[ Isaiah's PoV ]
I already knew this moment was coming the second I saw Lavinia's name on the travel list.
The math was too simple to avoid. Vali and Lavinia — the bond between them wasn't faction loyalty or professional respect or the polite warmth that builds between allies over a shared battlefield. It was the specific kind of closeness that grows when someone stubbornly plants themselves in the life of a person who keeps trying to be alone. She'd seen something in him worth staying for. He'd let her stay, which for Vali Lucifer was its own confession. She was his big sister in every way that didn't need blood to make it real.
Which meant she was also the last person who knew he was dead.
That silence she'd carried through the portal, through the burning grounds, through the whole conversation with Benemune — I'd felt the weight of it sitting against the edge of every moment like a stone no one was ready to name yet. She'd been turning the question over in her hands since before the explosions. Maybe since before we'd even left. And now she'd sat at the edge of my mattress in the dark and set it down between us, clean and direct, the way she did everything that mattered to her.
Did you kill Va-kun?
Her blue eyes hadn't moved from mine. The warm older-sister quality she wore by default — the softness that made people relax in her presence the way you relax near open water on a warm day — she'd folded all of that away and put it somewhere else. What was left underneath was the eyes of someone who had already made peace with hearing the truth and just needed the courtesy of it arriving from the right person.
I held her gaze for one more second.
"I did."
The words dropped into the room like a stone into still water.
Lavinia simply shifted her gaze forward and let it settle on the far wall, on nothing at all, and for a while the only sound in the room was the low creak of the old castle settling around us and the distant muffled pop of something still burning outside.
Then she spoke.
"Va-kun was always doing that." Her voice carried the particular weight of someone who had said a version of this sentence many times to an empty room and was only now saying it to the person who needed to hear it. "Going out looking for the strongest opponent the moment I turned my back. I would tell him — Va-kun, you don't have to fight everyone you meet — and he would look at me the way someone looks when they think you've said something very funny without meaning to."
"He never listened. But I always knew. At the bottom of all that stubbornness, underneath all the fighting and the competing — he was kind. The same way Isaiah-kun is kind."
I held her gaze for a moment.
There was nothing fragile about what she'd just said. No cracks in it. It sat in the room the same way candlelight sits, warm and steady.
"I didn't intend on killing him," I said. My forearms settled across my knees. The mattress springs groaned faintly under the shift of my weight. "But he forced my hand. Fighting him in Scale Mail was already — " I paused, pulling the right word off the shelf and finding only the accurate one — "daunting. The kind of fight where you're constantly one miscalculation away from something irreversible. When he entered Juggernaut Drive—"
I stopped, because the memory of that specific moment had a physical texture to it, the way the air had compressed and turned electric, the way his power had expanded outward like something tearing through a wall that had been holding it back — "— there was no more room to be careful. If I'd held anything back at that moment, it would have been my life instead of his."
Lavinia kept listening. The quality of her silence was like held breath — not tense, just full. Giving the words space to land properly.
"I have never once killed someone who didn't deserve it," I said.
I stood up from the mattress. The floorboards caught my weight with a low groan. I turned to face her directly, and I let her see exactly the expression I meant to show — no softening, no apology, just the clean undecorated fact of it.
"I warned him. He didn't listen." I held her gaze. "I know you might hate me for it, Lavinia-san. But I don't regret making this choice."
The silence after that was the compressed kind. The kind that builds pressure. I'd braced for it without consciously deciding to — the way your body angles itself before impact, independent of what your head has decided about standing still. Whatever came next, I'd sit with it. That much she was owed.
What came next was not what I expected.
Warmth hit my back first — two arms closing around my shoulders from behind with the slow, deliberate certainty of someone who had already decided this before they moved. The hug pressed firmly against my back. Lavinia's chin settled somewhere near my shoulder, and the scent of something clean and faintly cold drifted forward — like fresh snowfall on pine bark, something she always carried with her.
"I am sad," she said quietly. Just the plain fact, set down gently "And I was angry for a while. I think I will probably keep being sad about it for a long time." Her arms didn't loosen. "But I also know what kind of person Isaiah-kun is." A soft exhale. "What you did was to protect the people you care for. Va-kun spent his whole life chasing power — always the next fight, always the stronger opponent — and he never really learned that part. What it means to fight because someone behind you matters."
Something in my chest unlocked that I hadn't noticed was locked.
I stayed still for a moment.
Well. I thought, with the specific tiredness of a man who had been braced for something difficult and received something unexpected instead. That takes care of all the unnecessary drama I had pre-built contingencies for.
All I'd ever had to say about Vali could be compressed into one sentence, if it came to that: your reality is not what you think it is. I had only ever shown what I chose to show. What remained after every illusion was stripped away was just the truth — plain, undecorated, incapable of lying, sitting there in the open the way things sit when there's finally nothing left covering them.
*Cough*
The sound came from the direction of the window like a politely deployed grenade.
Both of us looked.
Benemune stood with her back half-turned toward the glass, arms folded cleanly across her chest, one ankle crossed over the other. Her glasses caught the low amber light coming through the window at an angle that turned the lenses faintly gold. She'd arranged herself with the deliberate composure of someone who had been standing there long enough to get comfortable and had no intention of acknowledging how long that was. The small curve at the corner of her mouth was doing approximately eighty percent of her current communication.
"My, my," she said, in the pleasant unhurried tone she deployed when she was most entertained and least going to admit it. "Isaiah-kun." Orange eyes moved between the two of us with the slow consideration of someone performing an audit. "I step away for one conversation with Azazel. One. And I return to find you've gone and replaced me with Lavinia-chan." She tilted her head fractionally. "One hour, Isaiah-kun. That's all it took."
Lavinia's arms did not move.
"Bene-chan." Her voice carried the warm serenity of someone with absolutely nothing to explain. "Did you finish speaking with Azazel-san?"
Benemune pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose with one finger — the precise, unhurried motion of someone filing information while simultaneously choosing which item to address first.
"I did," she said. "The leaders of the Three Factions have agreed to Isaiah-kun's decision. Forces will be deployed within a few hours." She paused, let that settle, then added in a tone that sat somewhere between reporting and mild disbelief at reality: "They'll be arriving personally to sign the peace treaty with Queen Carmilla."
The information organized itself neatly in my head and I turned it over once.
All three leaders. Actually agreeing. Forces moving within hours. No extended stalling, no political friction, no someone deciding to table the conversation until next week.
I hadn't built the plan expecting it to run this smoothly. Somewhere in the back of my mind I'd been holding a contingency shelf loaded with fallback positions — Azazel buying time, Gabriel adding conditions, Sirzechs needing to consult someone. If the factions were genuinely deploying, then the protection problem was no longer something I was carrying alone. The risk variables I'd been quietly tracking compacted down into something dramatically more manageable.
Huh. That actually worked.
"Lavinia-chan." Benemune's voice shifted into its efficient register — still light, still surface-composed, but carrying the specific precision of someone who has decided they are owed something and is now arranging to collect. "Could you release Isaiah-kun? I need a private word with him."
"Mm." Lavinia's response arrived the way her responses usually did — unhurried, thoughtful, like she'd genuinely weighed the request against something internal and reached a different conclusion. "Bene-chan, Isaiah-kun and I weren't finished talking. We still have things to discuss."
One corner of Benemune's mouth tightened — the specific microexpression of a woman who knows she is being managed and has not yet decided how she feels about that.
"Lavinia-san." The shift to full name landed like a gavel. "We agreed beforehand. A private conversation."
"But Bene-chan," Lavinia said, and I could hear the smile in it without needing to see her face, "you're the one who interrupted our private conversation. We weren't finished." A beat. "So technically—"
I raised one arm.
"Can you let go of me, Lavinia-san?" I said, going for reasonable and achieving something closer to a man negotiating with a warm, immovable wall. "I need air — " I became fully, physically aware of exactly where Lavinia had arranged herself and exactly where my face had ended up in this bone crushing hug — "immediately—"
"Nope."
She said it the way someone states like the sky is blue. Simply. Without room for a counterargument.
"Lavinia." Benemune stepped forward and closed her fingers around my arm with a grip that was professionally firm and entirely personal in its intent. She pulled.
Lavinia's arms did not yield a centimeter.
"Please release him."
"You can wait a little, Bene-chan. We're almost done."
"Lavinia."
"Isaiah-kun looks very comfortable."
"He looks like—"
The next several seconds resolved themselves the way physics resolves anything where two forces apply to the same object — eventually, badly. The tug-of-war between Benemune's pull and Lavinia's settled grip lasted approximately four seconds before physics stopped cooperating, and I ended up with my face pressed firmly into the warm soft expanse of Lavinia's lower region —
Mmph.
— and Benemune, who had not released my arm, ending up seated across my lower half with her skirt fanned around her.
I took a moment to contemplate the choices that had led me here.
This is it, I thought, staring into the soft pressure engulfing my face. This is exactly what every harem protagonist in every manga I ever read was talking about. I understand now. I understand completely.
Something in the lower half of my body, operating entirely on its own agenda, chose this specific moment to announce its opinion of the situation with a firm, upward insistence that poked directly into Benemune's hip.
Benemune went still.
The silence lasted exactly as long as it took her to register what had just made contact with her.
"Oh." Her voice had dropped into a quieter register — the composure still technically present, but stretched thin over something that moved slower and warmer underneath it. She looked down. Her hand, which had been gripping my arm, relocated with careful, deliberate intention. Her fingers pressed through the fabric of my pants and traced the outline of what had introduced itself.
Oh. She said again, softer this time. More to herself than to either of us.
Her orange eyes found mine with an expression I hadn't seen on her before — the administrative precision had dissolved completely, replaced by something that watched me from much closer in.
"Isaiah-kun," she said, her voice low and unhurried now, carrying that particular warmth that made it feel like the room temperature had climbed three degrees, "it seems keeping this conversation private may be beyond my ability at this point." She tilted her head, the corner of her mouth curving. "It would be quite rude of you not to let us take care of this properly, don't you think?"
Before I could produce a response — before I could produce anything resembling coherent thought — she worked the clasp of my pants open with practiced, unhurried fingers and pulled the fabric down.
The room went quiet in a specific way.
Both women stared.
The silence lasted a full three seconds.
"Is that—" Benemune started, her voice catching on the first word and needing a breath to continue — "is that length supposed to exist?"
Lavinia, who had lifted her head to look, said with the calm clarity of someone making an accurate observation: "It's bigger than the ones in the manga you showed me, Bene-chan. Significantly."
"The manga I — Lavinia-chan, that is not — the circumference alone is—" Benemune pressed her fingers to the bridge of her glasses, which was a gesture she used when reality required a moment to properly process. Her eyes didn't leave what was in front of her. "...Fine," she said, and the word carried the specific tone of a person who has evaluated a situation, accepted it completely, and decided to apply themselves fully to it.
I tried to find words escape my mouth
"Mmf--"
Benemune's mouth closed around the tip, her lips fitting themselves to the shape of it as she worked slowly downward, one hand braced flat against my thigh, the other wrapped at the base. The heat of her alone was enough to short-circuit the sentence I'd been building. Her tongue traced the ridge along the underside in one slow, dragging stroke that pressed at exactly the point that made my spine go rigid.
Hn.
Schlick. Schlick.
Ngh—
Then a second warmth joined from the side. Softer. Slower. Lavinia's lips ghosted along the shaft from the other angle, her tongue flat and warm where it dragged upward in long, unhurried pulls, meeting Benemune's rhythm and carving out its own lane alongside it without a word exchanged between them.
Lick. Lick.
Haa—
Benemune sank deeper, working her head in a slow rocking motion that sent vibration through every point of contact, while Lavinia pressed open kisses against the base and worked back up again — the two sensations layering against each other until thinking became something that required more effort than it was currently worth.
Schlick. Schlick. Slurp.
Chu. Chu.
Nngh—
Benemune pulled back to the tip, sealed her lips around it—
Pop.
—then dove back down, faster this time, her hand twisting at the base on every downstroke in tight, measured turns. Lavinia had pressed her cheek against the shaft and was watching Benemune work with the calm, focused attention she brought to things that genuinely interested her, fingers drawing slow patterns against the skin.
Schlick. Schlick. Schlick.
The pressure built at the base of my spine and climbed like current through a wire, narrowing toward one point.
Hgh— Ngh—
The release made every bit of my muscle shudder, with every bit of my juices spilling against Benemune's lips as she held her position and took it without pulling back, her throat refusing to let go of it.
Spurts.
Gulp.
The excess ran down her chin in thick white lines. Lavinia had leaned in at the last second and caught the rest across her cheek and the corner of her mouth, blinking once at the weight of it, then looking down at herself with the expression of someone who had received considerably more than estimated and was arriving, unhurriedly, at a verdict.
I rose to my feet as I gasped for breaths.
I almost died there.
I turned my head and met with sight of something I've never imagined.
Benemune sat back with her glasses slightly askew, white covering her chin and the corner of her mouth, the dreamy unfocused quality sitting openly in her orange eyes now — no composure left to hold it back, no administrative machinery running. She looked present in a way she didn't usually allow herself to look present.
Lavinia had a streak of white across her left cheek and a small dot at the edge of her lips. She looked like she was still deciding how she felt about the experience and was arriving, slowly but clearly, at positive. The soft smile at the corner of her mouth said the verdict was nearly in.
Both of them, marked. Both of them with dreamy expressions that said the evening had landed in a way that was going to be remembered.
I looked at them and thought: It's going to be a long night.
My attention drifted the way it always drifted — toward the door.
A presence. Still. Patient. Positioned in the hallway just outside, close enough to the door that sound carried, present enough that I'd felt it from the moment things got interesting. Not moving. Not announcing itself. Not retreating either.
A smile pulled at the corner of my mouth.
At least Your Majesty has the decency not to interrupt a private moment, I thought. Whatever your reasons for standing out there, Carmilla-san.
I'd deal with the Queen and her surveillance habits later.
Right now, both women were reaching toward me again. Benemune with the focused intent of someone who had just discovered a thing and decided she needed a fuller study, Lavinia with the unhurried curiosity of someone who had received an answer to one question and found it had immediately produced three more.
I looked at the ceiling once more.
Long night indeed.
---
....
---
[ Isaiah's Clone ]
In the Infinity Castle, the corridors did what I told them to do.
The rooms rearranged themselves like a deck of cards shuffled by someone who knew every card's face. Shoji doors slid open onto hallways that ran sideways, downward, or in directions that hadn't assigned a name to. Wooden walls drifted on warped gravity that answered to me rather than to any natural law — a floor that had been underfoot three seconds ago was now a ceiling, and the ceiling had rotated to become a wall to the left of something that used to be the entrance.
I moved through it without breaking the stride.
Been a while since I am given a task from the main one
The upcoming Tepes-Carmilla war was already laying itself out in clean columns at the back of my head. Factions colliding as chaos spills in every direction with named combatants start emerging in large numbers, back to back, and character cards start dropping like loose change out of a torn pocket.
I'm going to be farming Character cards like crazy.
And then there was Crom Cruach.
Strongest Evil Dragon alive. The one whose presence in Carmilla territory had functioned as a signed statement — I am here, I chose a side, and I haven't started actually trying yet. Either the pitch lands and he joins the peerage, unlikely on the first approach but not impossible, or he refuses and I collect two, three character cards across the fights that follow. Either way I closed at a profit.
The three factions had just made a decision that was going to tip the balance of power in ways that people ten years from now would spend papers trying to map. The equilibrium of power and control maintained at centuries of political cost about to be stress-tested in ways that were not going to be smooth.
But before any of that.
There was this task I had been assigned to take care of.
My hand found the shoji door revealing the room on the other side settling into its final position as I arrived. With the two presences inside, both in place.
I slid it open.
---
The room was sparse the way I'd made it — lamplit wooden walls, tatami underfoot, a ceiling at a height that was technically optional in this space but I'd set it standard for the occasion. The torches threw amber light across a floor that had been still long enough to look permanent.
Issei was standing near the center with his weight on the balls of his feet.
Not the loose stance he held when he was comfortable. I'd trained him long enough to read the difference from across a room.
His eyes found me the instant the door moved.
"Oh, it's you"
The relief underneath it was real but he was keeping it off the surface where he could. His gaze tracked past my shoulder to the door — still there, still an exit — and came back. He had questions and he was deciding which one was the right first question.
"Issei." I stepped fully inside.
Clack.
The door opened in my side as a smile I'd been carrying since the corridor sharpened into much wider.
Leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, was a man who, by every account that existed outside the walls of this space, was dead.
Vali Lucifer.
He'd felt my presence of me before the door opened.
He said nothing.
Then I looked at them both.
Issei in the center, with months of training under my eye, currently staring at a 'dead man' standing against a wall of my personal dimension, alive, with no explanation attached.
Vali against the wall who had 'died', and was here anyway, watching me like I was the most interesting individual he'd encountered since the last time we'd tried to end life of each other.
"Shall we start" I said "Our discussion about becoming my peerage members?" I let the words land where they landed. "The Red and White Dragon Emperors."
Outside the castle, the new era was already into its first hour.
In here, it was just three people and a conversation none of them were walking away from the same way they'd walked in.
---
— Chapter End —
. . .
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