Romania disappeared behind them instantly.
There was no dramatic flash, no violent distortion of space, no sensation that Valerie could consciously process. One moment she stood in a room that smelled of blood, rust, and despair. The next, she was somewhere warm, quiet, and impossibly clean.
She staggered.
Her legs gave out almost immediately.
Magdaran caught her before she could fall, one hand steady at her shoulder, the other bracing her back. He did not pull her close. He did not crowd her space. He only ensured she did not collapse onto the carpeted floor.
They were inside a hotel suite, large and appointed in a style that made her stomach twist with unfamiliar luxury.
Soft lighting washed the room in muted gold. Floor to ceiling windows framed a distant cityscape glittering under night lights. The air smelled faintly of linen and neutral detergent. The absence of the underground stench that had lived in every corner of her memory made her chest ache in a strange way, as if relief and terror had braided themselves together.
Valerie's breathing turned shallow.
Her eyes darted around the room, cataloguing bed, couch, polished table, the absence of restraints, the silent promises of empty surfaces.
She stiffened, instinctively pulling away from Magdaran's touch the moment she realized she was being supported by a stranger, albeit one she just agreed to join.
"Relax," Magdaran said calmly. "I am not going to hurt you."
His voice was even, controlled. It did not carry urgency.
He released her immediately.
Valerie stumbled back a step and pressed herself against the wall, fingers curling into the fabric of her torn clothes. Her gaze locked on him, wary and sharp, trembling at the edges.
"Where… where is this?" she asked. Her voice was hoarse. She had not spoken much in years.
"A neutral location, away from Vampires." Magdaran replied. "Human territory. A hotel suite shielded against detection."
She swallowed.
"You… killed them," she said. It was not accusation, simply stating a fact. The word researchers scraped at the memory. "The researchers."
"Yes."
He answered without hesitation. There was no flourish, no attempt to pour mercy over the act. The flatness of his 'yes' was worse than a speechful justification.
Her fingers tightened around the fabric at her wrists.
"And you brought me here because…?" Her voice trailed.
Magdaran did not answer immediately. He gestured instead toward the couch.
"Sit down," he said. "You have been malnourished. Your body is still in shock."
She did not move at first. Her eyes searched his face for the familiar signs of predators clothed in civility, for cruelty hidden behind charm, for the practiced microexpressions that meant danger. She found none. Only calm attention.
Slowly, cautiously, she lowered herself to the edge of the couch.
Magdaran remained standing, giving her space. His posture was casual in a way that should have felt threatening, but did not. It was calculated restraint.
Silence stretched between them like a held breath.
Valerie broke it first.
"You are not a vampire," she said. "I know that much."
"No."
"Not human either."
"No."
She inhaled as if the air had a new temperature.
"Then what are you?"
"A devil."
Her shoulders tensed. The word had teeth in vampire lore. Devils devoured souls. They warped fate. In stories they were instruments of temptation and ruin.
"A very high ranking one," he added.
That made her flinch. High rank implied reach, resources, implication. It implied doors opening and doors being slammed forever shut.
"You saved me," she said quietly.
"Yes."
"Why?"
There it was, the question that had orbited her since the chains dissolved and bodies evaporated.
Magdaran finally sat down, choosing the armchair opposite rather than the couch. He folded his hands loosely. He studied her as one would inspect a data readout.
"I will answer every question you ask," he said. "I will not lie to you. But I will not soften the truth."
Her throat tightened.
"Then starting with the hardest one," she said. "Why me?"
He met her gaze.
"Because you are useful," he said calmly.
Her face drained of color. She recoiled slightly, nails digging into her palms.
"Figures," she whispered. "That was always the answer."
"You misunderstand," Magdaran said. "Useful does not mean disposable."
She laughed weakly. "That is what they always said too."
He let the words settle before he continued, giving them the necessary space to hurt.
"You possess the Sephiroth Grall," he said. "One of the thirteen Longinus. That alone makes you valuable."
Her eyes widened as if the name had physical weight.
"You… know about it?" she asked.
"I do."
"You want it," she said.
"I want you."
The distinction froze her. Her breath hitched.
"Like all high class devils, I am building a peerage," he continued. "A group bound to me. I intend to offer you a position within it, a Bishop."
The word echoed in the room as if an old bell had tolled.
"Bishop…" she murmured. She knew what that meant. Devils used chess analogies for structure. Pawns. Rooks. Bishops. Queen. Bishop was not fodder. Bishops were specialists.
"You would reincarnate me," she said.
"Yes."
She stared at her hands.
"That means…" Her voice trembled. "I would no longer be… this."
"A dhampir," he finished. "Correct."
Her chest rose fast. The realization formed cold and bright.
"You would become a devil."
She laughed again, sharper now. The sound was brittle.
"So I trade one cage for another."
"No, not really." Magdaran said immediately. "You trade captivity for choice."
She looked up, searching his face for the bait.
"In my peerage," he continued, "you will have obligations. You will have duties. You will not be free in the way humans imagine freedom. But you will never be experimented on. Never restrained. Never starved. Never treated as property."
She searched his expression for the lie. He held none.
"And if I refuse?" she asked.
He did not hesitate.
"Then I will still ensure you are protected," he said. "You will be relocated. Given resources. Left alone. Somewhere quiet wherever you would want."
That answer shook her more than a threat would have. There was no coercion implied in it. It exposed his calculation and his capacity for restraint.
"You would let me go?" she said, incredulous.
"Yes. You have my word for that."
She leaned back, stunned, like someone whose ribs had been removed and then hastily returned.
"You gain nothing from that."
"Nothing to lose either, saving you was effortless for me." he replied.
Her eyes burned.
"Why are you doing this?" she demanded. "Why go to this trouble?"
Magdaran paused. A single private thought crossed him and he did not speak it aloud. 'Because I understand what it means to be caged.' He folded the thought back into his practiced neutrality.
"Because I can," he said instead. "And because the world does not need more broken people."
She covered her face with her hands. Tears slipped between her fingers. She did not sob, she did not wail. She did not perform melodrama for it was not in her nature to make noise now. She simply released a long, steady stream.
Magdaran did not interrupt. He waited. Silence was another kind of answer.
When she finally lowered her hands her eyes were rimmed red but focused.
"If I agree," she said, "what happens to the Longinus?"
"It remains bound to you," Magdaran answered. "I do not strip my peerage of their power. In case you don't know, that sacred gear is bound to you, separating it means killing you."
"Even if it rivals Satan class weapons?"
"Especially then."
Her lips parted. "You trust easily," she said.
"Maybe..." he replied.
She exhaled as if letting go of a held breath.
"I accept," Valerie said. The words left before fear could reassert itself.
"I accept becoming your Bishop."
Magdaran nodded.
"Then we proceed."
He produced a crimson chess piece from a pocket that had not seemed noteworthy until it was drawn. The carved Bishop gleamed with inner light in the lamplight.
"Are you afraid?" he asked.
"Terrified," she answered honestly.
"Good," he said. "That means you are still alive."
The ritual that followed was simple and intimate and clinical at once.
Magdaran inserted the bishop piece on her chest.
Crimson light gathered around the chess piece. It pulsed against Valerie's skin as if seeking entrance. She felt warmth first, then pressure, then an internal rearrangement.
Pain flickered and receded like a brief wind. She saw memories not as a flood but as a catalogue being reorganized. Her malnourished limbs filled with strength as new blood steadied in veins that had been hollowed by starvation for years.
Magdaran in the meantime sent a steady stream of life energy through Senjutsu in her body, she had suffered a lot, the time of transformation was the best to cure her the best he could.
He left some scars. He kept memory intact. Memory mattered, he said to himself. The past made a person; to erase it entirely would produce compliance but not loyalty, of course, it could be removed later.
He wanted a Bishop who knew what she had been, who remembered why she would refuse comfortable silence for the sake of those who could not fight.
When the light dissipated, Valerie collapsed forward.
Magdaran caught her.
She was heavier now. Her breathing steadied. She opened her eyes and they glowed faintly crimson as if the Longinus answered and accepted.
"I…" She inhaled deeply. "I can breathe."
"Welcome to my peerage," Magdaran said.
Outside a low dawn light smeared the world with gray and gold.
Kuoh Town, his temporary base and the staging ground for the precarious life he was building was waking under a brittle sky. He moved with her, guiding, not commanding.
The journey home was a gentle contraction of space. He folded distance as one folds a letter. Romania did not exist in her immediate memory now except as a place burned into the mind by trauma. He did not allow her to revisit the laboratory with words. It was not the moment.
They arrived at the mansion on the outskirts of Kuoh Town before the sun finished its climb. The estate looked like a promise. Invisible wards thrummed beneath the foundation. Architecture married modern minimalism and old-world strength. Magdaran stepped ahead of Valerie to open the heavy oak door.
She froze at the threshold.
"This place…" she whispered. "It feels...safe?"
"It is," he answered.
The living room was occupied in easy domestic tableau. Kuroka lounged on the couch, tail flicking like a small bored cat.
Shirone sat nearby with a book spread on her lap, eyes quicker than the words. Akeno stood by a window, cradling a cup of tea in hands that never quite stopped moving. Kuisha leaned against a pillar, expression watchful and quiet.
They all looked up at once, the way a pack recognizes one new scent and then another.
"This is Valerie," Magdaran said. "My newest Bishop."
Conversation stopped. The room contracted to the space around Valerie.
Kuroka's expression shifted from playfulness to something threaded with recognition.
"Another beautiful girl," she murmured softly.
Shirone's grip tightened on her book.
Akeno set her cup down very carefully. Her eyes were soft in ways that did not spoil her usual composure.
Valerie froze. She expected scrutiny, perhaps interrogation. She expected questions that would turn her inside out.
Instead Kuroka rose and approached slowly, the predatory grin she always wore softened into something that might have been empathy.
"She looked rather broken... Experiments?" Kuroka asked.
Valerie nodded.
Shirone rose as well.
"So were we... well, almost, if not for Mag-chan," Kuroka said quietly.
Valerie's breath caught. Her eyes found Kuroka and Shirone as if they might be lifelines.
Kuroka moved close to Valerie, The cat-girl's fingers were nimble and warm as she reached out and settled one hand on Valerie's shoulder exactly where the chains had dug into skin.
"You are safe here," Kuroka said. "Anyone who tries that again dies."
The vow was simple and brutal. It carried promise and threat in equal measure as if affection and violence were the same coin.
Valerie trembled. Tears welled again, but this time she did not hide them.
Akeno crossed the room and knelt. She put a gentle hand on Valerie's other shoulder and met her gaze.
"Welcome," Akeno said softly. "There will be no one harming you here, Mag-chan might look like a villain, but he is actually a softie, he might have acted cold towards you, but that's only because he's not good at showing emotions to people he isn't close with.
But, now that you are his family, anyone daring to think about doing anything to you would surely be obliterated by him."
Kuisha stepped forward and offered a small pack of clean clothes, soft fabric and satin sash.
Kuroka bought a bag of cookies, "Eat," she said in a voice as calm as stone. "You are so thin, if you don't eat a lot, your boobs won't grow"
Valerie took the clothes, she turned them in her hands, fingers brushing the weave. Then she gave a weird look at Kuroka before accepting a cookie.
Magdaran remained off to the side, watching. He catalogued, not in the clinical way he had sometimes done but as a man claiming the edges of something personal. 'They understand her without words,' he thought. 'That is the architecture of a well-bound peerage.'
Kuroka looked back at Magdaran with an expression that combined satisfaction and a small, savage joy.
She can be fierce, he thought with a small private smile that he did not voice.
Shirone moved closer to Magdaran unconsciously, drawn by a silent claim. He noticed rather than noticed.
Akeno's composure softened further. She took Valerie's hand briefly, a human anchor.
"Tell us," Akeno said, voice steady. "If you can."
Valerie's voice came in a whisper, a rasp honed by years of silence and forced acceptance.
"They took blood," she said. "They cut me. They tried to remove what makes me vulnerable. They called it improvement. They called me tool. I… I believed it for a while."
The room was a mosaic of reactions.
Kuroka's tail flicked faster. Her teeth flashed in a feline smile that was not pleasant but not cruel.
Shirone's hands fumbled with the edge of her book. "We were almost the same," she said. "We nearly…"
Her words broke and she looked away, pushing the memory back behind a practiced calm.
Kuisha's jaw set. "They will pay," she said simply.
Magdaran moved in then, because there was a practical piece to place. "Valerie," he said. "There are things you should know about the Sephiroth Grall."
He explained in measured phrases. "The Sephiroth Grall is an ancient Sacred Gear classified among the Longinus. It manipulates life and purification. At its theoretical peak it can heal grievous wounds, purify corrupted constructs, and under very specific ritual circumstances, assist in life restoration. Its existence has always painted a target on any bearer."
Valerie listened, a student learning the architecture of a world she had been kept ignorant of. Her mouth formed small words that tasted of hunger.
"The Longinus are not weapons in the simple sense," Magdaran continued. "They are instruments with conceptual resonance. Some are destructive. Some are protective. The Grall responds to the sanctity of life. In the wrong hands it can be perverted into a means of removing weakness."
Kuroka's nails ghosted the side of the couch. "They wanted to make vampires without vulnerability. It explains it."
"Yes," Magdaran answered. "The Tepes were searching for a way to eliminate sunlight sensitivity and holy weakness. They intended to chain the Grall's properties to biological modification. That is why your fate was so precarious.
But I don't understand why they also conducted biological experiments on her..."
Valerie asked, "Can the Grall become a weapon?"
"It can," Magdaran said.
Valerie's fingers tightened around the neckline of the clothes she held.
"What about the Vampires? Would they still chase after me?," she asked.
"Those are problems we will manage," Magdaran said. "My position, combined with Rias's influence, creates deterrents. There will always be those who would hunt a Longinus. That is part of the burden of bearing it. But you will not be left alone. That is the point of you joining me."
"And, with me, a high level Satan protecting you... let's say, not many would dare now." He continued after a pause.
Silence fell again but it was less fragile now.
Around them the household moved like a living thing. Preparations for the day unfolded quietly. Tea steam curled in thin threads. Akeno set a tray with soft fruits. Kuroka fumbled with a box that contained gifts, small, practical things that meant someone had thought of her.
Valerie accepted the fruit and nibbled. The taste of sweet flesh made her eyes water with gratitude.
She looked at each face in the room. At Magdaran who had plucked her from a laboratory like one would pull a sapling from a bed of rot. At Kuroka and Shirone who bore the echo of similar harms. At Akeno and Kuisha who offered steadiness.
"I will try to improve and help you the best I can," she said. The words were small but they were a beginning.
Kuroka laughed then, a quick feline sound that was less triumph than relief.
"Good," Kuroka said. "If you break, I will chew you back together. Figuratively of course, Nya."
Shirone, with a softness that had been honed into a weaponless armor, stepped forward and took Valerie's hand. "We will help," she said.
Akeno perched in a doorway like a warm sentinel. "Healing is not quick. It is affectionate and tedious and embarrassing. We will do all of it."
Magdaran observed them all and felt the slow bloom of something like pride tighten around him. These were not recruits. They were not assets to be deployed on his behalf. They were people he had chosen and who, by their quiet reciprocation, had chosen him.
'Peerage forms not from ledger entries but from shared bruises,' he thought in the private place where calculation and feeling briefly touched. He left the thought there unvoiced.
Valerie sat in the center of the room and allowed herself to be surrounded. It was an ordinary domestic scene. It was extraordinary in its ordinariness for someone who had been kept as an object for so long.
The Grall pulsed quietly in Valerie's chest as if acknowledging its new pattern of resonance. It would take time for her to learn its usage properly. It would take time for enemies to rearrange themselves in response And it would take time for trust to root.
Magdaran remained near the doorway for a long moment before he finally stepped forward to place a hand lightly at Valerie's shoulder. It was not possessive. It was a mark of contract and comfort.
"Rest for a while," he said. "When you are ready we will begin training. If there is pain we cannot remove, we will share it."
Valerie lifted her face to him and for the first time allowed a small, reluctant smile to break through the residual fear.
"Thank you," she said.
Kuroka flopped back on the couch with a small theatrical sigh and produced a ridiculous plush toy from behind her. She tossed it to Valerie who caught it with fumbling fingers. A ridiculous little moment of laughter escaped them both.
'Protection wins trust far better than rhetoric,' Magdaran thought, and for once he allowed a small, private satisfaction that did not hide itself behind thin logic.
"Valerie... would you like to change your surname?" He asked, though, after considering, that sounded a bit weird, almost like a marriage proposal.
And a blush crept into Valerie's face.
"Nya, Mag-chan, proposing already? You two met yesterday! One day! it's been one day!" Kuroka shouted exaggeratedly.
"I did not mean it like that, What I meant was to remove the Tepes name, for it sticks like a sore thumb, it would bring back unwanted memories." Magdaran argued.
"Let's remove the Tepes... Just call me Valerie." Valerie muttered, and everyone nodded.
Valerie, for the first time she looked at her hands and did not see only instruments of pain. She saw possibility.
____________________________________________
I made some changes, Kuroka has been changed from bishop to Rook, I felt that suited her better, Valerie would not fit any other piece otherwise.