Scene 1
"Alexi sent you after she gained her position. So tell me, what's so special about the Buné Clan that you had to hide with the Star Clan?"
I focused on the younger devil standing in my office as he shifted nervously in place.
The office had been arranged for war more than comfort. Maps covered one wall, marked with pins and thin cords showing clan movements, supply routes, and the territories that would become battlefields once the current silence finally broke. A low fire burned in the hearth more for atmosphere than warmth, casting orange light over polished wood, stacked reports, and the sealed letters waiting on my desk.
Yet the boy looked more afraid of the room than the war outside it.
His black hair almost touched the floor, falling around soft features that looked closer to a woman's than most young men would be comfortable with. His frame was slight. His posture smaller than it should have been. If I looked only with my eyes, I would have mistaken him for a harmless noble child dragged into politics too early.
But the pressure inside him told a different story.
There was something draconic buried beneath his skin.
Not fully awakened. Not properly guided. But present.
It reminded me of the Dragon Palace of Hyperion. A distant echo, weaker and buried under devil blood, but still enough for my senses to notice.
"Umm… umm… I'm the—"
I raised my hand before his nerves dragged the sentence into useless fragments.
Walking over to the side table, I picked up the gourd the maids had brought back from the human world. The smell of wine rose the moment I uncorked it, sharp and rich enough to cut through the ink, leather, and cold stone scent of the office.
"Here. Drink this. It'll help settle your nerves."
I took a seat on the couch and gestured for him to sit across from me.
There was no reason to frighten a child more than necessary. Not when fear was already doing enough damage on its own.
He accepted the gourd with both hands, brought it to his mouth, and immediately choked after trying to drink too much at once.
I stared at him for a moment.
Then I reached over, took it back, and took a drink myself.
"From what I know, the Buné Clan has an active bounty on their heads by Ajuka. He's been studying your clan's ability since he was thirty, which means over a hundred years now. Most of your clan should be accounted for in his lands. So how did you end up with the Star Clan?"
His eyes dropped lower.
I clapped once.
The sound cracked through the office hard enough to make him flinch.
"Focus."
His eyes snapped back up.
"When speaking with devils, don't be nervous. It's a game of whose ego is bigger. Tucking your tail at the start doesn't bode well for you. If it were the Merci heir sitting across from you, he'd already be figuring out how to use you like a puppet."
I leaned back, letting the gourd rest against my knee.
"Let's start over. What's your real name, Buné?"
He swallowed.
This time, I gave him the silence to gather himself.
No doubt it was a lesson he already knew in theory from his time with a warrior clan. But knowing a lesson and surviving the moment where it mattered were different things.
His fingers tightened against his robes.
Then something steadied in his eyes.
"Rasper," he said. "Rasper Buné."
There it was.
A small light.
Not courage yet.
But the beginning of a spine.
"Tenebris Hades," I said. "Son of Hades."
I waved for the maids waiting outside the door to bring food and fresh drinks.
The door opened with quiet precision. Two maids entered at once, carrying trays of roasted meat, dark bread, fruit, and several covered dishes still steaming from the kitchens. They moved around the room without disturbing the maps or reports, placing everything on the low table between us before withdrawing just as quietly.
Rasper watched them with the caution of someone who had spent too long being moved between stronger powers.
I picked up a piece of fruit and studied him again.
This would serve as a new chance to see another version of devils.
Not the proud old houses.
Not the soldiers trying to become something better.
Not the schemers buried under titles and inheritance.
A survivor.
A bloodline hunted for what it could become in someone else's hands.
And in this world, that might be the most honest form of nobility left.
Scene 2
Original Sitiri
"Enoch, why are you here in my heir's domain?"
I fixed the robe across my chest as I stepped through the void from my chambers in my own territory.
The world folded around me with the old ease of a power that had stopped needing roads before most clans learned how to build walls. One moment I stood in the quiet dark of my estate. The next, I appeared above my dead brother's city, looking down over streets that still moved with life even while the power beneath them rotted toward slumber.
Below, devils moved like ants.
Merchants. Soldiers. Servants. Nobles pretending their houses still stood on solid ground. None of them noticed the two ancient beings watching from above.
Enoch stood near the edge of the highest ruined tower, dressed in furs as if he had wandered out of some older, harsher age and never bothered to accept the refinements that came after. His hair and beard stirred slightly in the wind. His eyes remained fixed on the distant place where Tenebris was currently eating with the only useful survivor of my brother's tribe.
My brother had already placed himself close to eternal sleep after losing the game of clans.
A waste.
But not a surprising one.
"Just watching," Enoch said. "Does it bother you?"
He didn't look at me.
That made me smile.
"Not one bit. Unlike the rest who are currently wagering big, my idiot granddaughter won big, and I don't have to do anything except allow my daughter to handle things as she is."
The wind moved over the broken palace roofs below us. Banners hung from old towers, faded and torn from neglect rather than war. Buné had always preferred solitude. Silence. Distance. The kind of pride that called itself devotion because it was too stubborn to admit it had become decay.
"Bael clearly isn't happy," I continued, "but he won't appear before me after the bullying he's been doing. Beliel might come looking for you, but that would most likely be for a deal. The hardliners against Heaven are mostly dead, so peace won't be such a hassle this time."
I let my eyes drift over the city.
"Their children could have simply stayed quiet and been reborn through bloodline. Instead, the idiots attracted the anger of the next generation."
Only then did I glance at Enoch.
"So are you here to watch one of yours?"
He finally looked at me.
There was old annoyance in that gaze. Old patience too. The kind belonging to men who had outlived too many cycles of fools repeating the same mistakes with new names.
"Beliel has something I need either way," Enoch said. "I'll give you my blessing if you can restrict the amount of devils linking to my descendant. He shouldn't take so many of his brother Solomon's subordinates."
I grinned.
My clan had already passed before the mandate arrived restricting the Seventy-Two.
Lucky timing.
Or perhaps Father had always enjoyed jokes no one else could laugh at until it was too late.
"Then all I need to do is find Elijah," I said, "and I'll have both keys to approach my true essence. Although my daughter took a gamble trading my granddaughter, she's secured the clan a seat beyond the heavens."
Enoch looked at me in open annoyance this time.
That only made it better.
He stepped off the ruined tower, walking into the empty air as though the sky had become a road beneath his feet. The void opened ahead of him in the direction of the weakening Beliel Clan, and then he was gone.
I remained a moment longer.
Then I stepped into the void myself.
This time, I appeared before the ruined palace of Buné.
The structure had once been worthy of a Duke. Dragon-carved pillars lined the entrance hall, their stone wings cracked with age. Black marble floors stretched beneath layers of dust. Old banners hung stiffly from the walls, carrying the faded marks of a clan that had once thought its bloodline alone would protect it from history.
It had not.
Deep beneath the palace, I could feel my brother's collapsing divinity as he tried to remain within the lower Satan ranks. The divinity inherited from our Father was slowly leaving him now that he had lost any descendants capable of reigniting his bloodline.
No living branch.
No worthy vessel.
No future strong enough to pull him back.
"What do you want, Sitiri?" Buné's voice scraped through the palace like stone dragged over bone. "Can't I enter eternal sleep without being bothered by you bastards? You all already stripped my Duke rank."
His voice had the hoarseness of someone who had barely spoken in eons.
That quiet solitude he preferred had become the death sentence of his clan.
"Your draconic devil factor," I said plainly. "One of your few survivors has managed to make it to my lands. So, as agreed upon, he'll become a sub-branch of my Sitiri Clan."
Silence followed.
Buné had always hated false devotion more than anything. He had been willing to throw away his children before lying the way the rest of us did when we were in Heaven.
That was his virtue.
It was also his stupidity.
"Fine," he said at last. "As long as it's not Bael or that brat from Astaroth's bloodline."
The palace trembled faintly as his attention sharpened from below.
"Tell me, brother. How does it feel to be a winner while everyone is concerned with the actions of Lucifer's son?"
Even buried under stone, decay, and his own dying authority, he had still managed to turn his gaze toward my grandson-in-law.
I placed my hands behind my back and smiled.
"Exciting. I haven't felt this kind of kick since we were all scrambling around thinking we were hiding our actions from Father."
The old memory almost made me laugh.
Almost.
"But it would be a lie to say I'm disheartened by the deaths of our brothers. More will join them now, with this war Bael has egged on."
I glanced toward my older brothers' territories, where heirs were already fighting to become the leading figures of their factions. Armies were readying themselves for a clash being directed like the choir of Heaven.
Ranks.
Bloodlines.
Old grudges.
Young pride.
All of them moving to music they were too arrogant to hear.
None the wiser that they had brought a Demon of the End into their heir wars.
Even the idea of fighting against the children of the four leaders was largely pointless. Their enemies lacked the political and military capital to strong-arm everyone the way their Peak Minor God fathers once had.
This was no longer the old war.
It was a new inheritance dispute wearing armor.
"Then may the rest join me in slumber, brother," Buné said.
His voice softened, not with affection, but with exhaustion.
"May Yhwach bless your journey to your essence."
I felt his unstable connection to reality begin collapsing by his own will. He cut himself off from the rest of the world, retreating into an eternal slumber that would require Father or Michael to wake him from.
The palace grew colder.
Not from weather.
From absence.
I pulled out the wine I always carried and poured it across the broken floor in front of me. The red liquid spread over dust and cracked marble, staining the ancient stone like fresh blood offered to a dead altar.
Blood was blood.
Even when it disappointed you.
Even when it lost.
Even when it chose sleep over humiliation.
I turned away after the last drop fell and returned with my prize, feeling Buné's essence settling inside me.
It would be handed to his descendant.
And through that boy, my clan would inherit what my brother had failed to preserve.
Scene 3
Bael POV
"Are you okay, Grandfather?"
Sirzechs' voice snapped me out of my stupor.
For a moment, I said nothing.
I had been focused on the conversation between Enoch and Sitiri, listening from behind the protections most devils would never even know existed. Then Buné passed on behind his barrier, hidden under the ruins of his own territory, while Sitiri stood there smirking as if he knew I was watching.
Of course he knew.
That old bastard had always enjoyed making victory look accidental.
"Yes," I said at last. "It would seem Ajuka has lost the one material he's been desiring through the children of Buné."
I reached for a bottle and laid out two cups between us.
Sirzechs raised an eyebrow.
I ignored it and poured.
The wine was crimson, deeper than blood and older than most of the clans still pretending age gave them dignity. Its scent rose slowly, rich with the kind of sweetness only Heaven had ever managed to refine properly before our fall.
"Some things are tradition," I said. "Honoring the passing of a brother is one my Father commanded. Even in war, blood is blood."
I passed him one cup before swallowing mine in a single motion.
The taste burned down my throat, carrying memory with it. Not comfort. Never comfort. Only proof that there had been a time before all of this became inheritance disputes, broken titles, and children mistaking rebellion for freedom.
I refilled my cup with the limited wine I had received from Father in a rare show of allowed indulgence before my fall.
Sirzechs looked into his own cup before speaking.
"Did something happen to the Buné survivor in the Star Clan?"
His mind moved quickly.
Good.
His eyes sharpened through several thoughts before settling on the only side that remained unchecked now that one of Enoch's children had moved.
The Star Clan.
Long-standing rivals of the Gremory.
Defeated. Ousted from their original lands. Still alive because pride sometimes grew better in exile than it did in comfort.
Gremory had devoured Star of his essence, promoting himself upward by swallowing the minor clans around him. The camel had forced himself to stand shoulder to shoulder with us greater Seventy-Two Devils, leveraging the only goodwill he had between himself and Sitiri to hide my own movements before fully siding with my clan as part of the Grand Duke faction against the Prince-ranked clans and above.
Useful.
Ambitious.
Never as subtle as he believed himself to be.
"He's being claimed by Tenebris," I said. "He can be considered outside of Devil politics from this point onward. If Tenebris raises him to divine levels, then it is best for all of us to accept Ajuka's loss in this exchange."
Sirzechs' fingers tightened slightly around his cup.
I watched it happen.
He was still young enough to believe not reacting counted as hiding the reaction.
"Although I didn't win either," I continued. "Ajuka's experiments against my nieces and nephews were barely tolerated in favor of his creation of the Evil Pieces."
The room around us had gone quiet.
Only the low crackle of the fire and distant movement of servants beyond the doors remained. My private chamber was built of dark stone and older protections, lined with relics, sealed weapons, and portraits of a bloodline that refused to fade even when Heaven itself rejected us. It was not a place for comfort.
It was a place for memory.
And warnings.
"I expect a strong leash on your friend moving forward," I said. "Destroying more pure-blood devils will be banned unless agreed upon by several Original Devils."
Sirzechs looked up fully now.
Good.
He needed to hear this as more than advice.
"Then we will find alternative methods for cleansing a house. Each bloodline is worth more than any gold that could be offered."
I poured another drink before meeting his eyes.
"Am I understood?"
The question did not leave room for pride.
Not his.
Not mine.
To be a leader meant solitude. That was the first truth every heir hated learning and the last one every true ruler accepted.
Sirzechs was already beginning to pay for failing to understand that early enough.
He had lost Falbium as a close friend and ally through the failed scheme of forcing himself into marriage with Serafall. That failure had forced me to make a concession to my brother Sitiri just to keep the boy's head intact.
And Sitiri women were not known for letting disrespect remain at the level of words.
Succubus devils were rarely celebrated for raw combat ability, but that had always made fools underestimate the wrong danger. Every maid and woman entering my territory had been vetted to the point that their clans and families began disappearing from the board, stranded in my castle and working under watch before they ever reached a knife's length from my bloodline.
That was what happened when one insulted a house that specialized in desire, secrets, and patient revenge.
Sirzechs lifted his cup.
For a second, he looked less like Lucifer's son and more like a boy realizing the rebellion he started had costs that would not stop at victory.
"Yes."
He sipped the wine.
The word rang through the room like a crack forming deeper in his soul.
A small one.
But cracks always widened under pressure.
And for the first time, he began accepting a cost he should have understood before starting the Rebellion War.