POV: Haruki
Haruki looked down at the child cradled in his arms, carefully examining him for injuries with a thorough look that missed nothing. It did not take long for him to notice the absence of several fingers on the boy's right hand, and he clicked his tongue softly in irritation at the sheer barbarity of it.
He could understand the logic behind sending Sirzechs such a message, provoking him into acting irrationally and forcing mistakes through emotional pressure, yet mutilating Milcas had been entirely unnecessary. Using the child as a hostage would have achieved the same effect without crossing that particular line.
He had been explicit in his orders that the boy was not to be harmed, yet evidently his instructions had not been followed closely enough.
Lifting his eyes, Haruki regarded the silver haired figure standing before him, whose gaze was fixed upon him with an expression that was disturbingly joyful and unsettlingly obsessive. There was something about the son of Lucifer that did not align with what Haruki had learned through careful investigation.
Despite Rizevim's apparent disappearance from the world over the past century, Haruki had taken the time to study him thoroughly, ensuring that no variable went unaccounted for should the son of Lucifer decide to involve himself in Katerea's affair. Ignoring such a figure would have been foolish.
The conclusion Haruki had reached was that Rizevim had fallen into a deep and lingering depression for reasons unknown, withdrawing almost entirely from the world and even abandoning his twisted indulgence of violating powerful beings across various mythologies in pursuit of producing worthy offspring. That alone had marked a significant change in character.
As for his power, while Rizevim was acknowledged as the first known superdevil and was believed to possess power surpassing even his father, all credible accounts placed him far beneath Sirzechs and Ajuka in raw strength.
His only consistently noted ability of consequence had been his power to deny divine miracles, such as sacred gears, though Meron had once cautioned Haruki that Rizevim had never been forced to reveal his full capabilities and likely possessed far more than he allowed the world to see.
Even so, that did nothing to explain the sheer volume of demonic energy Haruki could now sense radiating from him. It was no weaker than that of Sirzechs or Ajuka, a fact that made little sense unless the increase in power was recent.
He likely used the method I gave Katerea, Haruki thought, and judging by the absence of any trace of the contingency protocols embedded within the spell, he must have reverse engineered it and altered the safety measures entirely. How annoying.
There had always been a risk of that outcome, despite the effort he and Cain had invested in layering the spell with protections and encryption. Haruki was not arrogant enough to believe that every mind would be incapable of unraveling his work and obediently dancing to his tune.
Behind Rizevim stood the two dragons, positioned a short distance away, their massive forms radiating barely restrained anger. They watched Haruki with a mixture of interest and hatred, their eyes gleaming with the madness and gleeful bloodlust that had made them infamous throughout history.
Haruki shifted his attention back to Milcas and gently touched the boy's injured hand. Instantly, the missing fingers regenerated as though they had never been severed, flesh and bone restoring themselves in a seamless instant.
Ordinarily, such healing required compatibility of demonic nature, as devils could heal one another through skin contact when they shared lineage or peerage. However, Haruki's nature as the god of devils rendered him a unique existence altogether, granting him an understanding of demonic energy so profound that alignment was unnecessary, since he could simply alter the nature of his own energy to match that of another.
He felt the child sobbing against him, small shoulders trembling uncontrollably, and he could hardly fault him for it after being kidnapped and forced to witness his father's murder.
"Shh, it's all over now," Haruki said gently, his voice low and steady. "You don't have to be scared anymore."
"Do you really believe it's all over?"
Haruki lifted his gaze to the son of Lucifer, who was studying him with open fascination, pale silver hair glowing faintly beneath the ambient light like something almost luminous.
"We meet at last, Haruki Yamashiro!" Rizevim exclaimed with unrestrained delight, his eyes shining with the innocent excitement of a child standing before a living legend.
"You know me?" Haruki asked, genuinely curious, wondering how the infamous son of Lucifer had come to take an interest in him.
"Of course!" Rizevim replied eagerly, almost bouncing in place. "How could I not know the greatest devil of this age? I am a devoted admirer of your work."
"My work?" Haruki repeated, bewildered. He had a sense of what Rizevim meant, yet he could not help finding it faintly amusing how everyone seemed to construct their own version of him.
"Yes!" Rizevim said brightly, clasping his hands together. "The last of the true. All the rest have sunk beneath the tide, except you and me. Would you not agree?"
"And whom do you mean by 'they'?" Haruki asked curiously.
"Those that have recognized their nature and purpose," Rizevim explained passionately. "Every existence that draws breath or casts a shadow does so for a reason that precedes it. Nothing is born without function, some are shaped to build and some to burn, some to preserve and some to destroy.
"The error of this age is the belief that purpose is negotiable, that one may wake up and decide to be other than what the world itself has already decided one must be - a childish fantasy no different from believing that a ceremony can proceed without an order or a ritual without its necessary acts."
"Determinism?" Haruki said, his voice sharp with undisguised disgust. "From the son of Lucifer no less. That is… almost impressive in how pathetic it sounds."
"Yet it's the truth," Rizevim said with evident delight. "Life itself is such a ceremony, and those who take part in it are not consulted beforehand nor instructed fully in their roles, because if they were then many would refuse the stage and that refusal would fracture the design. You can see at once that this cannot be permitted, for destiny does not rely upon the understanding of its instruments, only upon their participation."
Haruki let out a quiet breath through his nose. "So this is it then," he said flatly. "The grand revelation. You are evil because fate… decreed it so? I expected more from you than an attempt to justify your choices."
He despised beings who cloaked their cruelty beneath deterministic philosophies, those who insisted they could not act otherwise because they were made that way. Such reasoning had always struck him as a convenient refuge for cowardice.
No, they belonged to themselves, and it was precisely that responsibility they feared acknowledging.
Rizevim continued without addressing the rebuke. "Choices?" he repeated, genuinely puzzled. "Listen carefully. Devils are not wicked by choice nor brutal by accident, they are so because the world requires such things to exist, and to ask a Devil to imitate a hero or to posture as something called justice is to ask fire to cool itself or stone to soften under prayer. Those gestures belong to creatures who were shaped to hesitate and to waver between paths, such as humans and Angels, and we are not those beings. We were never intended to be."
"And yet history is filled with people who said no," Haruki replied at once, his tone cutting. "People who looked at the role assigned to them and rejected it outright. Your father chief amongst them. Did he not tear the world open precisely because he refused to remain God's lamplighter? Or was that rebellion also carefully scheduled in the margins of some cosmic ledger."
"Aye, but bear with me," Rizevim said, laughing lightly as though indulging a naive question. "What you call rebellion was itself a movement within the design. History is not the sum of individual intentions, nor the record of private hopes as many believe. History is the movement of a greater design that no single mind can fully perceive, and no man or Devil can ever know why he stands precisely where he stands, only that he must. Were he to grasp the full shape of the event in which he plays his part he might attempt to step aside, and the world would not allow it, for even that attempt would already be accounted for."
"So even defiance is scripted," Haruki said, shaking his head slowly. "How convenient for monsters. You turn every choice into a trick of language, and absolve yourself of any responsibilities."
"Yeah, I know the whole spiel - freewill and choices," Rizevim said with a gentle smile. "I heard it a thousand times before. And l tell you this - it's all lies. Every being seeks its destiny and no other, wether it knows this or not, and any creature who imagines that by choosing an opposing path it might escape its fate will arrive all the same at the very reckoning it sought to avoid, because destiny is vast enough to contain every apparent opposite within itself.
"This world, harsh and barren as it is, was never meant to comfort those who walk upon it, for its nature is fixed, its substance unyielding, and its purpose does not change simply because we wish it to. Explanations that pretend otherwise are recognized at once as hollow, leaving behind that familiar ache in the chest, the loneliness of a game played alone where the rules themselves seem uncertain and the outcome meaningless, and you know this feeling well, Haruki. It is that emptiness which drives men and Devils alike to seek purpose even as they deny that such purpose governs them."
Haruki did not answer him, for he saw no purpose in continuing the charade, nor any value in engaging further with a philosophy that sought only to anesthetize guilt.
"Look at Sirzechs Gremory for instance," Rizevim said, gesturing vaguely. "Look at his face and his posture and you will see his complaint written there, that the world refuses to conform to his wishes. Because of this refusal his existence becomes distorted, its original design bent and warped until he resembles little more than a shelter barely fit to house the spirit assigned to it, and still he insists that no force stands against him, that no will presses upon his path, that the ruin of his life is accidental and unentailed, owing nothing and owed nothing."
"And so," Haruki said with a pleased laugh. "Devils do what Devils must because the world itself demands that someone bear that role. What they wish to be has little bearing on what they are. Is that it?"
"Exactly," Rizevim said with open delight. "I knew you would understand me. You know me from the depth of your soul."
"Yes," Haruki replied calmly. "I recognized you the moment I saw you, and yet you were a disappointment to me. Then and now."
"Disappointment?" Rizevim asked, genuinely bewildered. "We are so alike, you and I."
"No," Haruki denied without hesitation. "I have no illusions about my own responsibility, nor do I seek to blame fate for my choices. They are mine and mine alone."
"I am merely honest," Rizevim insisted. "It's a heresy to deny cause when every consequence stands before us like an unpaid debt."
"No," Haruki said, his voice low and cold now. "Honesty would require you to admit that you enjoy what you do. That you choose it every time. There was no one forcing you to abuse and kill your own children."
Haruki had gathered a great deal of information about the son of Lucifer over the years. He knew of the children Rizevim had sired through acts of rape, offspring born without consent and forced into existence only to be herded into a grotesque game where they were made to kill one another for his amusement.
It was cruelty elevated into art, and it left no room for misunderstanding the kind of being Rizevim truly was.
Rizevim studied him now with open fascination, his expression bright and intent. "Do you truly believe you stand outside this order?" he asked. "What would you call driving the vampires to extinction if not fulfilling your destiny as a Devil?"
Haruki showed no reaction to the accusation. He was neither startled nor offended, for he had expected that Rizevim would know of his involvement, especially since such knowledge could easily have been extracted from Katerea.
"That is right," Rizevim said eagerly. "I know of your role in the fall of the vampires, how you prepared the stage for their downfall. I know of your magnum opus, the complete destruction of the new Satan's dream of heresy, every hope they nurtured reduced to ash without appeal or reprieve. Whether you knew it or not, Haruki Yamashiro, you were fulfilling your role perfectly, the Devil as he was always meant to be, the bringer of ruin and suffering, the hand that clears the field so the world may continue according to its design."
Haruki stared at him in silence for a long moment, then let out a quiet, humorless laugh.
"No," he said simply. "I did those things because I chose to."
Rizevim blinked, as though he had misheard him. "Choice," he repeated slowly. "And what choice do you believe that was?"
Haruki did not hesitate. "To protect those dear to me," he said evenly. "To save the defenseless, the ones crushed beneath powers they could not resist, the ones with no voice and no advocate left to argue for their right to live. That's all."
And above all else, there was his sister, though it had never been only about her. Humanity standing helpless before such barbarity was unacceptable to him. With Christ's barrier nearing its end, abandoning humanity without means to defend itself against beings like Rizevim, who reveled in misery under the pretense of fate, would have been an unforgivable betrayal.
The silence that followed was sharp and deeply uncomfortable.
Rizevim's smile collapsed into something raw and visceral, more severe than anger or shock, his mouth tightening as though he had tasted something rancid, his eyes narrowing with open revulsion.
"That is… obscene!" he said at last, his voice low and stripped of its earlier delight. "Disgusting! That is not the will of a true Devil."
He took a small step back, looking at Haruki now as though he were seeing him clearly for the first time and finding the image profoundly disappointing.
"A Devil… does not act to save," Rizevim continued, disgust seeping into every word. "A Devil does not concern himself with the weak or the voiceless, nor does he waste his existence on compassion or similar nonsense."
His gaze hardened. "I believed you understood this. I believed you were untouched by such human sickness. Unspoiled by Sirzechs' heretical dreams. That I had finally found my equal."
Haruki met his stare without flinching. "Then you believed a lie," he said calmly. "One you desperately wanted to be true."
Rizevim shook his head slowly. "You mistake attachment for will and weakness for virtue. Don't insult me by calling that choice! A true devil would never do that!"
"I care nothing for your beliefs or expectations," Haruki replied, his voice cold and unwavering. "I will do whatever damn I like. I have never acted, nor will I ever act, to be accepted by others, least of all by you."
Something brittle cracked in Rizevim's expression, the last remnants of admiration collapsing into something close to contempt.
"How repulsive," he murmured. "To wield such power and yet squander it on….. salvation."
He looked away, as though Haruki were no longer worthy of his full attention. "You are not what I thought you were," he said flatly.
Haruki ignored the son of Lucifer as he muttered to himself about betrayal and disappointment, instead shifting his attention to the two dragons who had been observing the exchange with unmistakable interest.
"You broke my control," Haruki stated calmly as he regarded the overgrown lizards.
He had resurrected the evil dragons using the Sephiroth Grail, yet he had also prepared countless safeguards to ensure obedience, contingencies layered upon contingencies in case they ever turned against him or attempted to act beyond their permitted roles.
"Did you truly believe you could command the greatest of dragons to ever exist with such ease?" Azi Dahaka sneered.
"The arrogance required to imagine yourself my master," the second head roared, its eyes blazing with wounded grandeur. "I who have mastered over a thousand arts of sorcery, I whose name is spoken in trembling whispers by gods and demons alike, I whose existence has broken empires and humbled pantheons, am to kneel to you?"
Haruki remained unmoved, his posture relaxed, his gaze steady.
"You don't seem surprised, son of dawn," Apophis observed, his serpentine gaze narrowing as he studied Haruki's relaxed posture.
"You made a deal with him," Haruki said at last, gesturing calmly toward Rizevim, who stood nearby, momentarily withdrawn into his own thoughts.
"Yes," the third head of Azi Dahaka replied. "I did not anticipate that the filthy son of Adam would bind us so thoroughly. His work was meticulous, his chains well hidden, yet nothing escapes me, for I am the master of magic. There is no flaw I can not exploit, no spell I can not dismantle. I required only an external source of power sufficient to overwhelm it, and so we made a deal with the Devil."
That explanation aligned neatly with Haruki's own assessment. The only viable method to ensure that the evil dragons would not erupt into indiscriminate slaughter upon resurrection had been to bind their souls directly.
Cain had devised the spell for that purpose, a complex construct designed to anchor their very existence to Haruki's will, leaving them unable to act against him without annihilating themselves in the process.
"I see," Haruki said evenly. "Still, you fulfilled your purpose, and I am a man of my word. If you swear an oath that you will never attack or attempt to harm innocent people, I will allow you to leave freely, as I originally proposed."
The two dragons stared at him in stunned silence before erupting into thunderous, rapturous laughter, the sound shaking the fractured space around them as though he had proclaimed himself superior to Great Red itself. Their mirth was sudden and violent, and just as abruptly their expressions twisted into something menacing and predatory.
"Allow us, little bat?" Apophis repeated, releasing a crushing pressure that rolled outward like a tide meant to force submission. "Has your newfound power eroded your judgment so completely?"
"We accepted your proposal then because you held our souls," Azi Dahaka continued, his voice steeped in contempt. "That leverage is gone. I have dismantled every contingency you placed upon us. You hold no power over us now."
The two dragons fixed Haruki with gazes filled with fury and unrestrained madness, their pride battered beyond endurance. Dragons were power given form, beings for whom existence itself was proof of supremacy, and every dragon regarded itself as the pinnacle of creation with an ego to match.
Among that already arrogant race, the evil dragons stood even higher in their self regard, their pride sharpened into cruelty and violence. To enslave such creatures, to bend their wills and force them into obedience, was the greatest conceivable insult, an offense that could never be forgiven, and they would pursue retribution without limit to soothe the wound inflicted upon their egos.
"You should have examined your condition more thoroughly," Haruki replied with a faintly mocking smile.
He snapped his fingers, and the two massive dragons, already coiling to strike, instantly detonated into a grotesque eruption of flesh and blood that burned away into ash, leaving no trace that they had ever existed.
"You…!" Rizevim gasped, his eyes widening as he finally emerged from his introspection. "You killed them? How is that even possible?"
The son of Lucifer stared in utter disbelief, his thoughts scrambling to comprehend how beings regarded as equal to Heavenly Dragon class could be annihilated so effortlessly.
"Oh, please allow me to explain my grand and evil plan," Haruki said lightly, the mockery in his tone unmistakable. "What do you take me for, a comic book villain?"
It was true that the dragons had broken free of his overt control and dismantled the majority of his contingency measures, yet they had committed a single, fatal oversight. At the moment of their resurrection, Haruki had fused fragments of his own soul into their very being, integrating them so completely that those fragments became indistinguishable from the dragons' own souls.
Their existence had been reconstructed around those fragments, rendering their souls, without their knowledge, extensions of his own.
Originally this measure had been intended solely as a final safeguard, a last resort should every other method fail. Since his ascension to godhood, however, his power had expanded far beyond its original scope. Drawing upon his divine nature and his intrinsic connection to his soul, he simply willed those fragments to be destroyed.
The dragons had been powerless to resist, first because it was their own essence tearing itself apart, and second because he had become an existence far beyond anything they could oppose.
"I hate you," Rizevim spat, his entire body trembling with revulsion and rage. "I despise you. You are a fraud who had no right to become a devil, a liar who hides behind stolen power, a con artist who twists rules you never respected, a grotesque aberration with a weak and cowardly will. You stand there pretending to be something you are not, mocking everything that defines our kind. I will destroy everything you hold dear and make you suffer for this."
Haruki regarded the outburst with clear disinterest. Had it not been for the consequences of doing so, he would have killed or sealed Rizevim on the spot. Even with his newfound strength, Haruki knew precisely what the son of Lucifer was at his core, a creature ruled by resentment and entitlement, whose bravado collapsed in the presence of a superior force.
Rizevim would not act, would not dare to challenge someone he knew stood beyond him, and that knowledge rendered all his threats hollow.
"Pity," Haruki said quietly. "I had hoped that the son of Lucifer would be above such pointless melodrama. Goodbye, Rizevim."
With that, he vanished, leaving the seething son of Lucifer alone amid the ruined dimension, surrounded by the echoes of his own fury and impotence.
POV: serafall
She landed hard amid the wreckage, boots skidding across glassed earth, her lungs burning as she dragged in breath after breath. The ground beneath her was no longer land in any meaningful sense.
What had once been mountains were now jagged stumps, torn open and crushed flat. Craters the size of cities stretched across the horizon, their edges still glowing with residual power. The world groaned under the aftershocks of their battle.
Distant fault lines split open again as earthquakes continued to ripple outward, and far beyond, the lake had risen into towering walls that crashed and receded in endless cycles of destruction.
Across from her, Katerea Leviathan stood her ground, breathing just as heavily. The woman looked like a cornered apex predator, eyes sharp, posture coiled with barely restrained malice. What remained of her clothing clung to her body in torn fragments, soaked through and shredded by ice and pressure, barely held together by scraps of fabric and magic that kept her breasts from shifting as she moved.
Serafall was in no better condition, her once pristine outfit reduced to tatters clinging to her body, her bat-like wings darkened and ragged at the edges, membranes torn and bleeding, every slow movement sending dull pain through her back.
She took in the battlefield with a grim calm. Ice and water ruled the horizon. Entire landmasses lay frozen solid, entombed under glacial sheets thicker than city walls. Colossal serpentine shapes were trapped within the ice, their bodies stretching for hundreds of meters, caught mid-thrash by her magic.
Everywhere else, the world had drowned. Floodwaters had swallowed regions whole, leaving nothing but debris and broken silhouettes beneath churning currents. Nothing touched by Katerea's water magic remained intact.
This reminds me of Grayfia, Serafall thought, her expression tightening. They had fought for Ten uninterrupted back then, when they had been hailed as the strongest female devils alive.
She knew without hesitation that her current self would overwhelm the woman she had been back then, centuries of growth hard earned through war and loss since the civil war five hundred years ago, and yet Katerea now stood before her, matching her strike for strike, power for power.
Serafall felt a tightness in her chest as she realized that without someone to intervene, without another Sirzechs to stop them, the collateral damage would escalate beyond even this apocalyptic scale.
She felt it before she saw it, Katerea's demonic energy surging violently as the sea answered her call, a massive serpent of water forming around her body in the space of a heartbeat. Its sheer size measured in miles, pressure alone crushing what little remained of the ground beneath it.
Serafall reacted on instinct, magic flaring as towering ice golems erupted behind her, their frozen forms towering and absolute, weapons already forming in their hands.
Then the space between them rippled.
The very air distorted, folding inward as a violet portal tore itself open, its edges shimmering with unfamiliar power, and from it stepped a figure carrying what appeared to be a small child cradled securely in one arm. The battlefield seemed to fall silent in that instant, the roar of elements muted by the sheer wrongness of the interruption.
Serafall's breath caught in her throat.
She stared at the man who had emerged, tall and dark haired, his presence commanding without effort, his beauty so overwhelming that her mind faltered, as though her senses themselves had been momentarily stripped of function.
It was the kind of beauty that could not be purchased, nor be crafted or enhanced, a perfection beyond artifice, beyond the reach of even those surgeons blessed with hands that might rival the gods.
Her heart slammed against her ribs, each beat loud in her ears, wild and unsteady, a rhythm that spoke of danger, of a body reacting as though faced with a predator or a force it could neither fully understand nor ignore.
The sound of her pulse filled her head, the cadence unmistakable, the same her body would produce when fleeing or fighting for survival, yet she did neither, rooted in place by the sight of him.
He was the pinnacle of devilish male beauty, unreal in a way that defied reason, as though sculpted from living void, lines and proportions so flawless they seemed drawn into existence upon the air itself.
It felt unreal, like someone had taken the concept of perfection and given it form.
Heat crept through her despite the frozen wasteland, a visceral, humiliating awareness spreading through her. Her body reacted before her mind could catch up, a tightening in her chest, a faint hitch in her breath, a pull she did not understand and did not control.
Her magic responded subtly to his presence, and she realized with a jolt of shock that simply looking at him stirred a hunger she had not felt in centuries.
For a fleeting, dangerous moment, the ruined world, the raging elements, even her formidable opponent ceased to matter, eclipsed by the impossible figure standing before her.
Serafall Leviathan, a being who had shattered nations and frozen seas, could only stare with a shallow breath and racing heart, acutely aware of just how deeply he had unsettled her.
Serafall, in the deepest recesses of her soul, recognized the figure standing before her. There was no possibility of error, despite the impossible beauty and the overwhelming divine power radiating from him, a presence so complete and absolute that it pressed upon her senses and made denial meaningless.
Much to her dismay, it was her opponent who reacted first to the sudden arrival. Katerea Leviathan abandoned her planned attack with frantic haste, moving with the desperation of a woman caught in the modest of committing adultery, and crossed the distance in an instant.
She fell to her knees before the newcomer, pressing her forehead to the ground as though in prayer before the physical manifestation of a god, prostrating herself completely and discarding every shred of pride and dignity without hesitation.
"Master," Katerea said, her voice trembling with emotion she made no effort to restrain. "My heart rejoices beyond measure to stand before you once more. The path you set into motion has borne fruit greater than even my faith dared to imagine. I am unworthy to witness your triumph, yet eternally grateful to serve beneath your gaze again."
Serafall could not stop herself from staring. She had never imagined that Katerea, whose pride was inseparable from her sense of self, would ever acknowledge someone as her equal, let alone submit to another with such absolute devotion and worship.
Her attention was drawn to the red haired child cradled in the figure's arms, and her heart began to pound violently as recognition set in.
"Sirzechs Lucifer is dead," the figure stated casually, his gaze settling on her.
What?
She must have misheard him. That was the only explanation. Sirzechs Lucifer was the strongest devil to have ever existed, and she had never, not once in her life, allowed herself to entertain the possibility of his death. The notion was so foreign that her mind rejected it outright.
Sirzechs Lucifer falling in battle was as unthinkable as the sun deciding not to rise, as gravity suddenly forgetting how to bind the world together, as time itself choosing to flow backward. It belonged to the same category as absurdities that could not exist, and her shock curdled immediately into denial.
"Finally, the traitorous dullard is dead," Katerea exclaimed with unrestrained joy. "That is the price for standing against the true kings of Hell. Now, master, you can rule the Underworld with none left to oppose you and lead us all to glory!"
"Stand up, Katerea," he ordered, his voice cold and stripped of any warmth. "He was killed by Rizevim Lucifer. Care to explain yourself?"
Her fears were confirmed in an instant. The son of Lucifer was involved. Katerea froze, confusion rippling across her face before her eyes widened in sudden realization, as though a horrifying truth had finally clicked into place.
"L-lord Haruki," Katerea stammered. Her composure shattered completely as fear took hold of her, her body trembling visibly.
"I see. So you didn't betray me intentionally," Haruki said with detached calm, and then, as though performing an idle gesture, he reached out and touched Katerea's forehead with a single finger.
Katerea screamed as though something utterly alien had been forced into her being, the sound sharp and agonized enough that Serafall recoiled instinctively. Katerea collapsed to her knees, sobbing uncontrollably as her hands clawed at the ground.
"What is this?" Katerea cried in panic. "What have I done? …Oh no, oh no, eternal darkness take me! How could I have been so blind? How could I have missed this?" Her voice fractured as panic consumed her, her words tumbling over one another as she berated herself for a catastrophic failure Serafall could not yet comprehend.
It was clear that Katerea was spiraling into a full panic, her breathing erratic as she shook violently, lost in terror at the realization of her own mistake.
"Oh, master, oh great master," Katerea cried, her voice saturated with dread and despair. "I have failed you. I have ruined everything you set in motion. I will accept whatever punishment you deem fitting, no matter how severe."
Her submission was absolute, her breakdown total, as though the loss of his approval was worse than any death.
"Interesting," Haruki murmured thoughtfully. "So he possesses the ability to place even Satan class beings under an illusion."
Serafall felt her blood turn cold. Rizevim could place even Satan class beings under illusion. The implication struck her with paralyzing force. It meant that no one was truly safe, that even she could be manipulated without ever realizing it, her will overridden without resistance.
Haruki turned his attention to her. "Ajuka Beelzebub has been sealed for an indefinite period of time," he added calmly, crushing the last fragile hope she had that this situation might still be salvaged.
She could not respond. Her mind stalled, unable to assemble words capable of expressing the magnitude of shock and terror crashing through her. Two impossibilities, things she would never have allowed herself to imagine even in dreams or idle fantasy, had just been declared reality.
The world around her felt suddenly unstable, its rules unreliable, and she would not have been surprised if the God of the Bible returned from death in that very moment alongside the original Satans to ignite another great war.
She finally looked at Haruki, her gaze hollow, her voice trembling. "We-were you responsible for all of this?" she asked weakly, even as she knew the answer deep within her heart.
"Yes," he replied evenly.
It began to make a terrible kind of sense to her. He had planned everything so that Sirzechs and Ajuka would be removed from the equation, clearing the path to destroy Agreas Island and ascend to godhood without interference. The structure of it all was unmistakable once she allowed herself to see it.
What she could not understand was the reason behind it. Why would he do any of this?
She knew Haruki, or at least she believed she did. She had heard countless things about him, from her sister, from Rias, from Sirzechs himself, and none of what she knew aligned with the scale of devastation he had caused.
From everything she had learned, he was not someone driven by naked ambition or hunger for power. He did not fit the image of a being who would willingly drown the world in blood simply to stand above it.
And yet he had done exactly that.
It no longer mattered whether he believed he had a justification, whether he could articulate some higher necessity behind the chaos. Cities had burned, lives had been erased, blood had soaked into the foundations of the Underworld, and he had deliberately driven devils against devils to achieve his objective. Whatever his reasons were, they did nothing to lessen the reality of what he had done.
"Why…?" she asked, her voice hollow with disbelief and incomprehension as she struggled to grasp what could have driven him this far.
"Does it matter?" he replied calmly. "Whether I have a reason for my actions or not changes nothing about the outcome."
"I suppose it doesn't," she answered dully, the words leaving her mouth without conviction.
The truth was undeniable. He had destroyed her home, fractured her people, and murdered those she had grown up alongside, friends she had known since childhood. The suffering he had caused was beyond measure, and there was no justification that could erase that.
"My lord, shall I kill her?" Katerea asked hesitantly. "She could prove to be a nuisance to your ascension."
Haruki laughed softly. "Oh come now, dear Katerea. Surely even you have realized it by now. I'm not Lucifer, nor do I possess any connection to him. I harbor no ambition to conquer Hell or to rule the devils in any capacity. I abhor the idea of ruling!"
Katerea froze, horror spreading across her face as she stared at him. "B-but you…" she stammered, unable to finish the thought.
"I never lied about my identity," Haruki said evenly. "How you chose to interpret it was your own decision. And in a sense, I have fulfilled your dream for you, so I consider us even."
Katerea looked utterly shattered. "W-we never meant anything to you, master?" she asked, tears streaming down her face.
"I am a reincarnated human, Katerea," he replied without emotion. "What made you believe that I would care for those who regard me and my kind as lesser beings?"
Katerea lowered her gaze to the ground, tears falling without restraint, her posture that of someone who had just realized that the one she revered above all else felt nothing but indifference or contempt toward her. Even Serafall felt a sharp pang of sympathy at the sight, and seeing her rival and greatest obstacle reduced to such devastation brought her no sense of triumph or relief.
"I see," Katerea said at last, her voice empty and stripped of emotion. "So are you going to kill me now?"
"Why would I do that?" Haruki answered evenly. "We have both gained what we sought from each other, and now we will go our separate ways."
With that, he appeared before Serafall so suddenly that she nearly recoiled, having felt no movement or disturbance to warn her of his approach. He gently placed the boy he had been holding into her arms, the care and tenderness of the gesture standing in stark contrast to the devastation he had caused.
"The Underworld is about to enter a new age," Haruki said to her. "The years ahead will determine whether the devil race can cast aside its pride and greed to stand together in the face of what is coming, or whether it will tear itself apart from within long before any external threat finishes the task."
With that, he vanished as though he had never existed at all, leaving Serafall standing there with Milcas in her arms while Katerea remained frozen in place.
The real fight was only beginning. And she had hoped to go on a vacation with Sona.
No rest for the wicked.
AN: This chapter took longer to write than I anticipated. Rizevim has always struck me as someone with a deeply deterministic view of life. Even in canon, he believes that a devil's nature is to be evil and that they cannot truly choose to do good. That fits neatly with my interpretation of him as a sort of inverse of Christ. where Christ represents freedom, Rizevim represents its denial. Anyway, some of you may have already guessed why Haruki can't directly act against Rizevim at the moment.
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