The First Year:
In the beginning, there was hope.
Not the blazing, brilliant hope that surrounded Lucien Gremory—the crimson-haired prodigy who had manifested the Power of Destruction before he could even crawl, whose every gurgle and laugh seemed to resonate with demonic power.
No, the hope for Caelan Lucifuge was smaller.
Quieter.
More desperate.
"Give him time," the physicians had said during those early months, their diagnostic spells washing over the silver-haired infant in waves of pale blue light. "Some devils are late bloomers. His demonic power reserves might develop as he grows."
"He's a Lucifuge," others murmured in the halls of the Gremory estate.
"That bloodline specializes in support magic, in shadow arts. Perhaps his power simply manifests differently than the Gremory destruction."
"He survived, didn't he?"
Lady Venelana had said once, holding the tiny Caelan in her arms while Lucien slept peacefully in his crib nearby.
"That alone shows strength. Perhaps not the strength we expected, but strength nonetheless." They wanted to believe.
Sirzechs wanted to believe.
He would visit the nursery when his duties as a Satan allowed, and he would look at both his sons with equal attention—or at least, he tried to. He would hold Caelan, whisper to him, tell him stories of the Underworld and the stars beyond the dimensional gap.
For those first few months, Caelan was still *his son*.
Both of them were.
Grayfia wanted to believe.
She maintained her perfect composure, her stoic mask never cracking in public, but in the quiet hours of the night when she nursed her children, she would trace her finger along Caelan's pale cheek and whisper, "You're stronger than they think. You have to be."
Even Lord Zeoticus, despite his initial disgust, had softened slightly.
"The boy has Lucifuge blood," he'd grumbled to his wife one evening. "
That's not nothing. Perhaps he'll be suited for administration, or magical research.
"Not every devil needs to be a warrior."
Hope.
Fragile, conditional hope. But it was there.
By the time the twins turned one, the doubt had begun to creep in.
Lucien had taken his first steps at eight months. By his first birthday, he was already speaking in short sentences—precocious even by devil standards. His Power of Destruction had stabilized under Sirzechs' careful guidance, and he could summon small orbs of crimson-black energy that would disintegrate whatever toys he pointed them at. The servants learned quickly to replace his playthings with magically reinforced items, and even then, they rarely lasted more than a week.
Caelan, by contrast, had only just learned to sit up without support. His demonic power reserves hadn't grown. Not even a little. The physicians' diagnostic spells showed the same depressing results every time: magical circuits that were present but anemic, demonic energy that flickered like a candle in a windstorm. He was healthy enough—no illnesses, no physical deformities—but magically, he was as close to human as a devil could be without actually being one.
"Perhaps next year," the physicians said, but their voices carried less conviction.
The visits from Sirzechs became less frequent. His duties as Lucifer were demanding, yes, but even when he was home, he spent most of his time with Lucien. Teaching him to control his power. Praising his progress. Laughing at his clever observations.
When he held Caelan, it was with the gentle care one might show a fragile piece of glass.
Necessary.
Careful.
But distant.
Grayfia remained dutiful. She cared for both children with the same meticulous attention to detail she brought to everything. She ensured Caelan was fed, bathed, clothed in the finest garments. But there was something missing in her eyes when she looked at him. Something that had been there in those first desperate hours after his birth, when she'd called him *her son* with such fierce conviction.
Now, when she looked at him, she saw *disappointment*. She never said it. She would never be so cruel. But Caelan—even as young as he was—could feel it.
By age three, Caelan understood.
Not in the way an adult might understand, with words and logic and the bitter acceptance of reality.
No, he understood the way a child understands when their parent flinches away from their touch. When their name is spoken with a sigh rather than warmth. When the room goes quiet when they enter, as though their presence is an inconvenience.
He understood through absence.
Sirzechs had visited the nursery twelve times this month.
Eleven of those visits, he'd spent the entire time with Lucien, teaching him a new spell or playing some game that made his brother laugh.
Once
just once—
he'd picked up Caelan, held him for perhaps three minutes, murmured something about "getting bigger," and then set him down to return to Lucien.
Grayfia had stopped whispering to him at night.
Lord Zeoticus no longer mentioned him in conversations about the family's future.
And the servants—oh, the servants were the worst.
They didn't ignore him, exactly.
They fed him, changed him, kept him clean and presentable.
But they did it with the mechanical efficiency of people performing a chore.
When they tended to Lucien, their faces lit up. They cooed over him, praised him, treated him like the little prince he was.
When they tended to Caelan, they were simply... going through the motions.
One day, a new maid—young, still learning the hierarchy of the household—had made the mistake of dressing Caelan in one of Lucien's hand-me-down outfits. It was a beautiful little suit, crimson and gold, embroidered with the Gremory crest.
The head maid had nearly had a fit. "Are you insane?" she'd hissed, snatching Caelan up and stripping him out of the offending garment as though it were on fire.
"That's the young master's clothing! Lord Lucien's! You don't dress *him* in it!"
"But—but they're twins," the young maid had stammered.
"I thought—"
"You thought *wrong*. Lord Lucien is the heir. *That one*—" she'd gestured at Caelan as though he were a piece of furniture,
"—is Lord Caelan of House Lucifuge. He wears silver and black. Gremory colors are for the *true* Gremory bloodline."
Caelan had been three years old. He'd understood every word.
At four years old, Caelan Lucifuge was a contradiction.
Physically, he was small for his age—delicate, almost fragile, with the kind of pale, ethereal beauty that came from his mother's Lucifuge bloodline. His silver hair had grown long enough to fall into his eyes, and those eyes—pale silver like winter frost—seemed far too old for a child's face.
He rarely smiled.
He rarely cried.
He simply... observed.
Magically, he was a disappointment.
His demonic power reserves hadn't grown at all. He couldn't manifest so much as a spark of energy, let alone anything resembling a spell. The physicians had stopped examining him regularly.
There was no point.
But mentally...
Mentally, Caelan Lucifuge was a monster.
It had started innocuously enough.
The Gremory estate had an enormous library, and Caelan—bored and alone while Lucien received private tutoring from the finest devil educators—had wandered into it one afternoon.
A servant had found him there hours later, surrounded by books, his small fingers tracing over complex mathematical equations in a text meant for adolescent devils. "Can you even read that?" the servant had asked, amused. Caelan had looked up at him with those too-old eyes and said, "The Pythagorean theorem is incomplete for non-Euclidean geometries. This book doesn't account for dimensional curvature."
The servant had stared.
Caelan had gone back to reading.
Word spread quickly through the estate.
The magically-inert twin was apparently some kind of savant.
Lord Zeoticus, intrigued despite himself, had ordered a tutor to test the boy's knowledge.
The results were... unsettling.
At four years old, Caelan could solve complex mathematical problems meant for devils ten times his age. He'd taught himself to read three different languages just by studying books in the library.
When presented with a logic puzzle, he solved it in seconds.
When asked about history, he recited entire passages from texts he'd apparently memorized after reading them once.
"It's remarkable," the tutor had reported to Sirzechs.
"His cognitive abilities are far beyond anything I've seen in a child his age. He grasps abstract concepts instantly. Mathematics, science, history, even philosophy—he absorbs it all like a sponge."
"What about magic?" Sirzechs had asked, his tone carefully neutral.
"Still... nothing, my Lord. His intellect is extraordinary, but without demonic power to channel it through, he'll never be able to apply it in any meaningful way. He's brilliant, but ultimately... useless in combat or Rating Games."
Sirzechs had thanked the tutor and dismissed him.
He hadn't visited Caelan to congratulate him on his achievements.
Caelan didn't need anyone to explain it to him.
At four years old, he'd already begun reading books on psychology, on social dynamics, on the nature of power and hierarchy.
Not because anyone suggested it—
no one suggested anything to him anymore—
but because he wanted to *understand*.
Why did Father's eyes slide past him as though he were invisible?
Why did Mother's jaw tighten whenever someone mentioned his name?
Why did Grandfather openly call Lucien "the future of House Gremory" while referring to Caelan as "the other boy" when he thought no one was listening?
The answer, once he found it, was brutally simple.
*Disappointment. *
He was a *disappointment*.
Devils valued power above all else.
Bloodline.
Magic. T
he ability to destroy, to dominate, to prove one's worth through sheer force.
The Gremory clan was built on the Power of Destruction—a legacy of annihilation passed down through generations a bloodline borrowed from Bael.
Lucien embodied that legacy perfectly.
At four years old, he could already unleash bursts of destructive energy that would have killed a lesser devil.
Caelan could barely light a candle with magic.
No, that was being generous. Caelan *couldn't* light a candle with magic.
In a world where power was everything, he had none.
And so, he was nothing.
At first, the child in him had tried to rationalize it.
*They're busy*, he'd told himself when Father canceled yet another promised visit.
*Lucien needs more attention because his power is dangerous. They have to teach him control. It's not that they don't care about me—they just have to prioritize.
But then he'd started reading about politics.
About power structures.
About the psychology of neglect.
And the truth had crystallized with painful clarity.
They didn't prioritize Lucien because he *needed* more attention. They prioritized Lucien because he *mattered*.
And Caelan didn't.
When Caelan was four years old, Lady Venelana gave birth to a daughter.
Rias Gremory.
The entire Underworld celebrated.
Another prodigy, they whispered.
Another wielder of the Power of Destruction.
The Crimson-Haired Ruin Princess, they would call her—a title earned not through deeds but through potential, through the sheer overwhelming magic that radiated from her even as an infant.
She wasn't quite at Lucien's level. The physicians were quick to point that out, as though reassuring Lord Zeoticus that his grandson an male would remain the true heir.
But she was close.
Terrifyingly close.
Her demonic power reserves were monstrous for a newborn, her magical circuits pristine and perfect.
Another masterpiece from the Gremory bloodline.
The estate erupted into celebration. Nobles from across the Underworld sent gifts.
Serafall Leviathan herself had teleported in to coo over the baby girl, declaring her "the cutest future Satan ever!"
Even Ajuka Beelzebub had stopped by, his analytical gaze studying the infant with academic interest before pronouncing her "fascinating."
Caelan had been in the library when it happened.
No one had thought to tell him he had an aunt.
Technically, Rias was his aunt—born to his father's younger brother's wife... no, wait. Born to his *grandfather's* wife. The family tree was confusing, but by devil nobility standards, she was his aunt despite being younger than him.
Not that it mattered.
Relationships were defined by power and status, not age.
He'd found out when he'd wandered into the main hall and seen the crowd gathered around Lady Venelana's chamber.
Curious, he'd slipped through the throng of servants and lesser nobles until he could peek through the doorway.
There, surrounded by what seemed like the entire Gremory household, was a tiny infant with crimson hair.
And there, holding her with an expression of pure joy, was Sirzechs Lucifer.
His father.
Caelan watched as Sirzechs cooed over Rias, his face lit up with genuine happiness.
Watched as Grayfia stood beside him, smiling—
actually *smiling*—
down at the baby.
Watched as Lucien was lifted up to see his new aunt, his excited laughter filling the room.
"She's beautiful," Sirzechs murmured, his voice thick with emotion.
"Another perfect addition to our family."
*Perfect. *
That word again.
Caelan stood in the doorway for perhaps five minutes, waiting to see if anyone would notice him. No one did.
Finally, a servant—
hurrying past with a tray of celebratory drinks—
nearly tripped over him.
"Oh! Lord Caelan, you shouldn't be here. This isn't—you should be in the nursery. Come along."
She'd ushered him away, back to the empty nursery where his books waited, and Caelan had gone without protest.
If Caelan had received little attention before Rias's birth, afterwards he received almost none.
The few scraps of acknowledgment he'd managed to cling to—
the occasional glance from Father, the perfunctory check-ins from Mother, the rare moment when Grandfather would test his intellect with some logic puzzle—
vanished entirely.
Rias became the centre of everything.
Sirzechs doted on her.
Grayfia's carefully controlled mask cracked whenever she held the infant, revealing genuine warmth.
Lord Zeoticus commissioned portraits of her, declared her the "jewel of House Gremory," and began planning her future as though she were already a teenage warrior rather than a newborn.
Even Lucien, who had previously been the sole focus of the family's attention, seemed happy to share the spotlight with his adorable new aunt.
And Caelan? Caelan was moved.
Not physically—
he still lived in the same nursery, slept in the same bed (though Lucien had been given a larger, more ornate room months ago).
But he was moved out of the *family's awareness*.
His daily lessons were transferred from the main estate's private tutoring rooms to a small study in the servant's wing.
His meals were no longer taken with the family but delivered to his room.
His clothing allowance was quietly reduced, the fine silks and expensive fabrics reserved for Lucien and now Rias, while he received simpler, more practical garments.
No one announced these changes.
They simply... happened.
Like he was being erased.
Slowly.
Quietly.
Methodically.
Did it affect him? He told himself it didn't.
He buried himself in books, in knowledge, in the cold comfort of logic and reason.
If they didn't want him at family meals, fine—he'd eat alone and use the time to study.
If they didn't want to spend money on his clothes, fine—he didn't need expensive fabrics to read.
If they didn't want to acknowledge his existence, fine—he'd find validation in his own achievements.
*I just need to try harder, * he told himself, bent over a book on advanced magical theory that he could understand but never actually *use*.
*If I become smart enough, valuable enough, maybe they'll notice.
Maybe then I'll matter. *
How naive.
How desperately, pathetically naive.
It happened three months after Rias's birth.
Caelan had been in the library—his sanctuary, his escape, the one place where he could exist without feeling like a ghost in his own home. He'd been reading a treatise on devil politics, trying to understand the complex web of alliances and blood-feuds that governed the Underworld's nobility.
He'd been so absorbed that he hadn't heard Lucien enter.
"There you are!" Caelan looked up, startled.
Lucien stood in the doorway, his crimson hair slightly mussed from whatever game he'd been playing, his eyes bright with excitement.
At four years old, he was already taller than Caelan, more robust, more *present* in a way that made Caelan feel like a shadow by comparison.
"Father's looking for you," Lucien announced, bounding into the library with the casual confidence of a child who'd never been told he wasn't welcome anywhere.
"He wants us both for something. Come on!"
Caelan blinked.
"Father wants... me?"
"Yeah! Well, he said 'bring the boys,' and you're technically a boy, so—" Lucien grinned, apparently thinking this was some kind of joke.
For the first time in months, something that might have been hope flickered in Caelan's chest.
He followed his brother through the winding corridors of the Gremory estate, his small legs struggling to keep up with Lucien's energetic pace.
They arrived at Father's study—a grand room filled with ancient texts, magical artifacts, and the lingering scent of powerful magic.
Sirzechs sat behind his desk, reviewing some kind of official document.
He looked up as they entered, and his face lit up.
"Lucien! There you are. Come here, I want to show you something." Lucien bounded forward eagerly.
Caelan stood in the doorway, waiting.
Sirzechs pulled out a small, ornate box and opened it to reveal a beautiful amulet—a Gremory family heirloom, from the look of it.
"This belonged to my grandfather," he explained to Lucien, his voice warm with nostalgia.
"It's enchanted to help focus and amplify the Power of Destruction. I think you're ready to start learning how to use it."
Lucien's eyes went wide with wonder.
"Really?! I can use it?!"
"With supervision, yes. We'll start training tomorrow."
Sirzechs ruffled his son's hair affectionately.
And then—
finally—
his gaze shifted to the doorway.
To Caelan.
For a moment, their eyes met.
Silver and crimson.
Father and son.
And Caelan saw... nothing.
Not love.
Not hate.
Not even disappointment anymore.
Just...
*absence*.
As though he were looking at a stranger.
"Oh," Sirzechs said, his tone polite but distant.
"Caelan. I didn't realize you were there. Did you need something?"
*Did you need something. *
Not
"I called for you."
Not
"Come join us."
Not even
"How have you been?"
Just...
*Did you need something. *
As though he were a servant who'd wandered into the wrong room.
Caelan's throat felt tight.
"Lucien said you wanted both of us."
Sirzechs frowned slightly, confused, then glanced at Lucien.
"I said to bring your brother. I meant—"
He paused, realizing his mistake.
"Ah. I see. No, I meant... never mind." He turned back to the amulet, already dismissing Caelan from his attention.
"You can go. We're busy here."
*You can go. *
Lucien, oblivious to the tension, was already chattering excitedly about the amulet, about training, about how cool it would be to learn a new technique.
Caelan stood there for one more second.
Then he turned and left.
No one noticed.
That night, Caelan sat in his room—
his small, simple room in what was functionally the servant's wing—
and stared at his reflection in the mirror.
Silver hair.
Silver eyes.
Pale skin.
Delicate features.
*Lucifuge bloodline, * they called it.
The servant clan.
The shadows of the great Lucifer name.
He looked nothing like his father.
Nothing like his brother.
Even his name was different—Lucien *Gremory*, heir to the clan.
Caelan *Lucifuge*, the... what?
The spare?
The mistake?
The defective twin who'd been shunted off to his mother's lesser bloodline because he wasn't good enough to carry his father's name?
*I just need to try harder, *
he'd been telling himself for months.
But tonight, staring at that reflection, a different thought crystallized in his mind.
A thought formed from all those books on psychology, on politics, on power dynamics.
A thought that was cold and clear and brutal in its honesty.
*It doesn't matter how hard I try. *
*They've already decided what I am.*
*A disappointment. *
*An embarrassment. *
*Nothing. *
And worse—a new thought, darker and more terrible:
*Things are only about to get worse. *
Because he'd read the political treatises.
He understood how devil society worked.
Lucien would grow stronger, more impressive, more *valuable*.
Rias would too.
And as they rose, as their power and status grew, the gap between them and Caelan would only widen.
He'd become even more invisible.
Even more irrelevant.
Until one day, they'd forget he existed at all.
Caelan lay down in his bed—a simple thing, not nearly as grand as Lucien's or even what a lesser noble's child might have—and stared up at the ceiling.
He didn't cry.
He'd learned not to cry.
He just needs to try...
more.