The night he was born passed without ceremony.
The city slept beneath a calm sky, streetlights humming softly as cars moved through empty roads. In a hospital room washed in sterile white, a child entered the world with a brief, fragile cry, Doctors continued their work.
Yet the moment his lungs filled with air, the world hesitated.
It was not a pause that humans could perceive. Time did not stop nor did the earth tremble. Instead, it was as if an invisible scale—one that had balanced Heaven, Hell, and Earth since the end of the Great War—tilted by the smallest possible degree. Not enough to topple anything. Just enough to be felt by those who had lived long enough to know when something no longer fit.
Deep beneath the human world, in the Underworld, ancient wards shuddered. They did not crack or fail. They vibrated, low and slow, like a warning whispered through stone and blood. Old devils paused mid-step and some conversations stopped.
The presence that had appeared did not surge like demonic power, nor did it blaze with holy light. It did not follow the violent, instinctive expansion common to newly awakened forces.
That alone unsettled the oldest devils.
Power was supposed to strain against the world, to demand space, to announce itself. This did none of that. It behaved as though it had always belonged—and the world had merely forgotten to account for it.
In places older than Hell's current rulers, beings who had survived the age of gods stirred in their rest. Some opened their eyes, felt the shift, and closed them again. For the first time in centuries, Hell's balance felt recalculated rather than restored.
Far above, in the territory of the fallen angels, instruments reacted in quiet confusion. Azazel's research systems—designed to detect Sacred Gears, Longinus-class artifacts, and dimensional disturbances—registered an anomaly that defied classification. There was no spike in output, no violent fluctuation. Just a constant, unwavering signal that refused to decay or disperse.
Azazel leaned over the data, wings folded close, his usual grin absent. He had torn apart divine systems, reverse-engineered holy artifacts, and mapped the logic behind Sacred Gears themselves.
He knew how borrowed power behaved. This was not borrowed.
"This isn't a Sacred Gear," he said at last, voice low. "It's not tied to Heaven's framework. It's not built on demonic contracts. And it isn't leaking energy from anywhere else."
A fallen angel nearby hesitated. "Then what is it?"
Azazel straightened slowly.
"I don't know," he admitted. "And that means it didn't come from any system we understand."
For someone like him, that was worse than an enemy, so he ordered observation of the human world.
Heaven noticed last.
There were no alarms, no mobilization of angels. Instead, there was resistance—subtle, almost polite. Observers of fate found their visions bending around a single point, as if the future itself hesitated to acknowledge it directly. Threads that should have flowed smoothly curved away, leaving a blank space where certainty should have been.
Angels gathered, expressions calm but wary.
"This existence does not align with known destinies," one observed.
"Not yet," another replied.
"And perhaps," a third added softly, "it never will."
Heaven chose silence, not out of ignorance, but restraint. Some things, once touched, could not be corrected without consequence.
Back in the hospital room, none of this was known.
The child slept against his mother's chest.
The world was still recovering. The Great War had ended long ago, but its scars had not fully faded.
Devils were rebuilding their society, shifting power away from pure bloodlines toward reincarnated devils and structured systems like the Rating Games. Fallen angels had abandoned conquest in favor of research and invention. Heaven maintained distance, enforcing balance without domination.
Peace existed—but it was fragile, upheld by caution rather than trust.
Sacred Gears continued to appear among humans, unpredictable yet familiar. Longinus artifacts remained rare and tightly monitored. Old dragon gods slept, leaving the Three Factions to manage a world that was slowly stabilizing.
Everything had a place.
And then something was born that did not. In the weeks that followed, the disturbance faded from immediate awareness. Ley lines adjusted themselves. Fate rerouted, reluctantly but effectively. To most beings, it seemed as though nothing had changed.
But unease lingered among those who mattered.
Ancient devils watched the human world more closely than before. Fallen angels refined their instruments, searching for signs that never quite appeared. Angels recalculated futures and found growing margins of error.
The child grew as any other human would. He learned to walk, to speak, to fail, to try again. His presence remained quiet, almost deliberately so, as if the world itself were holding him back from notice. No prophecy named him. No faction claimed him. No system acknowledged him as special.