Chapter 8: Crimson Without a Court
The apartment held its breath when Naruto left.
A shallow silence crawled across the walls, gnawed at the shadows, and crept into the seams between the flickering light of the TV and the half-eaten food steaming on the table. It was a silence not of peace, but of abandonment — the kind that slinks in after laughter dies and footsteps vanish into the wind. It sat beside her, cold and intimate, whispering reminders of everything she had lost.
Rias Gremory sat still, rigid as the moment demanded, her eyes fixed on the television screen but her soul nowhere near it. Her fingers clutched the chopsticks loosely, then let them fall. Clatter. Her mask slipped a moment after — a single teardrop breached her defenses, sliding like a traitor across her porcelain cheek. And once it began, the rest came in a flood.
She crumbled inward, like a palace without its cornerstone, shoulders trembling beneath the weight of regal blood now rendered exiled and purposeless. A sob burst from her, low and desperate, as she bent forward, face buried in her hands like a child hiding from a storm.
No brother to steady her. No mother's arms to shield her. No friends to call her name and remind her who she was beyond this world that smelled of dust and ash.
She wasn't Rias Gremory, the demon heiress, right now. She wasn't the powerful magician who could warp space with a thought. She was just… a girl, thrown too far from home, stranded among foreign stars where no one knew the language of her sorrow.
The ache of homesickness wasn't a knife — it was an ocean, and she was drowning with elegance.
She had held herself upright for so long. Too long. Around others, she stood tall, because predators feasted on cracks in the armor. She smiled, poised, because collapse meant someone might try to own her — shape her like clay into what they wanted, not what she was.
But now, with no eyes watching her dignity, no ears tuned to her composure, she broke.
"I want to go home," she whispered into the hollow air, voice raw, crumbling at the edges.
But the room offered no magic, no answer, no portal in reply. Just the flicker of commercials dancing in cruel mockery, selling things that didn't matter, to people who didn't understand.
Her sobs grew louder, body curling as if to protect her core, the last piece of her heart she hadn't already burned just to survive.
This world had no regard for nobility. It did not kneel to the grief of a crimson princess.
And yet… she endured.
In that fragile collapse, something glimmered — not power, not pride — but the stubborn, silent flame of someone who had not been broken, even if she had bent far past the threshold. The kind of strength that didn't roar or crack mountains, but simply remained, even when everything else fled.
Naruto would return soon. Maybe with a grin, maybe with ramen in hand. He wouldn't know what had happened here, what demons she had battled in his absence.
And she would smile again.
Because that's what lost queens do — they cry when the world isn't watching, and wear their crowns when it is.
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The stars lied too. Even they, eternal watchers from on high, offered no direction when your blood vanished from the page of the world.
Sirzechs Lucifer stood before the great infernal map—an artifact carved from stone and brimstone, lined with veins of silver and soul-ink that bled in accordance with the cosmic heartbeat of the Underworld. And yet… her mark, that divine thread of crimson light that had always flickered beneath his fingertips, was gone.
Not dimmed. Not veiled. Gone.
His lips were dry, tongue like parchment, and yet his voice cracked out like a blade being drawn. "Nothing."
The silence that followed tasted of ash.
"It isn't possible," he whispered, not to his wife, not to the shadows at the edge of the throne hall, but to the lie itself—to the idea that Rias Gremory could simply vanish. He had warded her soul with his own essence, a blood-wrought seal that no mortal sorcery could tamper with. Whoever had done this was no mere thief. No low-level devil seeking status. No stray dragon seeking vengeance.
He clenched his fists. The air wavered around him. Magic bled from his pores, the sheer pressure of his power crackling like thunder waiting to speak.
"Sirzechs," her voice—Grayfia, the anchor to his storm—cut through the rising tide of madness. She stepped into the circle of his grief like a priestess braving a immortal's wrath. Silver hair unshaken, crimson eyes firm and unflinching.
"She is not dead. You know that. The seal isn't broken. It's been veiled."
His rage flared. "Which means—"
"—She's alive." Grayfia's tone was stern, but not cruel. She reached for him—not for Lucifer, but for Sirzechs, her husband, the broken-hearted brother. "So don't let fear puppeteer your strength."
He breathed out. It came ragged. The energy recoiled as if ashamed of itself. "There are only a handful of beings who can veil a soul seal of that level. Another Lucifer, maybe. A Fallen of Azazel's caliber. A Divine-Class dragon…"
"Or another world entirely," Grayfia finished.
Sirzechs turned to her, a bitter smile crawling its way over cracked pride. "A world beyond our stars…"
She nodded. "Then we find that world."
"How?"
Her gaze never wavered. "Clues. Threads. Remnants of the magic used. She left behind her presence. We follow it. And we—not rage, not desperation—we bring her home."
Sirzechs closed his eyes. A long silence stretched between them. When he opened them again, the storm had not left—but it had a direction now. A purpose.
He spoke as a Lucifer now. Cold. Measured. Deadly.
"Mobilize the Seekers. Contact Ajuka. Prepare the World Gate and begin scrying across dimensional veins. I want every dragon sage, every elder devil with planar knowledge, every scholar who's studied cosmic drift."
He turned to the infernal map one more time, placing his hand over the blank spot where her light should have been.
"I will find you, Rias. Across stars. Across death. Across immortals and monsters. You are mine to protect."
And the fire in his eyes was no longer that of a brother. It was that of a demon king.
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The room still smelled like her. A delicate perfume of rosewood and lightning—warm, regal, faintly rebellious. The scent clung to the velvet drapes and deep-cushioned chairs, soaked into the parchment and ink bottles left half-full on her desk. Rias had always lived like a storm held within a wineglass—fragile, furious, and exquisite. And now she was gone.
Akeno sat cross-legged on Rias's bed, not with the poise of the Queen but with the weary slouch of someone who had bled too much grief behind a smile. Her fingers, usually precise as lightning, trembled as she turned another page in the battered leather-bound journal. Akeno had mocked it once—called it Rias's "storybook of melodrama and misplaced dreams." But now it was a relic. A shrine.
"She never wrote nonsense," Akeno whispered. Her voice was raw, like gravel across glass. "It was all there. Every shadow of her heart. Every storm."
Koneko sat by the window, knees hugged to her chest, cat-like eyes fixed on the distant sky as if expecting Rias to tear it open and descend. She didn't speak, but her silence was volcanic. Heavy. Angry. Sad.
Kiba stood behind Akeno, golden hair falling in messy strands across his face. He had been quiet too, save for the occasional flick of his sword callus across the pages. His eyes scanned the journal like it was a battlefield. Each word, a clue. Each sentence, a trap.
And then—there it was.
"Moryo," he murmured.
Akeno blinked. "The Dragon?"
"The vanished one," Kiba nodded. "The demonic beast who fled this realm before even the war of the Great Factions. He was said to defy even the Maou and rewrite the rules of existence. They called him the Dragon of Divergence."
"And Rias believed in that old myth?" Akeno asked, voice unsure.
"She more than believed," Kiba said, pointing to a section of the journal inked with more fervor than the rest. "She thought he found the Sage of Six Paths. Thought that if she could follow his trail, she could find something greater—something not bound by Hell or Heaven."
Koneko finally turned. "That means… she went willingly?"
Kiba's jaw clenched. "Or she was pulled into it chasing a legend. Either way, this name—Moryo—is all we have."
Akeno stared at the word again. Her eyes shimmered with lightning barely restrained.
"We'll find her," she said.
Outside, the skies rumbled. Not with thunder, but with consequence. For the moment they spoke that name—the name of the dragon who defied immortals—the wheels of ancient powers began to turn again.
And far away, in a world of shinobi, Rias sobbed quietly in a stranger's home. Oblivious to the hunt that had just begun.
The world had lost a Gremory.
But it would not stay lost for long.
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The leaves whispered like old wives in the wind, rustling secrets through the trees while shadows stretched long beneath the blood-orange sky. Naruto walked the edge of the village, where the world softened into wilderness and the ghosts of older days stirred the dust beneath his sandals.
His pace was casual—confident, untouchable—but something prickled beneath his skin. A sensation. Like the forest had eyes, and the trees knew something he didn't. He halted near a crooked power line pole, ready to leap toward the deeper glades when his golden eyes caught her.
She stood there like a misprint in reality—too clean, too quiet, too...wrong. A girl, perhaps ten or twelve by appearance, though Naruto had long since learned that appearances lie worst when they smile.
Black hair like shadow-drenched silk fell to her waist, the tips fluttering without wind. Her eyes, moonless and unblinking, were ringed by a predator's calm. Slits stared back at him, reptilian and ancient, flickering beneath lids that should have belonged to an innocent.
Her presence was not felt. It weighed.
Naruto's legs locked. Not because he wanted them to, but because the thing inside his belly howled with a primal terror that had no name. Kurama growled like the oldest of wolves, and that growl—deep and low—made Naruto's spine crawl like ice through the marrow.
"Fear," he thought bitterly. "So this is what it feels like."
And then he fell. Like a broken puppet sliding from its strings, he toppled from the wall and hit the dirt with undignified shock. Dust coughed from the ground around him. He didn't care. His eyes were on her.
The girl—no, the dragon—smiled.
"A little savior," she cooed, as if it were a private joke. "Reacting to little old me."
That voice. Light. Airy. The kind of melody you hear in dreams before they turn to nightmares.
Naruto stood, slow, breath hitching, hands trembling. The fear wasn't his. He would never accept that. But the beast inside was showing him the truth.
"Who… who are you?" His words cracked like dry glass.
But then—snap.
His instincts returned, and with a fluid motion born of ten thousand fights and a will that refused to bow, he was behind her, hand at her throat. His fingers closed around her neck—so thin. So breakable.
"Enough fear," he whispered.
Then she laughed.
It shouldn't have been beautiful. But it was.
"You really are interesting," she giggled. "But I'm not into choking games, little hero. Try that again... and I'll crush your soul like a moth beneath my tongue."
He blinked.
She was behind him.
He didn't feel her move. Didn't feel her exist.
Words were useless now. They belonged to things with boundaries. She had none.
"Name," he said. "If I'm going to be scared shitless, I want to know who's earning it."
She smiled, brighter this time.
"Ophis," she said. "Call me that. You'll scream it later."
A pause.
"And since you volunteered to show me around... let's go."
She touched his sleeve.
Not hard. Not aggressive. Just... touched.
And Naruto Uzumaki, who had thrown immortals into mountains and laughed at the divine, followed.
Not because he was beaten.
But because he understood.
There were dragons in this world.
And some of them smiled.