- Hey, someone asked for a fresh chapter? Here it comes. Authors Out. -
The night air above Kuoh was still. Too still. The kind of quiet that doesn't soothe—it stalks. Even the cicadas had punched out early like they'd heard a memo I didn't. Streetlights hummed their cheap neon hymn. A soft breeze combed through the trees and then decided, actually, no thanks.
I felt her before I saw her—an energy with edges, sharp as broken glass. Fallen. Low-tier. But confident. The confidence that comes from living through fights most people only have nightmares about.
Then she was there. She came down off a rooftop like gravity owed her rent—wings black and shimmering like oil under a streetlamp, heels touching asphalt without a sound. She didn't land so much as arrive. The smile on her mouth was less charm and more challenge.
Kalawarna.
"Hyoudou Issei," she said, voice low and velvety, like a cello that had learned to lie. "You've caused quite a stir. You're not the average human boy."
I slid my right foot back across the pavement, set my center, let my breath sink and my pulse go soft. "Yeah, and you fallens talk too much."
Her grin widened just enough to show teeth. "Then let's see how special you really are."
She didn't waste another syllable. The air kinked. One second she was in front of me; the next second my throat had an appointment with a blade of light.
I ducked. The heat off the cut grazed my cheek like a bad sunburn given by a vengeful god. My palm kissed the ground; the earth answered, a trained dog under my bones. A ripple bulged the asphalt beneath her step, shattered her footing a fraction of a second after she'd committed.
"Impressive," she hissed mid-flip, wingbeats braking her fall. A trio of light spears flowered from her hand, and she threw them with the easy meanness of someone who had practiced this under worse moons.
They screamed through the night like comets that hated everything. I lifted my left hand and breathed forward. Fire coiled up my palm and out—tight, bright, a red serpent with a job—and ate the spears one by one. The street glowed butter-orange; ash came down like mean snow.
"Fire?" she sneered as she circled, eyes quick, measuring. "Cute trick."
"It's not the fire you should be worried about."
I stomped once. The asphalt cracked like old knuckles. The ground punched up under her with a stone wave and slammed her into a lamppost hard enough to make the bulb sneeze out.
Kalawarna coughed and pushed off, wings flaring, dust swirling around her like a halo that had decided to start drinking. "You're no devil. No angel. What the hell are you?"
"Something that doesn't fit your org chart," I said evenly. "And you really don't want to find out the hard way."
Her eyes narrowed. "The hard way is the only way I trust."
"Me too, if you know what I mean..." I said, and she didn't like so much my joke.
Then she came again—faster. Her rhythm changed. More tactical now. She peppered me with light—angle, feint, commit—slid inside with a slash meant to read my parry, then pivoted off the read. Veteran moves. Clean footwork. No wasted motion. Under different stars, I might've applauded.
But I'd been drilled by a dragon that once traded blows with gods.
Every swing she made, I redirected, not with force—precision. Every burst she launched, I trimmed or smothered, fed the light to the edges of my flame so it died quick and quiet. I refused the brawl, chose the proof. She pushed. I guided. She cut. I erased. I didn't meet her where she was strongest; I made her walk to where I had already been waiting.
Her wings flared wide, a wash of radiance flooding the street to blind me by sheer arrogant physics. I answered with sacred light. It wasn't holy and wasn't profane: refined energy from the fault line between Ddraig's aura and Ashdod's sanctified residue. White-gold kissed Orange-red; the air clenched and shivered; dust lifted like it wanted a better view.
[You are holding back too much.]
I don't need more, I thought, letting her see exactly the amount of confidence that rattles talented people. She's already losing.
She lunged for the throat again because she was good and good fighters test the same door twice. I gave her wrist my hand, my hip, my shoulder, my weight, my intent. Twist, step, fold. A second later she was in the dirt with geometry complaining in her elbow and her own light blade a whisper off her neck.
Up close, her eyes were autumn storm—fury thundered through them; disbelief followed behind, drenched. "You… overpowered me without wings, without holy artifacts—"
"Without trying to kill you," I said, calm and close.
The words landed. Not on her chest—on her pride. Her expression shifted, microscopic but real. Predators understand the currency of restraint. She swallowed a thorn and asked, quieter, "Then why fight me at all?"
"Because I wanted to prove something."
"What?" she snapped.
"That negotiation works better when you know you can't win."
Her brow furrowed, the blade trembled a millimeter against her throat. "Negotiate… with who?"
"With your bosses," I said, voice low and steady. "Go back to the Grigori. Find Shemhazai or Azazel. Tell them the Red Dragon Emperor wants to talk."
She went still enough to be mistaken for stone. Her gaze flicked to my eyes and caught the faint green bleed there—the reptile behind the boy. Ddraig's presence hummed a tiny chord down my bones.
"You're…" Her voice went wary-soft. "Him?"
I didn't answer. I didn't have to.
Silence stretched a taut rope between us. Not hostility anymore—recognition. Respect, the combative kind. Curiosity, the dangerous kind. I let go of her wrist. She rose, slow and smart, wings twitching like loaded words, studying me like a puzzle with one piece missing and the box art lying.
"You could've killed me," she said.
"I could've," I admitted. "But I'd rather make allies than corpses."
Her lips curved, sly and skeptical. "You talk like a devil."
"I fight like a dragon," I replied.
She actually laughed at that—short, unguarded. It rolled across the quiet street and woke one cicada up enough to say hey and then think better of it. "Fine, Hyoudou. I'll deliver your message. But don't expect Azazel to bow because you look composed and swing pretty."
"He is too old and experienced to do it for lil young me, Mrs. Kalawarna."
For a heartbeat she just stood there, smirk tilted, wings half-folded, eyes gleaming under cheap municipal moonlight. The buzzing streetlamp threw a halo on the ground near her feet, and for a mean second it looked like the street itself was giving her a crown.
"You're trouble," she said finally. "And I might get wet because of this."
"Bring your wetness back with a time and place," I said. "Preferably somewhere my neighbors won't have to explain craters to the city council and high pitched moans of a blue haired chick."
She gave a two-finger salute with the kind of irony you can't fake, then tilted into the sky, black feathers shearing off and spinning slowly as she climbed, showing off her deep blue thong, thin enough for me to see the contour of her pussy, slightly wet. She didn't lied. The night seemed to inhale after she left, relieved to have a name for what had been making it nervous.
[You are playing a dangerous game, boy.]
Yeah, I thought, staring at the track her aura left in the dark. But that's how dragons negotiate.
[Dragons negotiate with fire.]
I smiled. Then you'll love chapter two.
I moved. Not home—too obvious. Not the warehouse—too precious. I took the long way around the block, then another block entirely, bled aura until even a saint would've shrugged and called me "a cool breeze in a school uniform." Twice I cut my own trail with hard turns and quiet roofs. A stray cat blinked at me like we shared a union.
At a convenience store with a reputation for knowing what teenagers did and forgiving them, I bought a sport drink that tasted blue and a steamed bun that tasted history. I sat outside under a buzzing light and let the quiet put itself back together around me.
Out there, in the underworld's boardroom, someone would be stirring coffee with a spearhead and asking who exactly the hell I thought I was. Somewhere, papers would be shuffled, odds calculated, risk framed in polite language. Somewhere, a superior would say, "Let's see," because curiosity has always been stronger than policy.
[You expect Azazel to humor you?]
I expect Azazel to be Azazel. Curiosity in a lab coat. He'll come if he thinks he can learn something. And he'll try to put me in a box with a clever label.
[And you will break the box.]
If it's ugly. If it's useful, I'll wear it until it isn't.
The drink worked its way through the parts of me that didn't need it and convinced them to carry it anyway. The bun argued for a better world. Ten minutes later, the night had put on enough normal that I could walk home without it looking like I belonged to the wrong kind of story.
Mom had left the hall light on like hope. Dad had fallen asleep in his chair with the remote on his stomach, the TV asking a panel whether sports were good. I turned it off gently, put a blanket over him, and stood there long enough to feel the outline of something like grace. In my room, I cracked the window to let the air argue with the heat. I didn't pull Ashdod out, but I laid my palm against its wrapped length. The hum that answered my touch was less weapon, more weather. A storm that had decided to live in my closet and pay rent on time.
[You chose parley over blood.]
Not because I'm soft, I thought, lying back on the floor and letting the ceiling be sky. Because blood now is a smaller victory than leverage later. And because neighbors don't deserve to sweep up after my decisions.
[Hnh. You're learning politics.]
I'd rather learn killing and then not need it.
[You will need it.]
I know.
Sleep didn't come so much as draft me. When it finally took me, it took me deep. I dreamed I stood in the bridge, traffic running in slow motion under it. Kalawarna landed again and again and again, each time from a different sky, each time with a different blade. In the dream, I didn't block any of them. I simply stepped into the spaces where they would not be and watched the blades write their names on air. When I woke, my heart agreed to go on being a heart. A dragon's heart.
The morning after carried that wrong kind of quiet again, the stillness people call "peace" when they haven't met war. At school, the rumor mill had chewed on something all night and came in spitting fragments: strange lights, a dented lamppost, a bird too big for this tax bracket. Teachers reminded us about safety and curfew and weren't looking at me when they did.
Kiba caught my eye in the hall and gave a nod three degrees heavier than usual. Akeno smiled like bells and thunderstorms. Rias didn't look my way at all, which meant she had noticed me in the only way that mattered. I kept my face in its neutral suit and my aura under the floorboards. Matsuda told a story at lunch about a cat so fat it looked like a question mark; Motohama had charts about why the cafeteria bread was a conspiracy. I laughed in the right places and meant it more than anyone there would believe.
After final bell, I cut across the athletic fields and paused to watch the kendo team practice. Their captain corrected a freshman's feet and, in that simple act, changed a life. I filed it away. Not everything that matters comes with feathers and light.
On the way home, I took the long route again. I didn't need to. I did it anyway. It wasn't paranoia if you'd already been hunted. In a narrow street that smelled like laundry and old wood, a shadow peeled off a wall. Not a threat this time; a courtesy.
"Message delivered," Kalawarna said, perched on a low rooftop like a gargoyle who'd gone freelance. No blade tonight. No immediate storm riding her tongue. "Azazel's curious. Shemhazai little more serious. But they'll listen."
"When?"
"Soon," she said. "Not here." A tilt of her chin toward the sky. "Somewhere no one will cry if things go poorly."
"Wise," I said. "Tell them I prefer not-poorly."
"Tell yourself that," she said, amused. "They'll want proof you're not a child who got lucky."
"I'll bring a syllabus," I said. "Office hours optional."
She huffed a laugh. "You're strange."
"So I've heard."
We let the pause exist. It didn't ask for anything. Where Raynare's interest tasted like knives, Kalawarna's had a flavor closer to professional curiosity—respect flirting with practicality. She had clocked me in the way people who survive clock threats: not with panic but with filing systems.
"Be ready," she said at last. "The world gets smaller when men like Azazel notice you."
"It was already small," I said. "I'm just too big for it now."
She took that in like a cigarette and flicked the end into the night. Then she was up and gone again, a silhouette pretending stars were a runway.
[You have chosen your battlefield.]
I'm not sure yet where they'll choose it. But it won't be here.
[Good.]
The stillness that had started the night returned for a bow. But it wasn't the same. Something under the stillness had woken up. Something under the streets. Under the ordinary. Fire under stone.
I stood there a minute longer, listening to the quiet practice its lines. Then I went home and did my homework like a boy who had only one life to live. I helped Mom with dishes and told Dad a joke that made him laugh too hard for how bad it was. I showered until the heat pulled the ache out of my shoulders. I lay down and, before sleep, let the dragon and the lance know, without words, that we were going to build a world where my parents would never know what it took to keep them safe.
[When they come, you will not get to choose every term.]
I know.
[When they come, choose enough, and choose wise.]
I will.
Somewhere under the city, pipes clanked a little and then settled, the building taking a deep breath. The cicadas found their courage. The wind remembered it had places to be. I closed my eyes and let morning start walking toward me.
The world would tell itself it had time. The world would be wrong.
[Sleep. Tomorrow, we negotiate.]
We will 'win' it.