Azazel had always been a curious fellow. It was that same curiosity that once led him to experiment with things he shouldn't have touched, namely, sex, which earned him his fall from Heaven and the title of Fallen Angel. In his new state, it was curiosity that drove him to study humanity and the gifts God had left them, the potent, unpredictable phenomena known as Sacred Gears.
These days, battles and wars didn't interest him. Maybe once upon a time, he would have enjoyed a good fight now and then, but when you've lived as long as he had, you start to see just how utterly pointless it all is. You see the same cycles of hatred, the same petty squabbles, the same senseless deaths repeated over millennia. To him, it was a childish game of power and territory, a brutal and vicious cycle that ultimately led to nothing but more loss.
That was probably why, among the leaders of the Three Factions, he seemed like the only one who genuinely wanted peace, even if many of his fellow Fallen Angels, still nursing their own grudges, didn't share his sentiment.
The Devils preached peace, yet they rarely acted on it. Whenever push came to shove, they leaned on their two "abominations" to force the conversation in their favor: Sirzechs Lucifer and Ajuka Beelzebub.
Those two monsters tilted the scales in the Devils' favor for decades, not just with their raw power, but with the fear they inspired. They were living deterrents, a constant threat that kept the other factions from making a move they might regret.
But if they were truly enough to end the conflict, the other factions would have been wiped out long ago. He knew better. The Devils' power was immense, but not absolute. At the end, even they understood that and had to be smart about who they threatened.
Their faction was powerful, but that still wasn't going to let them win.
The Angels had their own counterbalance: the Four Great Seraphs, Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, and Raphael. People often forgot just how dangerous those four really were. They were old, powerful, and experienced, more so than even many gods who came after them. Their collective wisdom and magical might were a force to be reckoned with.
Michael especially was a wolf in lamb's clothing, a serene and gentle-looking leader with a core of steel. He didn't possess the overwhelming raw power of the Devils' two monsters, but he had Father's vault of Heaven's weapons, an armory of divinely forged, Game changing artifacts, and the tactical mind to use them. After all, before he became the leader of the angel faction, he was Michael, the General, the right hand of God, the Sword of god, and god help those who crossed heaven with him there.
That alone evened the odds, a fact he was sure his rivals had not forgotten. The Angels were a patient, meticulous force, a counter-puncher waiting for the perfect moment to strike. They may have lessen activities because of Father's death and trying to be careful with the heaven system, but they were not weak, if push ever came, they would fight back.
And then there were the Fallen. A loose collection of rogues and exiles, held together by one person, Azazel himself. The Devils had Sirzechs and Ajuka. The Angels had Michael. The Fallen had Azazel, that has how it had always been for as long as he could remember.
He didn't want to brag, but he knew he was the glue keeping his faction from tearing itself apart. The Fallen, after all, were not of one mind. Many had fallen because of the actions of their now "comrades," leading to old rivalries and simmering tensions that could explode at any moment.
Azazel's leadership was a constant balancing act of diplomacy, threats, and subtle manipulations. He was a master of managing their internal conflicts, preventing the faction from collapsing under its own weight. Still, he kept them in line… most of the time. After all, even he could only do so much to keep everyone in line.
A deep sigh escaped him as he thought of his "comrades." They were a constant reminder of a time long past, a time he sometimes wished he could forget. He remembered a different existence, a celestial home built on a foundation of divine light and serene order.
He and his siblings, the Seraphs, had once lived in harmony under their Father's watchful eye. Back then, there was a sense of purpose, of belonging, of pure light. But that was before the war, before Helel's Rebellion, before Lucifer created the devils to fight against Father.
The war had been a brutal, soul-crushing affair. It was one thing to fight an enemy, but it was another to fight your own family, your own kind, to watch as friends turned into bitter adversaries, and to see the pristine, golden halls of Heaven stained with blood and resentment.
The conflict had drained him, not just physically, but spiritually, leaving a deep, hollow ache in his very core. The endless slaughter, the betrayals, the unyielding grief… it had all been too much. He had lost count of the number of siblings he had to cut down just so he could survive, all because of Helel's Pride and his curiosity, he thought bitterly.
He remembered the turning point, the day the war had been interrupted not by a truce, but by the forces of nature so immense it dwarfed their own civil conflict, the Heavenly Dragons.
Their arrival was a storm of fire, chaos, and destruction that ripped through their forces with impartial, terrifying might. He and the other Seraphs, the devils, all of them had to stop their fighting just to survive, and even joined forces just to stop the two dragons from killing them all.
That day, they had a common enemy, and for a brief, terrifying moment, they were all on the same side again, if only to survive. He, along with his brothers Michael and Gabriel, had fought alongside their devilish counterparts, using every ounce of power they had to stop the dragons' rampage.
But even they had their limits, their fight only stopped when their father appeared on the battlefield and fought the dragons and eventually killed them and sealed them away.
By then Azazel was tired of fighting and the fallen had already lost a large number and azazel had decied to pull out of the war to spare his men form fighting any longer, they were losing and he wasnt going to sacrifice his people just to take the enemy down with them, wasnt going to keep watching brother kill brother and sister kill sister.
So he pulled out.
But during all that fighting, he had had a sense of clarity. It had been a fleeting, chaotic reprieve. A moment of clarity where he realized just how petty their little war was.
Then, there was the death of their Father. The shockwave of God's passing was a blow that shook the very foundations of reality. The grief, the confusion, and the sheer, overwhelming emptiness left behind was something he knew he would never truly recover from.
In that moment, watching Heaven fracture, a small, bitter part of him had wished he had never left, never let his curiosity get the better of him. He sometimes regretted falling, because even with all the pain and the fighting, he had still had his home.
It was that same old curiosity that had brought him to Kuoh. He had dispatched some of his subordinates to watch a young boy named Issei Hyoudou, suspecting the presence of a Longinus-class Sacred Gear.
It wasn't every day you get a chance to study a Longinus gear, a weapon capable of rewriting the course of the supernatural world. He had planned to take his time, to observe and study it, maybe even use it to strengthen the Grigori.
But the fools had gone and bungled the job, practically handing the boy over to the Devils. Now, Rias Gremory had a mid-tier Longinus in her peerage, an asset that could tip the balance if war erupted, and a major missed opportunity for the Fallen.
Annoying, yes, but not what currently had his attention.
Azazel sat in a comfortable chair in his Kuoh residence, wine glass in hand, eyes narrowed as he stared out the window toward the neighboring town. It had been pure chance that he found it. He'd been taking a leisurely stroll, secure in the knowledge that the two Devil heiresses barely paid attention to their own territories, when he had sensed it. A barrier. Not over the whole town, just a section, by the edge, spanning a few blocks. At first, he thought his senses were off, a fluke of his immense age and power, but no… it was real. And it was unlike anything he'd ever encountered.
Every magical construct carried a signature, a trace of the caster's nature. Angelic magic bore Heaven's light. Devil magic had its own taint. You could always tell who, or what, had made it.
This one was… human. That, more than anything, intrigued him. Humans could reach high levels of skill, sure, but this? This was exceptional. The wards weren't just strong, they were layered, precise, and multi-functional.
They could repel malicious intent, shield those inside even if breached, and likely had other functions he couldn't discern at a glance. He could break them, of course, but that wasn't the point, a lesser being, any High-Class or lower, couldn't get through them without great difficulty, if at all. It was an impressive piece of craftsmanship.
Impressive didn't begin to cover it. The sheer sophistication of the magic, the unseen elegance of its construction, was a puzzle he simply had to solve. He had to meet the person responsible. A human this skilled would already be known to the supernatural world. That meant they were new, and that meant a massive opportunity. Perhaps a Sacred Gear user? But which one? Azazel's grin widened.
He sent his people digging for information on the town's residents, small details, big details, anything. He wanted to know everything.
Three days later, the file landed on his desk.
Kenji Takahashi. The only reason they found this was because it seemed he was the only person to have changed somewhat in recent times.
No supernatural history. No record with Devils, Angels, Fallen, or any other pantheon. A troubled past, a reputation well into adulthood… and then, a few months ago, a complete personality shift.
The change followed an accident, after which sightings of him became rare. When he did appear, people swore he was a different man entirely, saying that he was now like a completely different person.
Azazel hummed, tapping the folder.
No contact with the supernatural. No suspicious allies. An unexplained change after a near-death experience…
Definitely a Sacred Gear awakening. The timing was too perfect to be a coincidence. An accident often served as the catalyst for a latent gear to activate, and the resulting personality shift was a common side effect of a person suddenly gaining immense power and perspective. The only question was—what kind? What kind of sacred gear was this.
He had been running over the names of all the gears he had seen and heard of, but something that could do this was not among any of them.
Was it a subspecies? It could be.
Leaning back, he swirled the wine in his glass, smirking. The Devil heiresses' obliviousness was his luck and his opening. He would approach this with the utmost caution. If he played this right, he could bring Kenji into the Fallen's sphere… or, at the very least, secure an alliance with a person of immeasurable potential.
The fallen had lost a longinus, but he would do everything in his power not to lose someone like this.
The potential Kenji had shown already from just this was incredible, he wanted to see what more he could do.
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