[Yuuto's POV]
I released Valper's wrists, watching him stumble backward. His breathing came in ragged gasps, each inhale whistling through his teeth as panic took over his body frame.
The old priest's eyes darted around the impossible architecture of the Infinity Castle. Wooden platforms extending into infinity, paper lanterns floating in void-black space, doors and corridors that made no geometric sense. Even if he runs away, he knows there won't be no escape.
"Why?" Valper's voice cracked. "Why was I brought to this place? What have I done to deserve this madness?!"
I let the silence stretch until it became unbearable. Then, with a deliberate calm, I spoke two words.
"Holy Sword Project"
Valper's face went from pale to ash-white in seconds. His eyes widened behind those wire-rimmed spectacles, pupils dilating as the connections formed in his diseased mind. His mouth opened and closed like a fish drowning in air.
"You..." he whispered, then louder, more frantic, "You... were you sent by the Church?! Did they finally decide to dispose of me?!"
A dark chuckle escaped my lips. The sound echoed through the infinite space, bouncing off non-existent walls and coming back twisted.
"Why would a Devil be ordered by the Church to dispose of a piece of shit like you?"
Valper froze. His brain visibly short-circuited.
"A... Devil?"
"That's right" I let my demonic aura flare, just enough for him to feel the weight of what stood before him. The air grew heavier and oppressive with malevolent energy that made his knees buckle "I'm one of the survivors of your Holy Sword Project. One of the children you tried to dispose of after your failed experiment"
Recognition dawned in his eyes, followed immediately by something that looked disturbingly like triumph.
"So!" Valper's lips twisted into a vicious smile, his fear momentarily forgotten. "This is about revenge, is it? How utterly pathetic"
He straightened his posture, some confidence returning, from God knows where.
"You won't be able to lay a scratch on me, devil. The leader of the Grigori, Kokabiel himself, is my patron. He needs me. My research, my genius!" His voice rose to a fevered pitch "He'll come for me. He'll rescue me from whatever hole you've dragged me into. So I suggest, no, I demand you release me from this place right now, or it won't end well for you!"
The threat hung in the air for exactly three seconds.
Then.
A full, genuine laugh came from deep in my chest, the kind that said someone had just told the funniest joke in the universe without realizing it.
"What... what's so amusing about this?!"
I wiped an imaginary tear from my eye, my laughter dying down to a cold smile, which made him realize I wasn't someone to be threatened so easily.
"The fact that you think anyone can enter this space without my permission" I gestured to the impossible architecture around us "No one comes in unless I want them to. And I don't think even the leader of the Grigori possesses a space-time weapon capable of breaching dimensional barriers, to enter my domain"
Valper opened his mouth to respond.
My fist connected with his face before he could spout any nonsense.
CRACK
What followed next, was a satisfying sound of his broken jaw. Valper's head snapped back, his body following the momentum as he flew across the room and slammed into the wooden wall.
He crumpled to the ground in a heap of tattered robes and broken dignity.
Blood dripped from my knuckles. His blood, mixed with mine from the split skin. I watched with mild interest as the wounds on my hand knit themselves back together, demonic regeneration working within seconds.
Valper groaned, struggling to push himself up. Blood poured from his nose, staining his white robes crimson. When he spoke, his words came out garbled.
"You... you'll regret this! You have no idea what you've done! When Kokabiel finds out, when he comes for me, you'll wish you'd never brought me to this!!!"
"I have many regrets in my life"
I walked toward him slowly, deliberately, each footstep echoing in the infinite space.
"But this?"
I grabbed him by the collar, hauling him up until we were face to face. His breath reeked of blood and fear.
My fist drove into his stomach hard enough to lift him off his feet. The air exploded from his lungs in a wet wheeze. When I released him, he collapsed again, curling into a fetal position, gasping like a fish out of sea.
Something clattered across the wooden floor.
A small vial. No, not a vial. A crystalline container filled with a concentrated mass of light. It had fallen from Valper's robes when I'd hit him, rolling across the platform until it came to rest near my feet.
I stared at it.
The light inside pulsed.
This was the Holy Element.
The crystallized holy aura from all those children who died. All the holy power extracted from their bodies, their souls, condensed into this single container. Valper's masterpiece.
His magnum opus of cruelty.
I bent down and picked it up.
The moment my fingers closed around it, the light intensified. Blazing brilliant silver white that flooded the entire space, banishing shadows and turning the Infinity Castle into something that looked like the inside of a star.
"What..." Valper's voice was barely a whisper, with shock and dawning horror "That's impossible! It shouldn't react to a Devil!"
The light exploded outward from the container.
I should have been blinded. Should have been burned. Holy light was poison to Devils. It was supposed to sear our flesh, cause agony, reject our very existence.
Instead, it felt warm.
Familiar.
Like coming home, after a long arduous journey.
The light coalesced around me, taking form. Not one form, but dozens. Hundreds. Translucent figures made of pure radiance, their features blurred but somehow still recognizable. Faces I remembered. Faces I'd never forgotten.
The victims of the Holy Sword Project.
The ones who didn't survive.
The ones who died screaming in sterile labs while Valper took notes.
They surrounded me, a circle of the lost and the damned, and when they spoke, their voices overlapped into a chorus.
"Isaiah"
The name resonated through my entire being. My name. The name I'd carried through death and torture and forsaken after my rebirth as a Devil.
"You survived."
"You made it out."
"You're alive."
One figure stepped forward. A boy, maybe thirteen years old, with short dark hair and kind eyes. He reached out, and even though his hand was made of light, I swear I could feel it resting on my shoulder.
"We held them off," the boy said, his voice soft and sad and proud. "So you could escape. So someone could survive. So our suffering would mean something."
Another figure moved to my other side. A girl with long hair tied in twin tails. "We don't blame you. We never did. We're glad you lived."
"We're glad you're strong now"
"We're glad you're not alone anymore"
"We're glad someone remembers us"
The words came faster, overlapping, a cascade of forgiveness and hope and grief. Something hot ran down my face. Tears. When had I started crying?
"I..." My voice cracked. I cleared my throat and did my best "I'll keep living. For all of you. For everyone who died in that hellhole. I'll make sure your deaths meant something. I'll make sure the world remembers us. I'll make everyone behind this, pay for what they did to us."
The boy squeezed my shoulder. "Just live. Just be happy. That's enough. That's more than enough."
"We're leaving our light to you," the girl said gently. "Our everything we were. Take it. Use it. Become stronger."
"Survive," they all said in unison. "Live the life we couldn't."
The light began to fade.
One by one, the figures started to dissolve, breaking apart into motes of golden radiance that drifted into my body. But before they disappeared entirely, they all smiled and spoke one last time.
"Thank you, Isaiah. Thank you for surviving. Thank you for living."
"Goodbye."
The light winked out.
I stood there in the sudden darkness, my vision swimming, my chest heaving with emotions I could barely contain. The container in my hand had shattered completely, the crystalline fragments dissolving into nothing as the holy aura fully merged with my being.
Something had changed.
I could feel it. A new presence within me, a connection that hadn't existed before. My Sacred Gear thrummed with new found power, but it was different now. Stronger. More complete. The holy element from those fallen souls, their lingering light, their final gift, had merged with my demonic part of my sacred gear.
I've achieved the Balance Breaker and Second Sacred Gear, Blade Blacksmith.
Two opposites, two forces that should have annihilated each other, now existing in perfect harmony within my Sacred Gear, and not only I can create demonic swords but I can also create holy swords and holy demonic swords with different attributes.
I raised my right hand, calling forth my power. A magic circle blazed to life, but it wasn't purely demonic anymore. Holy symbols intertwined with demonic runes, light and darkness woven together in impossible synchronization.
"Sword Birth: Holy Demonic Blade."
The sword materialized in my palm.
The blade was midnight black shot through with veins of brilliant gold, the two colors flowing into each other like opposing forces that had decided to coexist. Holy light flickered along the edge, sharp enough to cut through divine protections, while demonic energy coiled around the hilt, ready to tear through angelic defenses.
A weapon that could harm both angels and devils equally.
A weapon that shouldn't exist.
"Sword of Betrayer" I murmured, testing the weight. It felt perfect in my hand, like it had been waiting for me for its creation.
"That's impossible!"
Valper's voice shattered the serene moment. The old priest had pulled himself into a sitting position against the wall, his face a mask of blood and disbelief. His eyes were locked on the sword in my hand, wide with horror.
"Holy and demonic elements can never be combined! The fundamental nature of the universe forbids it! The very essence of light and darkness are antithetical! They destroy each other on contact!"
He stopped mid-rant.
I watched as his face cycled through expressions. Confusion, realization, denial, and finally, soul-crushing despair.
"Unless..." His voice dropped to barely a whisper "Unless God is... no. No, that can't be true"
"Dead?" I finished for him "Yeah. God's been dead for a while now. He got Killed in the Great War, along with the Demon Kings. The holy light you've been studying, the power you've been trying to harness, it's all just residual energy. No divine will is backing it anymore"
I let the words sink in, watching as Valper's world collapsed.
"The only reason the holy aura could merge with a Devil is because there's no God left to enforce the separation. No divine presence to reject the combination. Just... nothing."
"No" Valper shook his head violently, like a child refusing to accept the reality of being abandoned "No, no, no! That's not possible! God is eternal! God is all-powerful! God cannot die!"
"And yet he did" I said flatly "Get it through your skull. Everything you devoted your life to, every experiment you conducted, every child you tortured, it was all in service of a god who's been long gone for centuries"
Valper's face crumpled. He made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob, his body shaking as the full weight of the revelation hit him.
"Then it was all... meaningless?" His voice was hollow, empty "Everything I did... the sacrifices, the research, the progress I made... all of it for nothing?"
I looked down at him, this broken old man who'd caused so much pain, and felt absolutely nothing.
"Not for nothing" I said quietly, holding myself to not kill this old fool "You helped create something like me. A Devil who can wield holy power. Congratulations, Valper. Your legacy will be the very thing you will be fearing most"
I dismissed the Sword of Betrayer, letting it dissolve back into magical energy. Then I turned toward the door I'd entered through, ready to leave this pathetic excuse for a human being to rot in his despair.
But I stopped at the threshold.
I snapped my fingers.
Another figure materialized in the room. One of my clones, identical to me in every way except for the expression. Where I felt nothing, the clone wore a smile that belonged in a nightmare.
The clone cracked its knuckles, then reached into thin air and pulled out a collection of vials, syringes, and implements that looked medieval.
"Make sure You introduce him to every poison, every toxin, every form of physical agony that those children experienced in his labs. He must suffer, and he must not die"
Valper's face went pale "You... you can't..."
"Heal him every time he gets close to dying, every time his body starts to shut down from the pain, heal him. Bring him right back. And then start over, for the rest of his life"
The clone's smile widened "Don't worry,. I'll make sure he feels every second of it. Just like those children did"
"No! PLEASE! I'LL DO ANYTHING! I'LL TELL YOU EVERYTHING I KNOW! PLEASE DON'T!"
I slid the door shut.
The screaming continued for another few seconds before the Infinity Castle's spatial properties muffled it completely.
And, Perfect silence descended.
I stood there for a moment, staring at the closed door, feeling the weight of what I'd just done settling on my shoulders.
Was it justice? Revenge? Cruelty?
Probably all three.
Did I care?
Not even a little bit.
I turned away from the door and walked deeper into the Infinity Castle, my footsteps echoing in the infinite space. Somewhere in the distance, I could feel the other clones going about their tasks. Training, researching, preparing for the chaos that would be coming in the future.
Trihexa.
Everything was accelerating toward that inevitable confrontation.
But for now, for just this moment, I let myself feel the warmth of those lost souls. Their forgiveness, their hope, their final gift.
Balance Breaker achieved.
Holy demonic power unlocked.
One mad priest suffering exactly as he deserved.
All in all, not a bad evening's work.
*Buzz*
Hmm? A message from Rias. What could be she thinking of at this hour? I pulled out my phone and the moment I read it, my eyes went wide.
Rias : Yuuto! The Exorcists are....!!!
. . . .
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