zazel stood by the window of his office, his gaze distant as he sipped a steaming cup of black coffee. The Grigori base hummed quietly around him, but his mind wasn't on research, nor strategy, nor diplomacy.
It was on fire.
Not the literal kind that reduced the Hyoudou household to ash—though that too haunted him—but a deeper, colder fire. A gut feeling, refined by centuries of command and conflict. Something wasn't right.
The report had been too neat. Electrical fault. House fire. No surviving witnesses. No residual magical energy.
And yet.
"Amon," he muttered, lips curling with suspicion. "You're hiding something. And I'm going to find out what it is."
He waved his hand, activating a console that brought up recorded surveillance data. Not public cameras—no, this was an arcane weave of Grigori sensors that had been discreetly placed throughout Kuoh. They weren't meant for spying on civilians, but the recent Divine-level irregularities had given Azazel the excuse he needed to stretch their use.
Hours of footage swept past, filtered by AI and spell alike. But when it reached the window of time surrounding the fire at the Hyoudou household, the feed glitched.
Static. Distortion. A blank interval.
Azazel narrowed his eyes. "Deliberate. And only a few people can mask Grigori sensors that cleanly."
He leaned forward and froze the image on a single blurred frame. Barely visible, a dark coat trailing in the wind. A wide-brimmed hat. Pale skin and eyes that seemed to glimmer like polished glass.
Amon.
---
In the aftermath of the Hyoudou tragedy, the air around Kuoh Academy had grown heavier. Grief hung over Issei like a thundercloud, but so did confusion. He didn't remember anything clearly. The authorities said it was an accident, but his instincts screamed otherwise.
He hadn't cried. Not yet. Not fully.
Rias walked beside him silently. She wanted to offer comfort, but even her presence seemed muted now. As if Issei had turned inward and shut the world out.
"Rias," he said finally, voice low. "They said it was an accident, right?"
She nodded slowly. "That's what the human authorities believe."
"But what about you?" he asked, stopping. "Do you believe that?"
Rias hesitated. She had felt something strange when she arrived at the burned home—a magical void, almost like the aftermath of a cursed seal. But saying that to Issei now would do more harm than good.
"I don't know yet," she admitted. "But if something's wrong, we'll find out."
He nodded once. The flame in his eyes hadn't gone out—it had simply turned inward. Focused. Dangerous.
---
Elsewhere, in the shadowed corridor of a dimensional rift, Amon walked with his gloved hands behind his back. With each step, reality bent subtly around him. Dimensional laws thinned. The veil separating planes shimmered.
He had passed through realms both divine and cursed. The Seraphim saw him as a threat. The devils thought him a wildcard. But none truly understood his goal.
Godhood was not ascension. It was replacement. Creation rewritten under his hand.
He stopped before a small, flickering mirror embedded in stone. It wasn't a mirror in the traditional sense, but a surveillance node—one of many he had placed across Kuoh through manipulation, parasitism, and illusion.
Through it, he watched.
Koneko Toujou, the Nekomata, wandered the forest behind the school in her cat form. Isolated. Practicing control.
"One by one," Amon said softly. "Break their foundation, and the tower falls."
He turned his hand upward. A glyph appeared in the air—a complex array of golden, spiraling runes.
He wouldn't strike directly this time. That was too risky now that Azazel had begun to stir.
Instead, he would test his puppets. See which ones still moved.
From the darkness emerged a hollowed soul—a failed exorcist, revived with threads of corrupted spirit. The creature bore no name, only purpose.
"Find her," Amon commanded. "Do not kill her. Hurt her. Let her bleed. Let them fear."
The soul-shade bowed and vanished into the rift.
---
Meanwhile, back at the Grigori base, Azazel summoned Baraqiel, his old comrade and one of the few he trusted with sensitive matters.
"Baraqiel," Azazel said, placing the paused footage before him. "Tell me what you see."
Baraqiel squinted at the image. "Distortion magic. High-level cloaking. But… that figure. Is that…?"
"Amon," Azazel confirmed.
Baraqiel exhaled. "I thought we were past the days of puppetmasters and demi-gods."
"We never left them," Azazel said grimly. "We just stopped seeing the strings."
He stood and walked toward a vault at the far end of the room. With a complex series of magical gestures, he opened it.
Inside were relics: weapons and seals never meant to be used again.
"He thinks we're blind. It's time to prove him wrong."
---
Back in the forest, Koneko was breathing heavily, claws drawn. She had sensed something. A distortion in the trees. Something old and dead and wrong.
She crouched low, eyes sharp.
Then it appeared.
A pale, ghost-like creature lunged at her, screeching not with a voice but with pure hate. She dodged the strike, claws raking its side, but it barely flinched.
"What are you?" she growled.
The creature didn't answer. It only attacked.
---
Far away, Amon watched.
A small smile touched his lips.
His game had begun.
Author note:
Hey guys! If you're enjoying the story, toss a Power Stone my way—it really helps keep me motivated to write more. Thanks for reading!