- Hey, ninth chapter, with a bit more of action for you guys, thanks for reading. Authors Out. -
The assignment came two nights after the deal was sealed, delivered like a dare—no seal, no crest, just coordinates and a directive short enough to stick under a fingernail: remnants of Raynare's rogue cell, eliminate, no devil attention. The message ended like it was holding its breath. I took that as a hint and did the same.
Kalawarna met me on the roof of an abandoned factory at the edge of Kuoh's industrial zone. The building sat in a grid of rust and concrete, all corrugated ghosts and broken windows. Wind carried dust and the faint scent of oil; sodium streetlights flickered below like dying stars. The skyline made promises in the distance; the district beneath us remembered debts.
"You ready, partner?" she asked, rolling her shoulders, checking the weight and draw of her light-blades with the thoughtless familiarity of a veteran. Wings tucked tight, armor well placed, eyes clear.
"Born ready," I said, tested my shoulders, wrists, hips—everything that mattered when the floor turned to teeth. "Quiet, though. No fireworks."
She smirked, dry. "Funny, coming from the guy who radiates like a space heater."
"Fine. Low-watt fireworks."
[Keep your breath thin and your aura thinner. You are not here to announce yourself.]
Already on it. I sank my pulse into a slow tide and pressed the dragon heat deep until even I could barely feel it.
We went over the plan again without moving our mouths: south-facing catwalk entry, drop point by the old loading bay, two-story guts of a plant that used to make things people forgot they needed. Infrared haze at the long hall. A blind spot in the west wall where the thermal bleed was wrong—like a human tried to teach a space heater how to lie.
We moved.
Corrugated roof groaned once beneath our weight, then learned better. We flowed through a skylight frame and into the bones of the place, stepping between puddles of old rain and shadows with good hearing. Kalawarna's wings brushed the air like a whisper you hallucinate; I took point at the turns, palm hovering inches over concrete—listening for the way stone hums wrong when it's been forced to remember magic.
Voices ahead. Laughing. Arguing. Four signatures, similar cadence—fallen. One human, and the sound of his voice grated on the back of my teeth: shrill, cocky, like a violin string tuned a half-step too high on purpose.
Freed Sellzen.
Even in whispers, chaos has a brand.
Kalawarna flicked two fingers—left, I nod, right, three taps: ready.
The air changed like it knew the cue.
A rogue clocked us first. He didn't shout; he panicked efficiently: spear of light hissed through the dark, clean throw. I caught it mid-flight on instinct and spun it with a quarter-turn of my wrist—the way you hand a knife back politely—and returned it tip-first. It shaved a line through his wing and detonated against the far pillar with a golden cough.
Kalawarna was already moving: a slip of black and silver, the line of her body clean as a diagram. She cut through the second with surgical economy—one feint, a blade through the chest, and a push-off that looked like dancing until you realized the floor had adopted a corpse. "Two down," she said, breath steady.
"Three," I corrected, tapping my heel. Earth is a stubborn friend—it doesn't like being told to do anything, but it respects conviction. I sent a pulse under the cracked concrete; a shard of floor stabbed up like a fang and pinned the third rogue as he rose. He never finished the spell he'd thought would save him.
The last one panicked late—a volley of light spears scattered from her like a flock. I stepped forward and breathed out. Fire rippled from my palm, not a roar but a sheet—controlled, clean—drinking down the spears and rolling over them until molten glass snapped into stringy threads on the concrete.
She didn't get another word off. Kalawarna took her quietly, quick blade behind the sternum, hand catching her just long enough to lay her down instead of letting her knees teach the floor new shapes. Professional. Unsentimental without being cruel.
Silence crept back, panting a little from the sprint.
Freed stood on a metal crate like a preacher at the wrong church, silver cross dangling, eyes bright with the wrong kind of joy. His light sword felt ugly even across the room—the kind of object that learned to hum on the way to Hell. He took one look at me and laughed through his teeth. "If it isn't the traitorous chicken and her little bitch boy. Didn't expect you to be this pretty bitch boy."
"Stand down, Freed Sellzen," Kalawarna said, weapon leveled at the line where his heart thought it lived.
He spun the sword lazily, the blade flickering with a swampy kind of sanctity. "Nah. I like chaos too much chicken bitch."
He lunged. Fast—real fast. The kind of fast normal humans don't get from reps, but from something meaner tutoring your bones.
I didn't call the Boosted Gear. Didn't need to. Stone flowered under my step, bulged, stole his angle. I parried with empty hands, caught his forearm, used his own momentum to write him into the wall with a burst of air and heat. The metal crate leaped and rang like a bad bell; the wall cracked around him like it had opinions.
"Holy crap," Kalawarna said softly, watching the flames flicker off my knuckles—tight hexes, geometric lace, not showy, just honest.
"Just warm-ups," I muttered.
Freed slithered free in that ugly way people do when their joints have learned new languages. He bled and laughed like both were recreational. "Monster, kid! Delicious!"
"Better than a clown," I said, stepping in. He came again, blades flashing, speed a stutter of light. I let my shoulders do the reading; reflex sang the response. Palm to the wrist, elbow to jaw, knee tap, weight shift—pin. He hit the wall again, this time discovering the difference between structural integrity and personal.
I let it show—just a glimpse. The thing under the boy.
One breath. Crimson burned behind me, draconic wings tore the air—solid and wrong for this room, edges banded with fire. Heat stepped up a register; concrete flinched; steel found it had sweat glands.
Kalawarna froze mid-motion, eyes wide. "You—those are—"
"Yeah," I said quietly. "Don't tell your bosses yet."
Freed looked up at me and, for the first time tonight, the manic grin drained like a wound. "You're not human," he whispered.
"Still am, but not so much."
He threw a flash bomb because of course he did. White cracked the hall; smoke rolled in like a closing argument. I heard him go, read the direction in the way the air tried to fill his absence. I did not chase.
Kalawarna cursed. "He escaped!"
"I let him."
She turned on me, everything taut. "You what?"
"He's not the target," I said, folding the wings back into nothing, heat settling into my bones like a tired beast. "He's the leash."
She blinked once. "Explain."
"Freed's unstable, but he's useful. Someone's paying him, aiming him, feeding him sacraments and bullets. He'll run to the hand that pets him next. We follow the leash to the wrist, then to the arm, then we see who thinks they own the dog."
She watched me for a heartbeat, then exhaled through her nose, half-exasperated, half-approving. "You really are dangerous, Hyoudou."
"You say that like it's bad."
She smirked. "I didn't."
[You dangle meat to catch a bigger animal.]
We'll clean the teeth before they bite. And if they bite, we learn their bite radius.
[Hnh. Remember—bait attracts what you expect—and what you forgot to expect.]
I know.
We cleaned the site. No fireworks, no trophies. Kalawarna burned sigils that told the air to forget; I re-smoothed the broken concrete until it remembered how it used to be. Blood evaporated into a heat that never reached the sensors. The dead fell into the cracks between jurisdiction and attention.
No devil attention. That was the rule. I kept the dragon quiet, the lance sleeping, the saint's residue folded like a knife in a hymnal.
"Let's go train," she said, when the room finally exhaled normal.
I nodded. We didn't waste much time. We made to the abandoned warehouse where I train and got into a sparring ring and made the sparring ring into a classroom. She taught me sky—how wings turn air into geometry, how braking is a weapon, how to fall on purpose and survive the story afterward. I taught her dirt—how the ground talks if you ask it right, how a wall becomes a hinge, how to let a floor betray someone at the exact moment they remember trusting it.
She cut me once, a neat line across the forearm; I tagged her three times with taps that would have been breaks if we weren't being polite. We kept the aura down and the speed honest. We stopped when laughter outpaced bruises.
By pre-dawn, we stood on the roof and watched Kuoh put on its sunrise face—horizon bleeding gold like the sky had split a lip. Wind plucked at our clothes and refused to let them settle.
"You really think he'll lead us to something bigger?" she asked, not looking at me.
"I don't think," I said, watching the streets start to remember being streets. "I know."
[A clever tactic, partner. But remember—when you play bait games, dragons tend to attract bigger hunters.]
Then let them come, I thought. I'm done hiding.
We split before the city remembered to notice us. She leapt west, wings cutting the morning; I dropped by dead stairwells and forgotten alleys, aura sunk so deep I could have walked past a choir and gotten a polite nod.
I took the long route home on purpose, past a shuttered bakery that still smelled like last year's bread, past a vending machine that had outlived three stores and still smiled. The streets were cool and blue; the world hadn't put its noise on yet.
[Freed will run to the loudest hand.]
Or the hand that promises the loudest future. Either way, noise leaves tracks.
[Do you expect Raynare's master?]
No. She's a broken arrow someone shot twice. Whoever was steadying her bow is cautious enough to change hands when the arrow cracks. Freed will go to a middleman first. Maybe a defrocked priest with a ledger and a problem with vowels. Maybe a low devil pretending not to care about heaven's castoffs.
[And if it is bigger than that?]
Then we stop thinking, and we start killing. Same way old dragons do.
Home smelled like miso and the laundry detergent that never loses hope. I pretended to be a normal boy in a normal house for long enough to eat breakfast and say "thanks" and mean it. Then I showered until the mirror steam wrote a world where none of this existed.
School didn't know I'd signed a contract written in a language made out of silence and knives. It handed me math and told me to be good. I nodded. I was good. My notes were neat and my aura was a rumor.
At lunch, Matsuda tried to explain a dream to me that was actually a cry for help; Motohama produced a chart that proved cafeterias were a plot by the starch lobby. I laughed at both because they'd miss me if I didn't. Across the courtyard, Kiba practiced politeness. Akeno carried a tray like it was a secret and sat down like she'd solved it. Rias looked everywhere but at me. That was how you look at someone when you know their orbit has changed.
After school, Kalawarna pinged the link with a single beat. I read the coordinates in the way the air twitched: old rail spur, south yards, maintenance tunnels that used to matter. I didn't answer. I went.
The tunnels were a film about the past rotting under the present. Metal screamed in slow motion somewhere deep. The smell of rust made promises it couldn't keep. I moved with one hand on the wall to listen. Stone will tell you what steel won't: who walked, where, when they forgot to be careful.
Three signatures down the line. One fallen, muddy aura, a courier pretending to be a conspirator. One human, cold as a coin—you can always tell church-work by the way it tries to sterilize the air. And Freed, pockets rattling with bad ideas, humming a hymn to knives.
They met under a dead lamp. The courier handed over a case. The human took it like a judge takes a verdict. Freed bounced, joked, insulted God and then apologized to his shoes, eyes too bright. The case smelled like sanctified metal, gun oil, and paperwork that wanted to be fire.
Kalawarna whispered to the link, voice thinner than a thought: ready?
I put one finger to the concrete: wait.
[You want the wrist. Not the ring.]
Yeah.
I let them talk just long enough for greed to show its face and pride to say "same time next week." When the human turned to go, I stepped out of the wall's confidence and said, "Heard you take feedback." He spun, blade came out—pure church. Kalawarna ghosted behind the courier and put him to sleep in a way that didn't count as mercy but might count as scheduling.
Freed grinned like a wound healing wrong. "Round two!"
"Round zero," I said, and moved.
The human was disciplined, which means he didn't panic uselessly. He panicked efficiently. He fired blessed rounds in a tight triangle; I let the floor shrug and the bullets bit the wrong world. Then I caught his wrist, turned it so the tendons thought about God in a new way, and took the blade away with the kind of care that leaves a bruise shaped like a lesson.
Kalawarna secured the courier. Freed slashed chaos into the air—his chaos was faster now, fueled by the case and the thrill. He clipped my shoulder; pain lit up nice and hot. I let it in and didn't let it decide anything. I let him overextend, said "thanks," and borrowed his momentum to introduce his spine to a pipe. He laughed even while choking. "God's funniest dragon!"
"Not his," I said, and let him run again—this time with a tracker woven into the air around his tongue. He could cut out his own teeth and it would still sing.
Kalawarna stared, not moving for a beat. "You let him go. Again."
"He's leading me somewhere I can't buy a map to."
She processed that and closed her mouth without arguing. "You're bleeding."
"I noticed." I pressed a thumb into the cut. It hissed like the idea of a smithy. The bleeding stopped. "You good?"
She nodded, eyes flicking to the case. "This is heavy."
"Open it."
We did. Inside, a polite apocalypse: purified silvered rounds, relic'd edges, a small idol in a lead wrap that made the air feel like a sermon too long. And paperwork—lists of drop sites, hymnals of debt. Names you keep in your mouth like a prayer or a threat.
Kalawarna whistled low. "Somebody's building a hobby."
"Somebody's building a proxy," I said. "And paying for noise to cover for signal."
We bagged what was useful, burned what was not, and left the tunnel with less future in it than we'd found. No devil attention. No church attention, either, beyond one or two angels in training who would feel something like a cold wind and look at their sleeves to blame the draft.
By the time night admitted it was morning, we stood again above Kuoh. The horizon didn't bleed this time; it inhaled. The city looked small enough to pick up.
Kalawarna flexed one wing, winced, stretched it again, then let it fall. "You're going to turn this into a war map."
"It's already a war," I said. "I'm just drawing where the lies are."
She looked at me sideways. "You ever sleep?"
"Enough," I said.
[Liar.]
I smiled without showing it. We split again, her into a slice of cloud, me into a quiet alley that had forgiven worse.
The next twenty-four hours moved like a spring tightening. School asked for essays. I gave it a paragraph and a heartbeat and got away with it. I made dinner with Mom. I laughed with Dad at a joke that was only funny because he told it. I fixed a loose screw on a cupboard and made a note to buy more screws. I sat on my floor for an hour and listened to the house breathe. At 2 a.m., the link twitched with direction. Freed had run hard and far and then circled back to a place no one checked anymore: a chapel folded into the skeleton of a mall, where faith had been cheapened into architecture.
We went. Carefully. [Quiet. Quieter.] I sank aura until I felt like an echo. Kalawarna's presence thinned to a suggestion.
Inside: candles that hadn't been paid for with belief, just habit. A priest who wore sincerity like a shirt he'd found on a bench. Two more fallen with the exact wrong kind of discipline: small smiles, hands empty, eyes busy. Freed, thrilled and exhausted and shaking like his bones had learned rhythm independently.
I let them talk to each other. Words are barcodes. They scan if you angle them right. I angled. Then I moved the first piece: closed the doors with a pressure nobody's hand had to own. Kalawarna clipped the power. My hand found the altar and said, It's time to be a table again.
Light spears. Blessed rounds. Words that had meant something once, said now like weapons. We didn't roar back. We trimmed, tucked, turned. We gave them gravity and angles and made them kneel to both. One fell and stayed down. One tried to run into a wall I had decided was not a door. The priest made choices and then unmade them. Freed laughed and cried and tried again to fit his body into a story it didn't deserve.
I pinned him one more time. He looked up, pupils a heaven with no God in it. "Why don't you just kill me?"
"Because someone else wants you alive more," I said. "And I want to meet them."
He spat a blessing. It missed me and hit the floor. The floor declined to participate.
Kalawarna had the priest against a column that remembered being a tree. She looked at me over her shoulder. I looked back. She sighed and knocked him out clean. "You and your leashes."
"Leashes pull hands into reach."
[This hand will not be small.]
Good. I'm tired of small hands thinking they can remake the world by scribbling on it.
We ended it as quietly as it could be ended. The fallen didn't get to leave. The priest did, but his route was 7 feet under the earth. Freed ran because I let him—again—now leashed with a second thread, lighter, finer, woven into the way his breath condensed. He would lead us farther, into a thinner sky where the real birds flew.
We cleaned again. The chapel forgot we had come. The mall remembered being empty. The city didn't have to know it had almost been asked to pray.
On the roof at the end of it, the stars were trying to be brave. The wind cut just enough to make you admit you were alive.
"You know this is going to escalate," Kalawarna said.
"It's supposed to," I said.
She studied my face like it might write the manual. "Azazel thinks you're going to get him answers. Shemhazai thinks you're going to get yourself killed and he's already rehearsing the line where he says he told you so."
"What do you think?"
"I think you make plans like someone who expects to survive them." A pause. "I like that."
"Get some real sleep," I said. "We'll need it."
"Bossy."
"Efficient."
She flew. I watched until she was a dark line against the suggestion of rain.
[Bigger hunters.]
Yeah.
[Do not show the wings unless you intend to change the weather.]
Understood.
[And the lance—]
Stays asleep unless gods wake first.
[Good.] The dragon's approval was an avalanche choosing to wait a little longer. [You are not done hiding, no matter what you told yourself. There is hiding, and then there is choosing a shadow that belongs to you.]
I took the long walk home through streets that didn't deserve the truth. My reflection in shop glass looked like a boy who had learned to keep his mouth shut. My shadow looked like it might be negotiating with the streetlights.
At my door, I listened for wrongness. Heard only the house. Inside, I set my phone on the counter like it was an ordinary phone and not a doorway, answered two messages from friends about nonsense because nonsense is proof you're still allowed to be here. I checked on the wrapped lance without unwrapping it and told it, not with words: Not yet. It thrummed a patient answer.
I lay down, eyes open, ceiling pretending to be sky. Somewhere in the city, Freed Sellzen was running toward the next hand. Somewhere beyond him, a larger shadow leaned forward to listen.
"Come on, then," I said to the quiet room. "Let's see what you think you own."
[When you pull on a leash, boy, be prepared to hold what's on the other end.]
I smiled at the dark. "I brought both hands."