- Hey guys, the las chapter of the first arc, and now more characters are gonna be added to the team. Thanks for reading. Authors Out. -
The sky above Kuoh was the color of rust, that tired copper smear evening wears when it's run out of blue and is pretending it meant to. The air carried a hint of damp stone and old leaves; the neighborhood around the old church had the kind of quiet that wasn't natural, more like the sound had stood up and gone outside to smoke. Kalawarna and I crouched along a thick branch across the olf building, a dark knot in a darker tree. Broken stained glass winked in the nave like a mouthful of bad teeth. The steeple leaned, the roofline sagged, and the whole building gave off a stubborn, ugly pride: a perfect hideout for fallen who didn't want to be found and wanted everyone to know it.
[I sense feathers and arrogance.] Ddraig's voice rolled through me, low and amused, a purr wrapped in thunder.
Yeah. Raynare's leftovers, I thought. Last pieces on the board.
Kalawarna adjusted her gloves, eyes narrowed to sharp lines. "Mittelt and Dohnaseek are definitely inside. Their signatures are all over the place. I'm feeling exorcists too. Half a dozen, maybe more."
"Then we go quiet," I said. "No flashy power-ups. No big moves. In and out."
She smirked sideways. "You really like playing the professional."
"Someone has to."
We let our breathing settle with the breeze and then moved, a shadow and a habit sliding across the street. The front doors had been barricaded with pews and iron like a movie about bad decisions, but the side entrance had rotted away years ago. We slipped through it, stepping between pews that smelled of dust and incense, the kind that doesn't remember prayer, just clings to wood.
Footsteps echoed ahead. Voices, laughter — the too-loud kind you only hear from people who think walls and weapons make them safe. An exorcist rounded the corner with his mouth already open to yell, and dropped before the syllable found a spine; Kalawarna's light-blade snapped, flashed, and then simply wasn't there anymore, the man's legs folding gently like someone had whispered "sleep." Another boot scraped to my left; I swept forward, let the floor rise in a small wave under it, and the second man pitched into my hip; one short strike to sternum turned his lungs off for the evening without being rude about it.
We moved like a clock that had decided it didn't need numbers. Where she danced above the aisles, soles whispering off pew tops, wings cutting thin arcs, I stayed grounded, a low line of weight and intent. Earth answered subtle taps — a ripple to trip, a bump to redirect, a knuckle of floor to catch a knee — and when we needed heat, I fed a quiet flame into a grip, a lock, a guard-break. They weren't enemies in that moment, not really; just obstacles removed from the board with handwriting neat enough to read later.
[Efficient,] Ddraig noted. [You fight like someone who's done this a hundred times.]
Feels like it, I replied, flattening a hand to the cold stone at the archway to read the vibrations. Four more downstairs. Two in the sacristy. One in the shrine who thought whispering made him invisible.
The ripple came then — a small, mean pulse that sang its name with perfume: fallen aura flex. The nave breathed out dust, and in walked the three I'd been expecting, like a play hitting its cue.
Raynare took the aisle centerline, chin up, wings spread in a threat display that probably worked on people who hadn't survived worse sunsets. Her outfit was the same brand of theatrical menace as always — leather, straps, choker, not much else, and it didn't covered almost anything — but I filed it under "distraction budget" and didn't pay. Beside her, Mittelt twirled a light-whip with that childish malice some people never grow out of. Dohnaseek loomed two paces back and to the side, a dark-suited silhouette with a spear that hummed like a fluorescent tube about to fail. The trio's geometry said they'd practiced this entrance, and I almost respected that. Almost.
"Well, well," Raynare drawled, eyes sliding over Kalawarna like a blade. "Kala, betraying your own?"
"I'm not betraying anyone," Kalawarna said coolly, blade in a low guard that made several options look stupid. "I'm following someone stronger."
"Cute," Mittelt sing-songed, whip snapping the air. "Your new boyfriend?"
I stepped forward until their attention had to pick me and stick with it. "I'm here on behalf of the Grigori. This operation's over. Stand down and you walk away."
Raynare laughed, sharp and brittle. "You think we care about Azazel's orders? We're done being his disposable toys."
"I figured you'd say that," I said softly. "So here's the shorter version: leave now. Last chance."
Raynare's eyes got colder. The aisle seemed to pull tight between us.
I didn't lift my hand so much as let it become what it wanted. The emerald gem gleamed under skin and then metal unfurled with that particular weight — the crimson gauntlet of the Boosted Gear catching the weak light and making it real. The air thickened; dust motes hung like glitter that had suddenly remembered gravity.
"Ah," Azazel would've said, amused. But tonight it was just us and the old building and the sound the world makes when it knows that he fucked up.
[Boost!]
The word wasn't a shout. It was a rule. Power pulsed out and I boxed most of it, let only a sliver leak. A shimmer of red ran the length of the floor like a heat mirage, and the draconic wings tore free behind me — not a firework, a fact. Every scale edged in molten light. Heat rose; the stone creaked like it had stories to tell. And my barrier went up discreetly.
Kalawarna shaded her eyes with a forearm and grinned despite herself. "So that's the power you have been hiding."
I didn't draw Ashdod. I pressed my palms together and focused the energy there, then I slowly separated my hands, while the energy solidified, creating a weapon, just like Ulquiorra did in Bleach: a lance of red light bordered in green, humming a sacred counterpoint that wasn't angelic and wasn't demonic. Mittelt froze mid-flick, the whip stuttering. "That's not—"
"No," I said, and took a breath that felt like a promise. "It's draconic."
They moved as a unit — for them, that was unusual, and it almost worked, if I was a worm. Spear and whip and blades of light braided into each other, a net with bad intentions. I didn't meet the net; I stepped into the holes. Dohnaseek's spear stabbed; I shifted hips and let the haft slide along the gauntlet, turned the thrust aside and nicked his wrist with the lance's humming edge, not enough to maim, enough to teach. Mittelt's whip cracked; I clipped it with a small burst of heat at the wrong moment, made it lose shape, and fed it back into the air. Raynare's blasts came in pairs — big, angry, imprecise — and I trimmed them down with a palm-out earth rise and a fan of tight fire, smothering the worst and filing the rest under "Sparkle on the pews."
Kalawarna moved like my other arm. She covered my flanks with lines cleaner than chalk, blades drawing elegant answers wherever angles asked mean questions. Twice she was in the air when I needed a midline intercept; twice she was simply there, the tip of her blade writing "no" across a grin. Our rhythms locked the way good training pretends it can and almost never does. Tonight, it did.
Raynare went hard when she realized her insults were bouncing off the air between us. She threw light like a tantrum and then like a prayer, and neither mattered. Each time she aimed for my center, I wasn't where she decided I was. Each time she went wide to catch the wings, I flicked and the wings weren't there anymore; they were shadow, ornament, threat withheld. In the space where panic creeps in, I stepped through. The lance sang once, a clean bright note, and Dohnaseek's spear cracked like old ice. Mittelt's whip, harried and hot, lost shape and dissolved; she hissed like an offended cat and backup-dashed right into Kalawarna's waiting guard. Raynare tried to surge on rage alone, and I let her — just long enough for her to spend all that stupid human-shaped anger the fallen never manage to stop carrying. Then I took one careful step and ended it.
Not flashy. Final.
Her last blast broke against a counterburst of fire and earth that braided together and forgot to separate — a controlled flare that ate the worst of the force and rolled the rest into the floor. The lance came down in a bright sweep that didn't cut flesh; it shaved the spell out of her aura and cut the fight out of her posture. She hit a pew back and slid to the floor, wings uneven, breath ragged.
Dohnaseek lay quiet, conscious and contemplating the choices that had led him to this architecture. Mittelt sat against a pillar, arms wrapped around herself, eyes bright with fear and fury and the beginning of comprehension.
They were defeated, not destroyed. Broken in the way you tape and time can fix if you're allowed.
"I gave you a chance," I said, the lance fading from my hand, the gauntlet withdrawing until the gem was just a memory under skin. "You could've walked. You decided to make it a sermon. I'm not even a priest."
Raynare spat blood and defiance onto the cracked tile. "You're no fallen. You're a freak."
"Maybe," I said, quiet. "But freaks survive."
I looked at Kalawarna. "Call Azazel. Tell him the rogue cell's neutralized."
She nodded and stepped away to the broken side door, murmuring across the link in a tone that stripped the event down to what mattered. While she reported, I moved, and made the decision a dragon would make: I decapitated the three, ripped off their wings, and placed it in the backroom of the abandoned church, and wrote in the wall with their blood "I see you. Keep coming."
I knew Freed would find it.
[A message with blood,] Ddraig mused. [Very dragon of you.]
Let their leader know who's hunting, I replied, running my hand along a cracked column until the ward peeled off under my palm like dead paint. And let them think I'm loud.
We didn't linger. We bound wounds that needed binding, and burned away what couldn't be under the earth. The place exhaled. A peace of sorts crept back in and sat, uncomfortable and stubborn, like a cat that refused to admit it wanted to be in your lap.
By morning, the church was quiet again. My barrier had already dissipated. The gold of dawn slanted through broken glass and painted the dust like a fresh lie. Only ash and a few broken feathers remained to tell a different story.
That's when I felt it — a new aura at the threshold, gentle and clear, careful like someone trying not to spill a full cup. Not fallen. Not devil. Something that had been taught that goodness hurts and came anyway.
A blonde girl stepped into the doorway, green eyes wide and kind, shoulders tense the way shelter dogs tense when they've learned doors swing both ways. Asia Argento. Younger than the building deserved, older than the world had allowed.
"Hello?" she asked softly. "I was told I'd find someone who could help me here."
I exhaled and lowered my hood. The light caught my face and made it look more patient than I felt. "Someone lied to you," I said. "This place isn't safe."
Her gaze flicked to the scorch marks and the faintly shimmering air around me, to the angles I'd drawn on the stone. She hesitated, took one step into the aisle anyway. "You… you're not a devil, are you?"
"No," I said. "I'm the kind of person monsters don't like to meet twice."
It wasn't poetry, but she smiled like it was. Small, trusting. "Then… could you help me? I want to help people."
I glanced at Kalawarna. She gave the tiniest nod: we can handle this, and also, be careful — both at once.
"Alright," I said, switching my tone to something a kid could trust without knowing why. "If you want to help and want me to help you, then stay with us. We'll teach you who to trust and how to run when you shouldn't have to."
Asia's gaze fell to the subtle glow still clinging to the air near my arm. She tilted her head, eyes gentling further. "Saint… Draco," she whispered, like a name she'd found written in a margin.
I blinked. "What?"
"That's what you are," she said, a little color in her cheeks. "A dragon touched by the light."
Thats when I saw that I still had my wings unfolded.
Kalawarna laughed softly, not mocking, surprised. "I think the name suits you."
I sighed and tried not to let the grin break out. "Great. A title. Just what I needed."
[Do not let titles choose you,] Ddraig said, amused and warning wrapped together. [Choose the ones you can bury when they become inconvenient.]
We walked Asia out into the morning. The first sunlight broke through clouds and washed the ruined church in gold, turned all that broken glass into small fires, turned the dust into glitter for a moment before reality told it to knock it off. The three of us stood in that light — one fallen with a professional's pride, one healer with a saint's stubbornness, and one half-dragon who'd started to accept the size of his shadow — and the day chose to believe we belonged there.
We didn't go straight home. I bought Asia a warm drink from a vending machine and a pastry that tasted better than most choices at this hour, and we talked about small things while bigger ones paced outside the circle of our voices. She told me where she'd come from without telling me with names — the church that had loved her miracles until it didn't, the kindness that had asked too much and then punished her for giving it. I didn't tell her much of anything about me, because the safest version of me for a kid to meet is the quiet one. Kalawarna listened with that half-turned attention of soldiers off-duty in a war zone, ready to catch falling glasses and knives.
We found her a room at a safehouse Azazel's people kept for "civilians with complicated fortunes." The building wore the kind of invisibility that comes from a neighborhood believing you're boring. A woman with a stern expression and a soft voice gave Asia a checklist and a key. Asia bowed so deeply it almost broke my heart. Kalawarna pressed a slip of paper into her hand. "Call if anything feels wrong," she said. "And call if anything feels right and you don't trust it."
"Thank you," Asia said, clutching the paper like a lifejacket. She looked at me one more time the way you look at someone you've decided to believe in before you know it's safe. "Saint Draco," she said again, with tiny delight, making the name less a title and more a personal joke.
"Just Issei is fine," I said, and she nodded like that was equally good.
On the walk back, the city did its best impression of being normal. Schoolkids cut corners on the way to classes; a salaryman practiced his apology to the morning air; a delivery truck made a left turn like a promise. The old church remembered us badly and then forgot.
"You're recruiting now?" Kalawarna asked, tone halfway between curiosity and mockery.
"She found us," I said. "Better she finds us than the wrong hands."
"You're going to piss off a lot of people protecting a former nun."
"Add it to the ledger."
She huffed a laugh. "You really do talk like a devil sometimes."
"I fight like a dragon."
"That," she said, "is why I'm still here."
At the intersection, she peeled off toward her report, wings hidden under the kind of walk that made men think "intimidating" and "interesting" and women think "don't waste my time." I headed the other way, toward the part of town that believed I was just a kid with a clean uniform and a habit of showing up early.
[You have taken responsibility for a healer,] Ddraig murmured, not a rebuke, not praise. [This pulls threads.]
I know. But if the world is going to tangle, I'd rather hold the knots than be strangled by them.
[Hnh. Your metaphors improve when you are tired.]
I smiled at nothing. "You have to make do when the poet's on break."
[This title she gave you—] I felt the tilt of his head inside my bones. [Saint Draco.]
It'll never be on a paycheck.
[But it will live in her mouth. Be careful with the names that live in the mouths of the kind.]
We let the streets walk us a while. My aura sank so low I could have shaken hands with a priest and he would have called me "nice young man." My shoulders remembered they were connected to a neck; my jaw learned fun again. In the store window, my reflection looked like a teenager who slept enough. In my shadow, the wings curled in tight and pretended to be nothing more than extra night.
Back home, I took off my shoes like I always did and lined them up with the quiet respect you give rituals that keep you human. Mom asked if I'd be late for dinner and I said no. Dad asked if I'd seen the game and I said I'd watch the highlights with him. We did both. I ate. I laughed. I cleaned the dishes and didn't think about how many of my knuckles had been closer to breaking earlier. I lay on my floor when I had a minute and stared at the ceiling until it stopped being a ceiling and started being a sky I could choose to fly in or not.
That night, after everyone else had chosen sleep, I sat with Ashdod wrapped on my lap, palms against the cloth, listening. The lance thrummed like a mountain humming, patient. It wanted to be drawn and it didn't mind waiting. That made two of us.
"You heard that?" I asked the quiet. "Saint Draco."
[You will be called worse,] Ddraig said, deadpan. [And better. Both are traps.]
"I know what I am," I said. "And I know what I'm not."
[Good. Remember: power names you if you let it. You have two names already—the dragon's and the saint's blade. Carry them. Don't wear them.]
Outside, the weather did that easy Kuoh thing where it changed its mind twice and then decided to be nice about it. I rolled the title around in my head once, privately, and set it down where it couldn't do harm.
The sky over the old church went back to rust when evening came again, as if it had been waiting for the callback. Somewhere out there, a smirking priest would be reading a report and reconsidering his hobbies. Somewhere farther, a governor with too many secrets would be reading a different report and smiling in a way that meant trouble loves a schedule. And somewhere beneath all of that, a blonde girl would be unpacking a small bag and whispering a prayer to a God who sometimes listens and sometimes sends dragons.
Tomorrow, the leash I'd let run would jerk in the direction of a larger hand. Tomorrow, the fallen would post their grief as threats and the devils would pretend they hadn't noticed their backyard smelled like ozone. Tomorrow, the saint's weapon would stay asleep because I told it to, and the dragon would pace because I didn't.
But for now, under the ordinary ceiling in the ordinary house, I let my eyes close and chose to sleep like a kid who had school in the morning and a world to defend at night.
[Rest, boy.]
"Only if you do," I murmured.
[Dragons do not sleep. We wait.]
"Call it what you want," I said, and let the dark come to me like a friend who doesn't knock.
And if I dreamed — of a church cleaned with sunlight, of a girl calling me a name I didn't earn, of the taste of feathers and arrogance on the wind — I didn't tell anyone in the morning.