Year Five:
The Gremory estate had a ghost.
Not a literal one—the protective wards would have detected and banished any wandering spirit immediately.
No, this ghost was flesh and blood, silver-haired and silent, drifting through corridors like morning mist that burned away the moment anyone bothered to look.
His name was Caelan Lucifuge.
Though increasingly, even that felt uncertain.
At six years old, Caelan had become an expert at occupying space without being noticed.
He'd learned which hallways the servants used most frequently and avoided them.
He'd memorized the family's schedule down to the minute—when Sirzechs would be in his study, when Grayfia would be training Lucien, when Lord Zeoticus would be holding court in the main hall.
He planned his movements around theirs like a chess player avoiding checkmate, ensuring he was never where they were, never visible, never *there*.
It was easier that way.
For everyone.
The neglect that had been gradual in his early years had crystallized into something more absolute.
Not cruelty—the Gremory household was far too refined for overt cruelty.
Just...
absence.
A systematic, thorough erasure of his existence from the family narrative.
His meals were delivered to his room by rotating servants who barely made eye contact.
His clothes were provided, cleaned, and replaced without comment—functional garments in silver and black, never the crimson and gold of House Gremory.
His room, tucked away in a forgotten corner of the estate's eastern wing, might as well have been in a different dimension for how often anyone visited it.
No one called his name anymore.
When the servants needed to refer to him—which was rare—they used euphemisms.
"The other young master."
"Lady Grayfia's son."
"The quiet one."
As though speaking his actual name might somehow remind the family he existed, and that would be... inconvenient.
Sirzechs Lucifer, the Crimson Satan, the most powerful devil in the Underworld, had not spoken directly to Caelan in over a year.
Not once.
Not even by accident.
Grayfia—his mother, the woman who'd held him those first desperate hours and whispered that he was stronger than they thought—had perfected the art of looking through him.
Her ice-blue eyes would pass over him as though he were furniture.
Useful, perhaps, in an abstract sense.
But not worth acknowledging.
And Lucien...
Lucien had simply forgotten he had a twin.
Late afternoon sunlight—filtered through the Underworld's perpetual crimson sky—streamed through the tall windows of the Gremory estate's grand drawing room.
Caelan watched from the library balcony, hidden behind a marble pillar, his book forgotten in his lap. Below, in the garden courtyard visible through the glass, a scene of perfect domestic bliss unfolded.
Sirzechs Lucifer—the terrifying Crimson Satan who could erase armies with a thought—was on his hands and knees in the grass, making exaggerated horse noises.
On his back rode Rias Gremory, now a year and a half old, her crimson hair tied up in tiny pigtails with golden ribbons.
She squealed with delight, her chubby hands gripping her brother's—shirt as he "galloped" around the garden.
"Faster, Zechs! Faster!" Rias demanded in her high-pitched toddler voice, and Sirzechs laughed—
*laughed* warm and genuine and utterly unguarded—
and obliged, making even more ridiculous sound effects.
Beside them, Lucien practiced his magic under Grayfia's watchful eye.
At six years old, he was already a prodigy that made adult devils nervous.
His small hands conjured orbs of crackling Power of Destruction, each one precisely controlled, each one demonstrating the kind of mastery that should have taken decades to achieve.
"Excellent form, Lucien," Grayfia said, and there—*there*—was the smile. T
he genuine expression of maternal pride that Caelan had seen perhaps twice in his entire life and never, ever directed at him.
"Your control has improved significantly. At this rate, you'll be ready for advanced techniques within the year."
"Really, Mother?" Lucien's face lit up like the sun.
"Do you think Father will teach me the Extinguished Star technique?"
"Perhaps," Sirzechs called from where he was still playing horse with Rias.
"Though you'll need to master your current abilities first. No rushing, even for a genius like you."
"I won't rush! I promise!"
Lady Venelana emerged from the mansion carrying a tray of refreshments—expensive juice imported from the human world, delicate pastries prepared by the estate's master chef.
She set it on a garden table and immediately scooped up Rias, showering the giggling child with kisses.
"My precious daughter! Are you having fun terrorizing your poor brother?"
"Rias not terrorizing! Rias is a princess!"
"Yes, yes, the Ruin Princess herself," Venelana cooed, and even that title—
meant to be intimidating—
sounded affectionate in her voice.
Lord Zeoticus joined them shortly after, and the whole family gathered around the garden table.
Talking.
Laughing.
Lucien demonstrated a new spell he'd learned.
Rias showed off a trick she'd learned with her baby toys (levitating them with barely-formed telekinesis, impressive for her age).
Sirzechs told some story about a political meeting that had gone hilariously wrong.
Grayfia allowed herself to actually smile—not her professional, perfectly-controlled maid smile, but a *real* one.
A perfect family.
Warm.
Happy.
Complete.
Caelan watched from his hidden perch in the library, his silver eyes reflecting the scene like mirrors reflecting a world he wasn't part of.
His hands, resting on the open book in his lap, trembled slightly.
Not from sadness.
He'd moved past sadness months ago.
This was something colder.
Something that settled in his chest like ice and refused to melt.
On his lap, the book lay forgotten.
But peeking out from beneath it was a rolled-up piece of parchment covered in complex mathematical equations, magical theory diagrams, and detailed notes written in Caelan's precise, elegant handwriting.
A magic stabilization formula.
He'd been working on it for months.
The Theory
Caelan's problem was simple: his body couldn't store demonic power.
The magical circuits were there—the physicians had confirmed that much.
But they were weak, underdeveloped, like rivers that had dried to mere trickles.
Where Lucien's demonic power reserves were like a vast ocean, constantly churning and regenerating, Caelan's were like a small pond.
Shallow.
Stagnant.
Barely enough to sustain basic devil functions, let alone perform any meaningful magic.
But Caelan was smart.
Brilliant, even, in a way that made his tutors—back when he'd had tutors—deeply uncomfortable.
If his body couldn't store power efficiently, then the solution wasn't to force more power in.
That was like trying to fill a cracked cup by pouring faster.
No, the solution was to *stabilize* what little power he had.
To create a formula, a technique, a *system* that would allow him to use his pathetic reserves with perfect efficiency.
No waste.
No loss.
Every drop of demonic power utilized to its absolute maximum potential.
He'd spent six months on the theory.
Reading texts meant for devil scholars centuries old.
Cross-referencing magical theories from different disciplines.
Teaching himself advanced mathematics because none of his current studies covered the level he needed. Staying up through the night, hunched over parchment by candlelight (he didn't waste his limited magic on light spells), working and reworking the equations until they finally, finally clicked.
And three days ago, it had worked.
On paper, at least.
The formula was sound.
The theory was revolutionary, if he said so himself—a way to create an external magical structure, almost like a second set of circuits, that would capture and recycle ambient demonic energy to supplement his body's natural (pathetic) regeneration.
It wouldn't make him powerful, not by Gremory standards.
But it might—*might*—let him perform basic spells without exhausting himself immediately.
It might let him matter.
Just a little.
He'd checked the math seventeen times.
Had cross-referenced it against twelve different magical theorems.
Had even tested a miniature version on a captured firefly (the insect had glowed three times brighter before the spell faded, proving the concept worked).
This was *real*.
This was *important*.
This was something that might—
finally—
make them see him.
Caelan waited until the family gathering in the garden began to wind down.
Waited until Sirzechs had set Rias down and was stretching his back with an exaggerated groan.
Waited until Grayfia had finished her critique of Lucien's technique and was accepting a cup of tea from Lady Venelana.
Then, clutching his rolled parchment like a lifeline, he descended from the library.
His small feet made no sound on the marble stairs.
Six years of being invisible had taught him how to move without drawing attention—an ironic skill for someone desperate to *be* noticed.
He crossed through the mansion's main hall, passed through the ornate doors leading to the garden courtyard, and approached the gathered family.
No one saw him.
Sirzechs was laughing at something Lord Zeoticus had said.
Grayfia was watching Lucien attempt to juggle small orbs of destruction (he managed three before they started destabilizing, impressive for his age).
Rias was being dandled on Lady Venelana's knee, babbling happily.
Caelan stopped a few feet away from his mother.
Waited.
No one looked.
He took a breath, steeling himself, and reached out to tug on Grayfia's skirt.
The fabric was fine silk, expensive and perfectly maintained. His small fingers caught the hem gently—
not pulling, not demanding, just... requesting attention.
Grayfia's eyes shifted down.
Not her head.
Just her eyes.
Silver met silver.
And in that moment, Caelan saw absolutely nothing.
No recognition.
No warmth.
No curiosity.
Just the cool, professional assessment of a servant who'd been interrupted.
"What?" Her voice was perfectly neutral.
Not unkind.
Not kind.
Just... nothing. Caelan's throat felt tight, but he forced himself to speak.
"Mother, I—I wanted to show you something. I've been working on—"
"Not now." The words weren't harsh.
They were worse than harsh.
They were dismissive.
Final.
The tone one might use to refuse a merchant's solicitation.
Caelan blinked, his hand still clutching the parchment.
"But I've been working on this for months, and I think I've solved—"
"Caelan." Sirzechs' voice cut in, not even looking at him.
He was helping Rias pick up a toy she'd dropped, his attention fully on the toddler.
"We're busy. This isn't a good time."
We're busy. Caelan looked at his father—at the way he was crouched down, making funny faces at Rias to make her laugh. At the way Lucien was now trying to show off a new spell variation to get his father's approval. At the way the entire family was gathered, warm and close and *together*.
They weren't busy.
They were busy with *them*.
Not with him.
Never with him.
"I just need five minutes to explain the theory—" Caelan tried again, his voice smaller now.
The parchment crinkled in his grip. "Perhaps later," Grayfia said, already turning her attention back to Lucien.
"We'll discuss it at dinner."
But they wouldn't. Because Caelan didn't eat dinner with the family anymore.
He hadn't in over a year.
For a long moment, Caelan stood there, invisible once again, clutching his revolutionary magical theory that no one would ever read.
Stood there while his brother laughed and his aunt squealed and his parents smiled at them with the kind of love he barely remembered receiving.
Then, quietly, he turned and walked away.
No one noticed him leave.
That night, Caelan didn't eat.
The servant who delivered his dinner—a middle-aged devil woman whose name he'd never learned—knocked twice, announced "Your meal, young master," and left the tray outside his door as always.
She didn't wait for a response.
She never did.
Caelan heard her footsteps fade down the corridor but didn't move to retrieve the food.
Instead, he sat by his window, staring out into the darkened grounds of the estate.
From his vantage point, he could see the servants' quarters—a cluster of smaller buildings near the estate's outer wall. And there, in a small courtyard lit by a single magical lamp, he saw her.
The hound.
She was one of the estate's guard dogs—a demonic creature, all sleek black fur and red eyes that glowed in the darkness.
She'd given birth recently.
Six weeks ago, maybe? Caelan had watched the whole process from this window, fascinated in the clinical way he approached most things now.
Four puppies.
Two were large and dark like their mother, already showing signs of the aggressive power that made demonic hounds valuable guardians.
One was smaller, white-furred—a genetic anomaly that made it less intimidating but strangely beautiful.
And the last... The last was the runt.
Weak.
One of its hind legs twisted at an odd angle, a birth defect that would have gotten it culled immediately if the groundskeeper had been less sentimental. Its fur was patchy, its body too thin, its demonic aura barely present.
By all rights, it should have been considered a failure.
A disappointment.
Worthless.
But as Caelan watched, the mother hound played with all four puppies equally.
She nuzzled the strong ones, yes, encouraged their rough play, let them practice their tiny growing fangs on her ears. But she also curled her body around the runt, keeping it warm. Licked its malformed leg gently. Pushed food toward it when it was too weak to compete with its siblings.
All four puppies.
No favorites.
No disappointments.
Just her children.
Caelan pressed his forehead against the cold glass of the window, his breath fogging it slightly. Something twisted in his chest—
something he couldn't name, couldn't articulate, even with all his reading and his precocious understanding of psychology and philosophy.
A dog.
A simple demonic beast with barely any intelligence.
Loved all her children equally.
But his parents—brilliant, powerful, supposedly *civilized* devils—couldn't manage the same.
What did that say about them?
What did that say about *him*?
Year Six:
Another year passed.
Then another.
Time in the Gremory estate moved in strange ways for Caelan.
Days bled together in an endless cycle of solitude and study.
His room.
The library.
The rare occasions he needed to venture out for basic necessities.
Then back to his room.
Back to the library.
Over and over, like a ghost haunting the same corridors for eternity.
No one called his name.
At seven years old, most devil children were beginning structured education.
Learning the basics of their clan's magic.
Being introduced to devil society through carefully orchestrated social events.
Building relationships with other noble children that would form the foundation of their future political networks.
Lucien, for instance, had already made friends with Sona Sitri—the young heiress of the Sitri clan, a brilliant tactician-in-training who shared his competitive drive.
He'd been introduced to Sairaorg Bael, the powerful heir who trained obsessively despite lacking his clan's signature magic.
He attended formal dinners, sat in on Rating Game broadcasts, was being groomed for leadership.
Caelan's entire social circle consisted of books.
And he'd made peace with that.
Or at least, he'd convinced himself he had.
The library became his kingdom.
A vast, sprawling collection of texts that covered everything from ancient devil history to cutting-edge magical theory to human philosophy to mathematics to military strategy.
He read voraciously, desperately, as though knowledge could fill the void where family should have been.
By seven, he'd read more books than most devil scholars read in a century.
And somewhere in all that reading, he'd made a discovery.
It started with a simple observation.
Caelan *could* use magic.
It was pathetic—barely worth mentioning.
His demonic power reserves were so limited that a single spell exhausted him completely.
But technically, the ability was there.
He'd discovered it by accident at age seven, during a particularly cold night when his room's heating spell had failed. (The servants-maintained Lucien's room meticulously but seemed to forget Caelan's existed half the time.)
Shivering, desperate, he'd focused every scrap of his pitiful magic into his hands and... Ice. A few inches of it, creeping across his palm.
Fragile and thin, but real.
His mother's element.
Grayfia Lucifuge, the Strongest Queen, could freeze entire battlefields with a gesture. Could encase armies in ice thick enough to withstand dragon fire. Could lower the temperature of a room by fifty degrees just by walking into it.
Caelan could create a patch of ice the size of his hand, and it exhausted him so thoroughly he'd slept for twelve hours straight afterward.
The difference was... insurmountable.
But Caelan was nothing if not stubborn.
If he couldn't match his mother's *scale*, then he'd focus on *precision*.
The next eight months were spent in obsessive study.
Physics.
Mathematics.
Thermodynamics.
The precise molecular structure of ice formation.
The exact amount of energy required to lower water's temperature to freezing.
The variables that affected magical efficiency—
distance, humidity, ambient temperature, the caster's emotional state, even the phase of the moon in the human world.
Caelan didn't just want to create ice.
He wanted to create ice *perfectly*.
Every morning, he'd wake before dawn and practice.
His room's window became his laboratory.
He'd focus his magic—that pathetic trickle of power—and attempt to freeze a single drop of water.
Then measure how long it took. How much energy it consumed.
How stable the ice was.
Then he'd adjust the variables and try again.
And again.
And again.
He taught himself advanced calculus because the existing magical texts didn't go deep enough into the math.
He studied ballistics to understand trajectory and distance.
He read military strategy to understand how precision strikes could overcome overwhelming force.
Did his magical reserves grow? No. He was still pathetically weak, still barely able to manage a single spell before needing to rest.
But his *control*... His control became something else entirely.
It happened on a cold morning in autumn.
Caelan stood in his room, facing a target he'd set up—a training dummy "borrowed" from the estate's old storage room.
On its chest, he'd marked a single point.
A circle no larger than a coin.
In his mind, he ran the calculations.
Distance: 4.7 meters.
Ambient temperature: 16 degrees Celsius.
Humidity: 34%.
Air resistance: negligible at this range.
Required energy for flash-freezing a 2-centimeter diameter area: 47 units of demonic power (roughly 12% of his total reserves).
Margin of error: 0.3 centimeters.
He raised his hand, fingers positioned just so, and released the spell.
A pinpoint beam of ice-blue light shot from his palm—so focused, so precise, it was barely visible. It crossed the distance in a fraction of a second and struck the marked circle dead center. Ice spread across the dummy's chest—not wild, not expansive, but *exactly* within the marked circle.
A perfect disk of ice, two centimeters in diameter, frozen solid enough to shatter steel.
Everywhere else, the dummy was untouched.
Not a single ice crystal outside the target zone.
Perfect precision.
Caelan stared at his hand, then at the dummy, then back at his hand.
He did it again.
This time targeting a point on the wall behind the dummy, calculating the angle to miss the dummy entirely. The beam of ice struck exactly where he'd aimed.
A single frozen point, as though someone had pressed an ice cube against the stone and held it there. Again. This time the ceiling. Then the floor.
Then back to the dummy—left shoulder, right knee, center of the forehead.
Every single shot, perfect.
No wasted energy.
No collateral freezing.
Just exactly what he intended, where he intended, when he intended.
By the time he stopped, he'd made twenty-seven precise strikes, each one hitting a target no larger than a coin.
It had taken 81% of his total demonic power reserves.
His mother could have frozen the entire room—walls, floor, ceiling, furniture, everything—in a single spell and barely noticed the drain.
But his mother couldn't do *this*.
No one could do this.
Because no one *needed* to do this.
Why develop pinpoint accuracy when you had the power to simply overwhelm everything in your path? Caelan slumped against the wall, utterly exhausted, and for the first time in months, something like a smile ghosted across his face.
It was bitter.
Cold.
But it was there.
Does Anyone Care?
The answer, of course, was no.
Caelan didn't tell anyone about his breakthrough.
What would be the point?
"Father, Mother, I can freeze a single point with perfect accuracy!"
"That's nice, dear. Lucien just melted an entire training ground. Can you do that?"
"No, but—"
"Then it doesn't matter."
He could imagine the conversation perfectly.
Could see the polite disinterest in Sirzechs' eyes, the cold dismissal in Grayfia's.
Could hear Lucien's oblivious, well-meaning comment:
"That's cool, brother! But why not just freeze everything? It's more efficient!"
Because Lucien *could* freeze everything.
Or melt it.
Or disintegrate it with the Power of Destruction he was rapidly mastering.
Lucien had the luxury of overwhelming force.
Caelan had to make do with precision.
And in a world that valued raw power above all else, precision was just another word for weakness.
By the time Caelan turned eight, the neglect had reached its final form.
Not active abuse.
Nothing so dramatic.
Just... complete indifference.
Sirzechs Lucifer hadn't spoken to him in two years.
Hadn't looked at him in longer than that.
When official family portraits were taken—grand magical paintings commissioned by the estate—Caelan wasn't included.
When family events were held, he wasn't invited.
When important visitors came to the Gremory estate, he was quietly moved to his room and instructed (via a servant's note slipped under his door) to "remain out of sight." He was an embarrassment.
A blemish on the perfect Gremory image.
The defective twin who reminded everyone that even the strongest bloodlines could produce failures.
Grayfia maintained her duties as his mother in the most technical sense.
She ensured he had food, clothing, shelter.
But she did it through servants, through written schedules, through systems and processes that meant she never had to actually interact with him.
Once, he'd passed her in a corridor.
She'd been walking with Rias—now three years old and already showing remarkable magical talent. Rias had spotted him and, with a child's innocent curiosity, asked, "Who's that?" Grayfia had barely glanced at him. "No one important, Princess. Let's continue to your lesson."
No one important.
Not "your nephew."
Not "another member of the household."
Not even "the other boy."
No one important.
And Rias, taking her word as gospel, had simply forgotten about him by the next turn of the corridor.
Lucien, meanwhile, had completely forgotten he had a twin brother.
At eight years old, he was already a celebrity in the Underworld—the Crimson Prodigy, the future heir, the boy who'd achieved his Balance Breaker state of the Power of Destruction before his tenth birthday.
He had friends, tutors, admirers.
His days were filled with training, with social events, with the carefully curated experiences of a prince being groomed for kingship.
He was happy.
Genuinely, innocently happy.
And he had absolutely no idea that somewhere in the forgotten corners of the Gremory estate, his twin brother existed.
On Caelan's eighth birthday—a date remembered by precisely one servant, who left a small cupcake outside his door with a note that read "Happy Birthday, young master"—
he sat in his room and did the math.
He'd calculated a lot of things in his life.
Magical formulas.
Physical trajectories.
Probability distributions.
But this calculation was different.
He calculated how many days it had been since his father had spoken to him.
(824 days.)
How many times his mother had looked him in the eyes in the past year.
(Twice. Both times by accident.)
How many people in the entire Gremory estate knew his name.
(Perhaps a dozen servants. Maybe. And even they usually used euphemisms.)
How many friends he had.
(Zero.)
How many people would notice if he disappeared tomorrow.
(One. Maybe two. The servant who delivered his meals, and possibly the estate's accountant who'd notice a line-item expense had vanished.)
The numbers painted a picture that was brutally, mathematically clear.
He was already gone.
Oh, his body still existed.
He still consumed resources, still occupied space, still technically bore the name Lucifuge.
But *Caelan*—the person, the individual, the *son*—had been erased.
Thoroughly.
Systematically.
Completely.
And the most terrifying part?
It was only going to get worse.
Lucien would grow stronger.
His achievements would become more spectacular, his fame more widespread.
The gap between the prodigy and the failure would widen until it became a chasm, and then an ocean, and then an unbridgeable gulf between worlds.
Rias would grow too.
Already she was showing signs of becoming another Gremory legend.
The Crimson-Haired Ruin Princess, they were already calling her, and she wasn't even four years old yet.
And Caelan? Caelan would continue to fade.
Until one day—maybe in a year, maybe in five, maybe in ten—
someone would realize that there was this extra room in the eastern wing that no one used.
This line item in the budget for a person no one had seen.
This name on the family registry that no one remembered.
And they'd simply... remove it.
Caelan Lucifuge would cease to exist.
Not because he'd died.
But because no one had noticed he'd ever been alive.
He sat there on his bed, on his eighth birthday, eating the single cupcake that a kind servant had left him, and felt something inside him break.
Not his heart—
that had broken a long time ago.
Something deeper.
Something fundamental.
The last fragile hope that maybe, somehow, things would get better.
That hope died quietly, without fanfare, like everything else about his existence.
And in its place...
In its place grew something colder.
Harder.
Something that looked at the world with silver eyes that calculated probabilities and measured outcomes and saw, with perfect clarity, exactly what he was in this family.
Nothing.
But as he sat there in the dark, that cold, analytical part of his mind—the part that could calculate magical formulas and predict trajectories and solve problems that stumped scholars' centuries older than him—came to a different conclusion.
If he was nothing in their world...
If he was invisible in their reality...
Then perhaps he needed to create his own.
The thought wasn't fully formed yet.
It was just a seed.
A possibility.
But it was there.
And it would grow.