Chapter 186 (Cont.): The Man Who Stopped the Past
The one who stopped the doomsday cannon wasn't the flirtatious feline in a kimono—Kuroka—it was the mysterious man under investigation, the one known only as Byakugetsu.
His gaze swept the scorched surroundings with an unreadable intensity. The lines around his eyes deepened.
Kuroka tilted her head, ears twitching. "What's wrong, nya?"
"This is Jerusalem," he replied solemnly.
Byakugetsu had already analyzed the architecture around them—the sandstone domes, the sacred courtyards, and the royal banners fluttering against the purple Underworld sky. This was ancient Israel. They had arrived in the unified kingdom three thousand years before their time.
And the explosion—they hadn't arrived in time to prevent it entirely. The blast had erupted inside the royal palace.
There were casualties.
Four, to be exact.
Two maids—one dead, one unconscious.
And a mother and child.
The mother had survived.
The child had not.
The maid who'd fainted beside the woman woke up in a panic, her cries echoing through the marble halls. Her shrill voice carried one name—one that caused Byakugetsu's expression to tighten instantly.
Kuroka, trailing behind and utterly lost in this era's dialect, glanced up. "What's wrong, nya? You recognized someone?"
"Bathsheba," he answered.
"Bathsheba?" Kuroka blinked. "I've heard that name before…"
Her tail twitched anxiously. The name stirred a faint bell in her memory, one she couldn't quite place.
"She's the mother of Solomon."
Kuroka's eyes widened until they nearly popped out of her head.
The child who died… was Solomon?
A drop of cold sweat slid down her cheek. A wave of dread churned in her gut.
Solomon. King of Israel. Mage of seventy-two seals. One of the pivotal figures around whom countless mythologies revolved.
Dead.
"What do we do now?" Kuroka asked, her voice barely a whisper. "Without Solomon, won't the entire world unravel? What about White Yin? What about the Gremory family? What about me?"
In her panic, she didn't even consider her own fate. She was more afraid of losing her sister than ceasing to exist.
Byakugetsu didn't answer. Instead, he moved swiftly, weaving arcane sigils into the air. A pale light washed over Bathsheba and her attendant, ushering them into deep sleep. Then he turned to the infant's charred body.
He performed a healing spell—one far beyond Kuroka's comprehension. Flesh reformed. Breath returned.
But a heartbeat wasn't enough.
Kuroka frowned. "Wait—did you… resurrect him?"
"No," she gasped a second later. "That's not resurrection."
She had peered deeper, beyond mere vital signs. The infant's soul was gone.
It hadn't traveled to any afterlife or divine realm. It had evaporated—destroyed in the blast, its fragile essence shattered like mist in a hurricane.
But now the child stirred, blinked.
How?
She stared at Byakugetsu with unspoken horror.
That man… He had implanted a new soul fragment. A blank shard—innocent, pure, empty.
A spiritual transfusion.
Like donating blood, but a thousandfold more agonizing.
Kuroka had once used soul magic in battle. She had flicked a needle of essence into an enemy's heart and watched the man scream himself into madness and death.
This—what Byakugetsu had done—was unthinkable.
And now her own body was beginning to fade.
She looked down.
Her hands were transparent.
Her legs, too.
The air around her rippled and rejected her. Reality was erasing her existence.
"So it wasn't enough," she whispered.
History had shifted. The butterfly effect had taken hold.
Some ripple—some change—meant that she was no longer part of the future that once existed.
"I'm disappearing, nya…"
She turned to Byakugetsu, whose own figure was dimming.
"Hey," she said softly. "If we're both going to vanish… at least tell me who you really are."
She stepped closer.
His expression remained blank. Unresponsive.
"Say something, nya."
And in that moment, with death looming, Kuroka threw herself at him like an oversized squid. She wrapped herself around his fading form, her movements bold, uninhibited.
"Heh. Guess you're lucky. You get a beauty like me clinging to you while we die, right? Not everyone gets that kind of company."
She giggled and licked her lips provocatively.
"You're cute when you're being silent. Makes me want to teach you what it means to feel warmth before the end. Big Sis will take care of you~"
Whatever barriers she had left were gone.
But then—her peripheral vision flashed.
A kaleidoscope of light. A surge of magic.
Time fractured.
And as she reached toward Byakugetsu in one last, ridiculous attempt at seduction—
THWACK.
Her head whipped sideways.
Stars burst behind her eyes.
Not metaphorical ones—actual cosmic sparks as if her brain had been jostled into orbit.
She groaned and sagged.
Someone had sucker-punched her in the back of the skull.
As her vision steadied, she realized she was once again face-down, arms locked behind her, someone's knee in her back.
She turned her head slightly.
"Yin…?"
She blinked rapidly.
They weren't gone.
They were back.
Back in the Underworld, right where the cannon's ripple had vanished.
Rias and White Yin stood nearby, calmly observing.
"You alright, Byakugetsu-sensei?" Yin asked.
"I'm fine," the man replied.
"You sure? You looked a bit disappointed for a moment there."
"Just your imagination."
Rias chuckled. The temperature around them dipped slightly, as if her amusement cooled the very air.
Chapter 187: The Truths That Ripple Backward
It was night. In a dim chamber—one of the rooms belonging to Kuoh Academy's Occult Research Club.
Kuroka, now officially a classified SS-level threat, was bound by magic restraints. She lounged on a couch, tail swishing restlessly behind her.
"So… Azazel isn't a traitor?"
Sona Shitori adjusted her glasses, voice clipped.
According to Kuroka's testimony, Azazel had orchestrated his defection into the evil faction—Khaos Brigade—as part of a larger gambit.
He wanted peace.
He and Vali had staged everything to infiltrate the organization and reveal its true structure.
Kuroka had explained the inner circles:
The Old Devil King faction, composed of remnants and loyalists to the original demonic nobility. The Nirlaem faction, comprised mostly of human mages. The Hero faction, descendants of historical mythic figures.
And finally, the Vali faction, led by the silver-haired dragon himself—and that was the one Kuroka belonged to.
There might have been others.
But Kuroka wasn't privy to everything.
Khaos Brigade's tendrils reached too far.
Then Rias asked the real question.
"So… that blast fired by Lumaydora—one of Rezoroado's Four Generals—what exactly happened?"
Until now, no one had addressed it directly.
Byakugetsu hadn't shared the full details. He had vanished, recovered, and gone to rest. So it was up to Kuroka to provide answers.
"Relax, nya. Everything's fine. We only flew back to 3,000 years ago, no big deal~"
"What!?" Ravel Phoenix gasped.
The farther back you went, the more catastrophic a butterfly effect could be.
"So you reached the ancient era? Where exactly?" Rias pressed.
"Guess," Kuroka teased.
Sona answered: "The United Kingdom of Israel?"
"Bingo!" Kuroka winked. "That blast could've obliterated the entire nation. Luckily, that weird guy managed to contain it. Only two died."
No one in the room relaxed.
The glint in Kuroka's eyes was too mischievous.
"Who were they?" Sona asked.
"One was a random maid. Not important. The other?" Kuroka grinned. "A baby~"
"A baby?" Rias leaned in. "Who was this child?"
"Bathsheba's son."
The room fell silent.
Everyone except White Yin went pale.
"You're saying that child… was King Solomon?" Sona murmured, voice grave.
"Dead?" Tsubaki asked faintly. "But Solomon existed. He built the temple. The legends…"
Kuroka giggled. "Yeah, that's the fun part, isn't it?"
"If he died, who was Solomon?"
"Maybe a replacement. Maybe a rewritten soul. Maybe the timeline splintered. Or maybe…" she twirled her hair, "maybe that guy—Byakugetsu-sensei—is Solomon."
"What?" everyone said at once.
White Yin tilted her head. "He's still alive, though…"
Kuroka's ears perked.
There it was.
If Solomon had died… and the present still existed…
Then either the past had repaired itself, or someone *