The first thing Alexander Meridian felt was cold.
Not the numbing cold of winter, but the deep, existential cold that came from understanding—with absolute certainty—that he had died. The memory was crystal clear: the hospital bed, the steady beep of monitors flatlined, the morphine haze that did nothing to dull the certainty of his last breath.
And then... light. Consciousness. Pain.
Alexander—no, that wasn't right. His name had been different. James. James something. The surname slipped away like water through fingers, already fading into the fog of a life that belonged to someone else.
He opened his eyes.
The ceiling above him was ornate, decorated with geometric patterns that his new memories identified as protective wards—not merely decorative, but functional. Sacred geometry intertwined with alchemical symbols, all rendered in gold leaf and something else, something that seemed to shimmer with barely-visible light.
High-grade mithril dust mixed with powdered salamander scales, his borrowed memories supplied. Father's work. He always said protection should be beautiful.
Father.
The word triggered a cascade of memories that weren't his own, yet were somehow now intrinsically his. Marcus and Elaine Meridian, his parents in this life. Brilliant magical researchers from an old bloodline that had carefully kept itself hidden from both the supernatural mainstream and the mundane world. The Meridians didn't serve devils, didn't bow to angels, didn't align with any faction. They simply... researched. Learned. Pushed the boundaries of what magic could do.
Served, a dark part of his mind corrected. Past tense.
Alexander—because that was his name now, had always been his name in this life—sat up slowly. His body was thirteen years old, gangly with recent growth, but moving felt wrong. The neural pathways didn't match what his mind expected. He clenched and unclenched his fist, watching the tendons move beneath pale skin, trying to reconcile the disconnect between expected sensation and reality.
The room was a study in controlled chaos. Bookshelves lined every wall, packed with leather-bound grimoires and modern notebooks alike. A massive oak desk dominated one corner, its surface covered in half-finished projects: ritual circles drawn on parchment, crystalline matrices suspended in silver frames, complicated diagrams that would have looked at home in either a theoretical physics textbook or a medieval monastery.
But it was the smell that finally broke through his analytical detachment.
Smoke. Old smoke, the kind that had soaked into wood and fabric and wouldn't leave for years. The acrid bite of burned paper, leather, and something organic he didn't want to identify.
The fire had been three days ago. His parents—Alexander's parents—had been in the estate's main ritual chamber, attempting something ambitious. Something that had gone catastrophically wrong.
The original Alexander had been at school. One of the few concessions Marcus and Elaine made to normalcy was ensuring their son had basic mundane education, if only to understand the world they were hiding from. He'd come home to find fire crews and police, to smoke billowing from the west wing, to hushed conversations about a gas leak and tragic accidents.
The authorities had bought it. The wards woven into the estate's very foundations ensured that mundane investigators would find exactly what they expected to find: a terrible accident, nothing more. Even the bodies, reduced to ash by magical fire that burned far hotter than any natural flame, told no tales.
And then, alone in his room that night, the original Alexander had done something stupid. Grief-stricken and desperate, he'd attempted to use one of his father's more dangerous grimoires—The Testament of Carnamagos—to try to reach beyond the veil, to contact his parents' spirits.
The backlash had killed him instantly.
Which was when James-who-was had woken up in this body, in this world, with two sets of memories warring for dominance in his skull.
It took Alexander—he'd committed to the name now, letting James fade like a half-remembered dream—nearly an hour to piece together the full picture. But when he did, the realization hit him like a physical blow:
He was in the world of High School DXD.
Not some vague world with similar elements. Not an alternate reality that merely resembled it. The actual, literal world of an ecchi harem anime he'd watched years ago (a lifetime ago) in moments of boredom and hormonal teenage interest.
A world where gods were real, where devils and angels waged eternal cold war, where dragons could shatter continents, and where the balance of power between factions could shift based on the whims of beings so far beyond human comprehension that they might as well be forces of nature.
And he—Alexander Meridian, thirteen years old, orphaned, alone—was just human.
No Sacred Gear had manifested in the original Alexander. No special bloodline granted supernatural powers. The Meridians were human mages, powerful by human standards certainly, but still fundamentally limited by mortal constraints. In a world where gods walked and Ultimate-Class devils could reshape reality, even the most skilled human magician was barely more than an insect.
Alexander stood, moving to the window. The estate sprawled before him, forty acres of carefully warded land in the countryside outside of Bath. His new memories provided the details: the eastern gardens where his mother had cultivated reagents, the northern workshop where his father had forged enchanted items, the western wing—now a burned-out shell—where the main ritual chamber had been.
And beyond the estate's walls, a world full of beings who could kill him with a thought.
"I need to survive," Alexander said aloud, his voice—higher pitched than he expected, still carrying the remnants of puberty—sounding too loud in the silent room. "I need to get stronger. Strong enough that I'm not just another casualty when the plot starts moving."
He turned back to the room, eyes scanning the accumulated research of two lifetimes of magical study. His parents' work, their insights, their failures and successes all documented in meticulous detail.
A plan began to form.
He had five years. Five years before Issei Hyoudou would be reincarnated as a devil, before the events of canon would begin. Five years before this world became exponentially more dangerous for anyone without the power to defend themselves.
Five years to master magic, to push it beyond what anyone had thought possible, to become strong enough to not just survive, but thrive in a world of gods and monsters.
Alexander Meridian walked to his father's desk, pulled out a blank journal, and on the first page wrote in careful script:
Day 1: Understanding the Foundation
Magic in this world operates on principles that are simultaneously more flexible and more rigid than the systems I remember from fiction. It's not merely about willpower or energy reserves—though both matter. It's about understanding the fundamental architecture of reality and learning how to manipulate it.
The various factions approach this differently:
Devils use geometric magic circles that essentially "program" reality through mathematical precision. Angels operate on faith and conceptual purity, enforcing their will through divine authority. Youkai and other beings channel natural forces through instinct and racial inheritance.
But humans... humans learn. We systematize. We experiment. We take concepts from other traditions and synthesize something new.
That will be my advantage.
He paused, pen hovering over paper, then added:
First priority: Map and secure the estate. Inventory all resources. Begin systematic study of parents' research with focus on foundational theory.
Second priority: Develop personal magical capabilities. I need basic competency before attempting anything advanced.
Third priority: Long-term planning. Understand the timeline. Identify key events and opportunities. Prepare.
The goal isn't just survival. It's mastery.
Alexander closed the journal and stood, feeling the weight of two lives, two sets of knowledge, two different worlds pressing down on his shoulders.
Then he got to work.