Rain had not yet begun to fall, but the air in Kuoh Park was thick with the scent of ozone and impending death.
To the untrained eye, the universe was a place of chaotic, beautiful free will. People lived, loved, made choices, and died.
But to a being who understood the fundamental ontology of existence, the universe was nothing more than a rigid, suffocatingly boring equation. Cause and effect.
Action and reaction.
A perfectly deterministic machine left behind by a dead God.
Sitting on a wrought-iron bench at the edge of the park, draped in the shadows of the creeping twilight, sat Lucian. He did not possess the demonic aura of the Underworld, nor the holy light of Heaven.
He possessed. .
. nothing.
He was the Apeiron—the primordial void, the infinite boundless emptiness that existed before the first concept of 'light' was ever spoken into existence. And right now, the Void was severely underwhelmed.
His crimson eyes, swirling with the depth of a dying galaxy, focused on the pathetic scene unfolding by the park fountain.
Issei Hyoudou, a hormonal teenager completely oblivious to the strings attached to his limbs, was bleeding out on the cobblestone. Hovering above him, bathed in the grotesque glow of purple light, was the Fallen Angel, Raynare.
"Would you die for me?" she had asked, a line so agonizingly cliché that Lucian nearly sighed.
Issei was choking on his own blood, clutching the massive hole in his stomach. He was the possessor of the Boosted Gear, the Red Dragon Emperor.
In the grand tapestry of this world's fate, this was the moment Rias Gremory was supposed to descend, a crimson-haired savior, to resurrect this pawn and bind him to her chessboard.
It was the canon. The script.
The predetermined law of the DxD reality.
How utterly mundane, Lucian thought, crossing his legs. A universe governed by supposed deities and devils, yet they all act like predictable clockwork toys.
Let us introduce a variable, shall we? Let us see how the board reacts when a piece refuses to be played.
As the crimson magic circle of the Gremory clan began to materialize on the ground beneath Issei's dying body, Lucian finally moved.
He didn't cast a spell. He didn't summon an aura.
He simply exerted his will over the concept of space.
Instantly, the world. .
. stopped.
Not frozen in time, but suffocated. The rustling leaves halted.
The dripping blood from Issei's wound hung suspended mid-air. The magical hum of Rias's summoning circle flickered and choked, like a candle starved of oxygen.
Raynare, who had been laughing a moment ago, suddenly felt a pressure so immense, so incomprehensibly vast, that her very soul screamed in primal terror. Her black wings seized up.
She couldn't breathe. She couldn't blink.
Slowly, the shadows in the park seemed to detach themselves from the trees, slithering across the ground and coalesiting into the figure of a young man walking toward her.
Lucian's footsteps made no sound. He bypassed the laws of physics entirely.
He stopped right in front of the paralyzed Fallen Angel. He didn't look at Issei; the boy was irrelevant, a mere mathematical error on the pavement.
Lucian looked up at Raynare, his eyes stripping away her flesh, her magic, and her ego, perceiving the very core of her existence.
"You think you are enacting your own will, little bird," Lucian's voice echoed, not in the air, but directly inside the deepest recesses of her mind. It was a voice that sounded like the inevitable end of all things.
"You think killing this boy is your choice. You are merely a slave to the causality of a dead Creator.
"
Tears of absolute dread spilled from Raynare's frozen eyes. She was a being of light and dark, but standing before Lucian, she realized she was staring into an abyss that could swallow Heaven and Hell without a burp.
"I am going to break this world's illusion of control," Lucian whispered, raising a single, pale finger. He gently tapped the center of Raynare's forehead.
"Starting with your mind. "
He didn't use mind-control magic. That was a parlor trick for low-class devils.
Lucian simply reached into the conceptual framework of her memories and rewrote the truth.
Snap.
The suffocating pressure vanished. The world slammed back into motion.
Raynare gasped, dropping to her knees on the cobblestone, clutching her head. She looked at Issei's bleeding body, then looked around frantically.
Her mind was reeling, rewritten. In her newly forged reality, she hadn't killed Issei to steal his Sacred Gear; she had merely struck him to awaken it, acting under the subtle, terrifying orders of a master she couldn't quite remember, but knew she must fear above all else.
Behind her, the Gremory magic circle violently shattered.
Instead of Rias Gremory smoothly emerging to claim her new pawn, the spatial distortion Lucian had caused violently expelled the crimson-haired heiress and her Queen, Akeno, a dozen meters away. They tumbled onto the grass, coughing and disoriented.
Rias quickly stood up, demonic power flaring around her as she prepared to face the Fallen Angel. But she froze.
The magical signature she felt in the air. .
. it wasn't angelic.
It wasn't demonic. It wasn't draconic.
It felt like staring into an empty grave. A profound, hollow nothingness that made the demonic blood in her veins run ice-cold.
It was a philosophical impossibility—a presence defined entirely by its absence.
Rias's eyes darted around the park, her usual confident demeanor completely shattered. "What.
. .
what was that?" she breathed, her hands trembling. "Akeno, did you feel that?"
Akeno, usually composed and teasing, was pale, gripping her chest. "Yes, Buchou.
It felt like. .
. like the world just died for a second.
"
Raynare, still clutching her head, spread her black wings and fled into the night sky, completely ignoring the devils. Issei lay bleeding, the script violently derailed.
Standing beneath the shadow of an old oak tree, perfectly concealed from their primitive senses, Lucian watched the Heiress of the Gremory clan tremble. A cruel, beautifully dark smile curved upon his lips.
Check.
The game had begun. And the devils hadn't even realized they were playing against the board itself.
(Author's Note: The Eclipse has begun. The King of the Void has made his first move, and the arrogant devils of Kuoh have no idea what is coming for them.
If you want to see Lucian absolutely dismantle Rias's pride, break Akeno's mental barriers, and rewrite the DxD universe, drop those Power Stones and let me hear your thoughts in the comments! Next chapter, Lucian enrolls in Kuoh Academy, and the hierarchy shatters. )