Haemorrhage

I took a step into a desolate city. The only things I could see were ruins and ashes. It's as if the world had chosen to end here.

I continued to walk through the ruined city, what remained of the Kuoh that I loved, that had been my second home, my escape. The smell, the combined smell of burnt flesh and blood permeated through the air.

My gaze went on a half-destroyed clock that miraculously still worked. It had only been less than ten minutes. Less than ten minutes and hundreds of thousands had lost their lives.

'Now is not the moment,' I reminded myself. I would allow myself to be sad about it later. I didn't have the luxury of crying now. I had to, no, I needed to know that the members of my family were alright.

I took another step and reappeared in Kuoh Academy discarding concepts like distances, concepts like impossibility.

My eyes travelled through all of the remnants of the Kuoh Academy. I saw corpses with the Kuoh female uniform and my heart dropped before I realized that they didn't look like the members of my peerage.

I know I shouldn't but I felt relief. The only people who were present today in Kuoh Academy were Sona, me and our peerages. I loved Sona and I was sorry that she lost them. I didn't want to imagine how she would react if she learned it, how broken and sad she would be.

Many called her cold and they would be right to call her such but her coldness didn't mean she was apathetic. Sona cared almost as much as a Gremory.

Her sister was the Leviathan. If she had asked or wished for it, she would have been able to reincarnate people whose potential equalled if not surpassed the potential of the members of my peerage.

Well, all of this depended on the fact that she was still alive. I hoped that was the case. I really did.

I was finally able to locate Kiba who seemed to be with Koneko and Gasper. Koneko wasn't moving. She wasn't moving. I could feel the abyss inside of me leak out but it didn't matter. She still wasn't moving!

I took another step and reappeared at their side startling Gasper and Kiba. Shadows rushed at me from Gasper until they realized who I was and fizzled to nothing before touching my skin.

I kneeled down at her side and put one of my hands on her chest. She was breathing. She was moving.

"I healed her," I heard Yuto say at my side.

Even with everything, I felt my lips twitch upward in a small smile "You were not able to do this before."

"I wasn't but I listened to one of the advice of my king. I am not the Isaiah of back then. I'm not human anymore. It was time to act as what I am now."

"Thank you Yuto."

"You don't need to do so. We're family, aren't we?" he told me.

"Of course.," I confirmed his words. I turned to look at the two of them. My knight looked worse than the last time I saw him.

He looked as if he had chosen to grapple a gigantic chainsaw and had won. Gasper looked the same as before if not a little more nervous with the way I could see his eyes flick everywhere around us as if trying to prepare for a hidden strike.

He wasn't supposed to feel like this. A child no older than fifteen shouldn't be fearing for their life and the lives of their loved ones.

"You said you healed her. What happened?" I asked softly to my knight.

"We were attacked by a god. He almost killed Koneko. He left an aspect of him to end us while he left to continue his slaughter. I showed the aspect of the god my disapproval at his presence here today," he answered.

"Did you make him suffer?" I asked him.

A savage grin bloomed on his face "Yes, I did."

I was sure that at that moment, my face mirrored his "Good job."

"I was able to make the barrier go down. Soon, we should be receiving some help from the underworld." The only important thing left was making sure that the others were able to come out unscathed.

From a tear of reality, she came both unchanged and so changed. Her dark hair flowed behind her head as if following an invisible breeze.

Her amethyst eyes shone with unfair knowledge. They looked like prisms, crystals into which someone could lose themselves for all of eternity.

"Hi Rias," she spoke. With the way, she said my name, it was as if she was uttering a divine commandment, worshipping a higher being.

"Hi, Akeno." The rift behind her closed and she came closer. She took a step but her feet didn't touch the ground as if if Gravity itself was being reversed, as if the world acknowledged that it wasn't worthy enough to touch her.

"You've changed," I told her.

"I did like you did." Her gaze went on the others and turned toward the horizon. I turned in the direction she was looking at but was unable to see even with my eyes what had grabbed her attention. A small smile bloomed on her face "Like we all did."

"It'll be better if we're all together when they come," I heard her whisper. As if acknowledging a secret command, four forms fell at our side on the blackened and ruined ground at our side.

My eyes took less than an instant to recognize the phenomenon that had just happened. Issei, Asia, Sona and her queen were now at my side.

The only one who seemed to be really untouched, not hurt was Asia but even then, a part of her clothes was burnt. Her skin looked redder in some places as if she had touched something too hot. There were also the facts that blood, too much for it to be her was staining her clothes and that she held in her hands a severe head, the severed head of Issei's mother. The worst thing, the telltale of things having really gone wrong was how different her eyes were. It's as if the innocence inside of them had been ripped out.

Her eyes widened at the sight of us. She crawled to the side of the Issei. I followed suit. Issei looked as if he had just come out of a war zone. One of his arms was missing. I could see holes through his skin. More than that, he felt cold and looked pale as if he had touched death. The ground under him had taken a frozen hue as if the frost clinging to his skin was propagating.

Even then with all of those things, what made me calmer than I should have been was the spark I could see in his heart. He was changed. I had changed him. Issei had fought against one of the divine presences that had come to Kuoh with Kagutsuchi and had won.

I could feel the usurped divinity in his soul mending him from the inside. His soul was also different apart from the divinity. It's as if more than me, someone or something else had modified his soul.

His soul felt more rugged, more angry, more dangerous. His soul felt like his sacred gear at a lower magnitude. I could trace with my eyes threads, no chains between the boosted gear and his soul as if they were linked even more.

One of Asia's hands lit up illuminating the world in the familiar and soothing glow of her sacred gear twilight healing. With it, she touched the skin of my pawn accelerating his healing.

I felt myself relax. Even though what happened was more than a tragedy, I had been lucky enough to keep all of the members of my peerage. Issei with time will heal. I was sure that With time, love and care, the traumatic experiences that were created here would be ones my family members would be able to recover from.

Sona hasn't been as lucky as me. Sure, Issei literally missed his right arm and looked as if Death had used him as a basketball but he looked at least kinda Okay.

It wasn't the case with the queen of Sona, Tusbaki. She had literally been bisected at the level of her hips. She missed everything under her stomach. Blood, crimson blood with garish guts and intestines lying on the ground.

I could literally see her insides. Even with our biology, she should have died a long time ago. I understood why when I saw the glow of magic coming from Sona's hands.

The blood of the reincarnated queen was still moving, pumping through her body when it shouldn't have been the case. It was known that The Sitri clan had dominion over water.

It was known and written in our history books that the Archdemon Sitri before choosing to enter an eternal slumber had chosen to help Peter the Great ascend to his throne and who in helping it keep it killed the father of Frey and Freya, the Norse god of the ocean Njord.

The books talk of a battle where rain covered all of the Earth, where the Oceans swallowed in his mouth thousands of mortals and immortals. A battle it was said that broke the barrier between worlds, continued through the different realms of the Yggdrasil and ended in Jotunheim with the Death of the Norse god.

Blood in itself was mostly water. It was logical I thought for members of Sona's clan to be able to control it. They descended from an Archdemon that fought a Norse sea god and won, overpowering him with his own Hydrokinesis.

"You have to fight Tsubaki, that's an order!" I heard Sona scream at her falling queen. Tears were falling from her eyes and I could also notice blood running from her nose.

Sona when it came to power was far from being the strongest even in our generation. What she had that truly made her special was her mind. Sona had used her demonic energy to stop the falling burning ash of Kagutsuchi all over Kuoh at the beginning of my fight with the god.

This was something with my memories I was surprised she was able to do. This was something expected to be exhausting and draining for someone like her who had demonic energy reserves that sat at the lower end of the high class.

She used her demonic energy after all of this to heal her queen, to make sure that her blood was still pumping through her brain and her heart so that she would not die was her overextending herself.

The demonic energy of a devil was more important than everything. We could survive anything as long as we had enough demonic energy. It was our lifeblood. The moment we hadn't enough we suffered from backlash, we became weak and we could even die.

If Sona continued like this, It was not a question of if she would die. She had already begun bleeding. I could see through my eye how dangerously low her demonic energy was. If she didn't stop, Sona would die.

Issei would be alright. 'Your family will be fine,' I reminded myself before I moved to the side of Sona who seemed to be ignoring the fact that she had been displaced through the space-time continuum.

I hadn't inherited the ability of my father allowing him to peer through time and have more than perfect control of the basic elements but I was still a devil and imagination was all I needed.

I didn't need to know how the body worked or what should or shouldn't be done. I only needed to believe. Demonic energy in itself and my power of destruction even more only wanted to corrupt, to destroy. It could be said that the power of destruction was naturally negative. "Creation can come from destruction" Olethros had told me.

What happened When you multiplied negative by negative? You obtained a reversal. I only needed imagination. I had watched a white-haired blue-eyed sorcerer come back from the gates of hell by applying the same concept.

The power of destruction rushed out of my body like a wave of dark crimson and like a shark plunged into the forms of Sona and Tsubaki.

I watched Sona's eyes widen. "Why?" she whispered like a broken doll before being swallowed by my power of destruction.

"President, what are you doing?!" I heard Asia scream in shock at my side.

I turned toward my bishop. Akeno had put a hand on one of her shoulders as if to calm her "Making sure that she doesn't lose all of her family," I answered.

My power of destruction fed itself. I would have probably been able to do much before if I had tried but it wouldn't have been so much easier than it was now. The encounter with the mother of the Endless had changed me.

I turned back toward where my power of destruction had swallowed Sona and her Queen. Seemingly satisfied after realizing its objectives, it faded out of reality leaving behind the pristine and whole forms of Sona and Tsubaki.

It's as if Time had been rewound and Tsubaki had never lost her lower body. The blood that was running from Sona's nose and that was indicating the fact that she was overusing her demonic energy had also disappeared.

The Sitri heiress' eyes widened in shock at the sight of the whole body of her queen. She placed one of her hands on the chest of her queen and closed her eyes for an instant before opening them back up. Disbelief and Euphory coloured her voice "She's alright, she's alright," she laughed even though it sounded like a mix between one and a sob.

She turned toward me. I would never know the next words she would say because it was at this moment that a door in the cosmos was opened and the horde of hells finally showed up with my brother leading them.