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In Wanda's voice - ' That Seems Fair.'
*****
Kokabiel's POV
I sat on the open terrace of Heaven, watching the world below continue its endless cycle. Mortals going about their lives—working, loving, fighting, dreaming—completely unaware of how close they stood to something far worse than annihilation.
Annihilation would be mercy. A quick, clean end.
What Shub-Niggurath brought was something infinitely worse. Corruption that spread like a disease. Eternal suffering as your world became part of her twisted domain, your very existence warped and reshaped into something unrecognizable. Your soul would scream forever, aware of what you'd become but unable to stop it.
I'd seen corrupted worlds before. The memories still haunted me.
Michael sat on my right, silent for a long while. The sunset painted his face in orange and gold, making him look younger somehow. More like the brother I remembered from millennia ago.
Finally, he spoke. "Brother, do you think we actually have a chance?" His voice was quiet, almost lost in the evening breeze. "Will we still be here together, to witness another sunset like this one?"
Before I could formulate a response, Azrael spoke from my left, leaning against the marble railing. "What's with all these pessimistic thoughts, Michael? You're supposed to be the eternal optimist among us. The one who always believes things will work out."
Michael sighed deeply, the sound carrying centuries of accumulated weight. "I was younger back then. I only saw the good in everything, believed things would always work out if we just tried hard enough and had faith. But now..."
He trailed off, staring at his hands. "Now I feel like I was foolish. Naïve."
I shook my head firmly. "That's not foolishness, brother. That's kindness. That's hope. You inherited Father's kindness better than any of us ever did. Better than I ever could."
"Kokabiel's right," Azrael added, his usual sardonic tone absent. "Your optimism isn't weakness, Michael. It's what kept us together when everything else fell apart."
Michael smiled faintly. "You're both being unusually sentimental today."
"Blame the circumstances," I said dryly.
Azrael suddenly asked a question I could tell he'd been holding back. "Do you think Father is still watching over us somewhere, Kokabiel? Wherever he ended up after... after he passed. Is he happy that we've moved on? Our actions since then—all the reforms, the changes we've made, the way we've reshaped Heaven—would he approve?"
I considered the question carefully. Yahweh had been many things—creator, father, god. Complex didn't begin to cover it.
"I honestly don't know, brother," I finally said. "Perhaps he would approve of some things and disapprove of others. But there's no point pondering over it now. He's gone. We're here. All we can do is fulfill our duties and try to live good lives. Make choices we can live with."
I paused. "That's what all parents want, isn't it? For their children to be happy. To surpass them."
"Do you think we've surpassed him?" Michael asked.
"In some ways, yes. In others, we're still children stumbling in the dark."
Michael's expression shifted to something more immediate, more concerned. "You're certain it's tomorrow? No possibility of delay?"
I nodded slowly, feeling the weight of certainty in my bones. "Yes. I can sense it clearly now. The shift in fate, the way reality itself is preparing for impact. The stench of corruption seeping through the dimensional barriers like poison gas. It's time."
"How strong is that thing really?" Azrael asked. "I know the stories from the records you shared with us. But you've actually encountered Outer Gods before."
"She's old, Azrael. Older than most universes. She existed before the concept of time became sequential. Her power isn't just raw strength, it's fundamental reality warping. She doesn't fight by destroying you. She corrupts what you are until you're something else entirely. Not to mention her endless army of spawns."
"Can you actually win?" Michael's voice was barely a whisper.
"I don't know. Honestly? It could go either way. Best case scenario, I drive her back to wherever she came from. Worst case..." I didn't finish.
We fell into heavy silence, watching the sun sink lower toward the horizon. The sky painted itself in brilliant oranges and deep reds, colors that would've inspired mortal poets for generations.
Then energetic footsteps echoed across the marble terrace, rapid and cheerful, completely at odds with our somber mood. "What are you guys doing out here all by yourselves? Are you brooding together again?"
Michael and I smiled wryly while Azrael groaned audibly. "We are not brooding, sister. It's called having a serious conversation. A manly discussion about important matters."
Gabriel completely ignored his protest and plopped down directly beside me, physically shoving Michael to the side to make room. His eye twitched visibly at the casual disrespect.
"It's the same thing!" Gabriel declared with absolute confidence. "Brother Kokabiel's sulky, brooding nature has clearly spread to all of you like a disease. You're infecting the others!"
I protested weakly. "Hey! I'm not sulky! I'm contemplative. There's a difference."
"No there isn't."
"There absolutely is—"
Gabriel grabbed my arm and leaned against my shoulder, cutting off my argument with that sweet smile that promised terrible consequences if I continued. "Yes, you are sulky. Don't make me bring out my journal."
We all fell silent immediately.
Gabriel, despite her angelic appearance and genuinely sweet nature, possessed a mischievous streak that could rival Loki on his best day. She'd been recording every single embarrassing moment for all of us in her secret journal for millennia. Every stupid thing we'd said, every awkward situation, every moment of weakness.
And she absolutely was not above using it for blackmail when circumstances called for it.
Michael had learned that lesson the hard way when he'd tried to skip one of her tea parties last century. She'd threatened to read excerpts at the next formal gathering with other pantheons. He'd never missed a tea party since.
Gabriel's playful expression faded into something more serious. Her grip on my arm tightened slightly. "Brother, you're leaving tomorrow morning, aren't you?"
I nodded, not trusting my voice for a moment. "Yes. Early, before dawn."
She hummed softly but didn't say anything else. Just stared ahead at the darkening sky, watching the first stars begin to appear.
I patted her head gently like I'd always done since we were younger, since the early days when she'd follow me around asking endless questions about everything. "Don't worry. I'll come back. No matter how long it takes, no matter how far I have to go, no matter what I have to endure. I will always come back home to you all."
She looked up at me, and I saw moisture gathering in her eyes. "Promise? You're not just saying it to make me feel better?"
"I promise, Gabriel. When have I ever broken a promise to you?"
"Never," she admitted quietly. "You never have."
Raphael's amused voice came from the doorway behind us. "So this is where everyone disappeared to. I've been looking everywhere. Are you having some kind of secret meeting without me?"
Michael chuckled, the tension breaking slightly. "Nothing like that, sister. Just spending some quality time together before Kokabiel leaves tomorrow."
He didn't elaborate further. He didn't need to. Everyone understood the unspoken reality, the very real possibility that I might not return soon. Or possibly not return at all, depending on how the battle went and what Shub-Niggurath was truly capable of.
But nobody wanted to say that part out loud. Speaking it might make it real.
Raphael walked over and settled down on my other side, forcing Azrael to move. "How are you feeling? Nervous? Ready?"
"Both. Neither. I don't know anymore."
"That's honest at least." She studied my face carefully. "You look tired."
"I am tired. This whole situation is exhausting."
Gabriel suddenly spoke up. "Remember when we were younger? Before the war, before everything got complicated?"
"When Father was still alive," Michael added softly.
"We used to sit out here all the time," Gabriel continued, a small smile on her face. "You'd tell us stories about the different worlds, the strange beings that exist across dimensions. We thought you were making half of it up."
"I was making half of it up," I admitted. "The real stories were often too disturbing for children."
"We weren't children," Azrael protested. "You are younger than us."
"I am mentally older and more mature." I replied ina smug tone that always irritated him.
"Screw you." Azrael mumbled.
Raphael laughed. "You're not older than us, you know. You can be considered a child in that regard. A few thousand years isn't that significant in the grand scheme."
"It feels significant sometimes."
We sat there together as the last light faded from the sky, stars beginning to fill the darkness above. Heaven's artificial sky was beautiful in its own way, even if it wasn't real.
"Tell us something," Gabriel said suddenly. "Something real. About what you're going to face."
I hesitated. "Are you sure you want to know?"
"We deserve to know what you're walking into."
I took a breath. "Shub-Niggurath is one of the oldest Outer Gods in existence. She predates most creation myths. Her entire being is corruption personified—she doesn't just destroy, she transforms. Takes what exists and reshapes it into something else. Something twisted and evil."
"How do you fight something like that?" Michael asked.
"Very carefully. The goal isn't to kill her. I'm not even sure she can be killed in any meaningful sense. The goal is to drive her back, make the cost of staying higher than the benefit of conquering our world."
"That's not very reassuring," Azrael muttered.
"It's not meant to be. This is going to be the hardest fight of my existence."
Gabriel hugged my arm tighter. "But you'll win. You have to win."
"I'll do everything in my power to come back to you all."
Grayfia's voice came from behind us. "Kokabiel-sama, I apologize for the interruption, but there are some final administrative matters that require your attention before tomorrow."
I sighed and stood up, gently dislodging Gabriel. "Duty calls, I suppose."
"Don't stay up too late working," Raphael said, giving me a meaningful look. "You need rest before tomorrow."
"I'll rest when I'm dead."
"That's not funny," Gabriel said seriously.
"It wasn't meant to be."
Michael stood as well. "Come on, Gabriel. Let's give Kokabiel some space to handle business. We can continue this later."
Gabriel reluctantly let go of my arm. "Promise you'll come say goodbye before you leave?"
"Of course. I wouldn't leave without seeing you all first."
They filed back inside slowly, leaving me alone with Grayfia on the terrace.
She handed me a data crystal. "The final reports from all departments. Everything is in order. Heaven can function autonomously for several centuries if necessary."
"Let's hope it doesn't come to that."
"Let's hope." She paused. "Kokabiel-sama, may I speak freely?"
"Always."
"Come back alive. They need you. We all do."
I looked at her carefully. "I'll do my best, Grayfia. That's all I can promise."
"Then that will have to be enough." She bowed slightly. "I'll continue handling affairs in your absence. You can count on me."
"I know I can. You've never let me down."
After she left, I stood alone on the terrace for a long moment, looking up at the artificial stars.
Tomorrow, everything would change.
One way or another.
****
Far across the infinite void, in the spaces between worlds where reality grew thin and unstable like worn fabric, an overwhelming force of primordial darkness moved with terrible, inexorable purpose toward the DxD world.
Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young, traversed the emptiness between dimensions with disturbing speed for a being of her incomprehensible mass.
Her true form defied any coherent description that mortal language could provide. An enormous, constantly writhing mass of black corruption that seemed to exist simultaneously in more dimensions than any mind could safely process without immediate insanity.
Countless black tentacles extruded from her central mass, each one the size of solar systems, dripping with a substance that wasn't quite liquid and wasn't quite solid. Where drops of this corruption fell into the void, new dimensions spontaneously formed and immediately collapsed into screaming chaos.
Slime-dripping mouths opened and closed randomly across her entire surface, each one speaking in tongues that predated the invention of language itself. Some mouths screamed. Others laughed. Some whispered secrets that would drive gods mad.
Short, writhing goat legs—hundreds of them, thousands perhaps—kicked uselessly at the void as she propelled herself forward through means that violated every known law of physics.
Small creatures were constantly being birthed from her body, expelled from those terrible mouths in an endless stream.
Some were immediately consumed back into the miasmatic form before they could even understand they'd been born. Others escaped, fleeing into the void to begin their own monstrous existences in whatever unfortunate dimensions they stumbled into.
Her spawn surrounded her in a massive cloud of nightmares. Hundreds of thousands of them, each one screeching and hissing in a cacophony that shattered lesser dimensions just from the acoustic trauma. Each spawn was powerful enough to destroy entire pantheons single-handedly.
She turned her countless eyes scattered across her writhing form in no discernible pattern—toward three specific spawn that traveled closest to her massive bulk.
Ithaqua, the Wind-Walker. Zhar, the Twin Obscenity. Lloigor, the thing that should not be named.
Her children with Hastur, the King in Yellow.
All she felt looking at them was crushing disappointment.
"You three are my offspring with Hastur," her voice resonated across multiple planes of existence simultaneously, causing several nearby dimensions to develop sentient tumors.
"Children of two Outer Gods, born with the potential for greatness. Yet you fall so pathetically far behind your brother Nug before I had to devour him for his failures. What a complete waste of my essence."
Her tone carried absolutely no maternal warmth whatsoever. Outer Gods fundamentally did not possess familial love the way lesser beings understood such concepts unlike Hastur who possessed some semblance of it. To her, even her own children were merely tools, weapons to spread corruption across existence, expendable pawns in an infinite game.
She had devoured Nug after his failure against Kokabiel without a second thought, without even the slightest hesitation. That single action showed exactly how much she cared for her spawn.
Her other children—Yeb and Noth, Byatis, Yig, and countless more whose true names would drive mortals to immediate madness just from hearing them—watched in absolute, terrified silence. None dared speak. None dared even move unnecessarily.
They all knew their so-called mother would not care for their opinions, their objections, or their very existence beyond what use they could provide.
Umbrazoth—or as he stubbornly preferred to be called now, Kokabiel—was not someone who would ever agree to their mother's demands for union. They all knew this fundamental truth. He had rejected his nature as an Outer God, contaminated himself with mortal concepts like "family" and "love" and "duty."
It made him weak in their mother's eyes. But they weren't so sure. Umbrazoth had destroyed Nug, after all. Shattered him so thoroughly that even the concept of Nug's existence had been partially erased before he was devoured by their mother.
Throughout countless eons spanning the rise and fall of entire multiverses, the birth and heat death of infinite universes, there had been very few direct conflicts between Outer Gods. The Outer Gods generally avoided direct confrontation with each other.
The reason was simple: the result of such clashes was catastrophic for everyone involved. The collateral damage alone could erase entire realities. Whole clusters of universes could be destroyed just from the shockwaves.
And now they were about to witness such a confrontation again.
Shub-Niggurath observed with her infinite eyes, each one seeing different aspects of reality simultaneously, as the boundary of the Omniverse came within her perception.
The barrier that separated DxD's local multiverse cluster from the greater void beyond, a membrane of condensed reality that kept the chaos out and the order in.
It was beautiful in its own way. Delicate. Fragile.
She extended dozens of her largest tentacles toward it almost casually, like a child reaching for a soap bubble.
Crack! Sizzle!
The barrier immediately began to corrode and break under the overwhelming corruption radiating from her mere presence. The sound it made was terrible—reality itself screaming as it was violated and torn.
She made a sound that might have been laughter if laughter could cause dimensional rifts. A cackling, gurgling noise that caused nearby realities to spontaneously develop sentient cancers that immediately began consuming their host dimensions.
"It has been quite some time since I last entered this particular Omniverse cluster," she said to no one in particular, her countless mouths speaking in perfect unison.
"The last cycle of destruction was disappointingly ineffective. Those pathetic, insignificant life forms still persist in their meaningless existence, like bacteria that refuse to die. No matter. Once I obtain Umbrazoth's essence and force him to breed with me, birth a child from our union, the resulting offspring will end everything. A perfect synthesis of his death and my corruption."
Her spawn chittered excitedly at the prospect.
SMASH!
The barrier ripped apart violently, tearing like wet paper, as her countless spawn roared in terrible anticipation and poured through the gap like a flood of living nightmares given form. Millions of them. Billions perhaps.
Their mere presence in this Omniverse began immediately devouring and corroding the fundamental universal balance itself. The laws of physics started rewriting themselves incorrectly. Causality began flowing backwards in localized pockets. Entropy accelerated to impossible speeds.
Several nearby worlds were instantly consumed before their populations even registered the attack—their histories, their cultures, their very existence erased and converted into more corruption that fed back into Shub-Niggurath's essence.
She watched with amusement as entire civilizations vanished. "Go, my children. Spread my presence across this entire Omniverse. Devour everything in your path. Consume all matter and energy. Destroy every spark of resistance until everything exists within my grasp. Make them understand true despair."
Her spawn screeched in acknowledgment and scattered in all directions like a plague.
Then she felt it. A specific presence that made all her mouths simultaneously twist into grotesque smiles.
"There you are, my reluctant mate."
The void suddenly became silent. Deathly, unnaturally, impossibly silent.
Even her spawn stopped their screeching.
Her countless spawn suddenly screeched in rage and confusion as they felt an enormous invisible force slam into them from seemingly nowhere. An invisible pressure that seized their forms and squeezed until they could not move even slightly, could barely even think.
A darkness blacker than the primordial void itself, blacker than the space between thoughts, began spreading around them like spilled ink in water.
This was not mere absence of light. This was not simple darkness.
This was a darkness that predated the very concept of light itself. A darkness that existed before the first stars were born, before the first photon ever traveled through space. This was the darkness from which all things came and to which all things would eventually return.
Wherever this absolute darkness touched, it overwrote reality itself at the most fundamental level. The laws of physics didn't just break, they were rewritten from scratch. Cause and effect became gentle suggestions rather than unbreakable rules. Time began flowing in directions that shouldn't exist.
At the center of this impossible, reality-denying darkness stood a small figure.
From this distance, it appeared roughly humanoid in shape. Two arms, two legs, a head.
But it was anything except human. It was a pitch black silhoutte of a man. Within his form, countless stars shone brilliantly in the dark. A duality of darkless and light.
With a simple, almost casual gesture, two massive wings unfurled from its back. Not the white feathered wings of angels. Not the bat wings of demons. These were wings composed entirely of pure darkness itself, darkness so absolute that it seemed to contain entire dying galaxies within their impossible depths. Stars being born and immediately dying. Black holes consuming themselves. The end of all things.
The figure's eyes, if they could even be properly called eyes, were spiraling vortexes that looked like entire galaxies being simultaneously born and dying in endless cycles. They held no fear, no anger, no hesitation, no doubt.
Only an absolute, inevitable, inescapable promise of death.
Shub-Niggurath writhed in what might have been pleasure, her countless mouths speaking in the old tongue—the language that existed before language was invented, the sounds that reality itself first made when it learned to vibrate. "You have accepted your fate then, Umbrazoth? Finally surrendered to inevitability? You have come to me willingly?"
The being did not immediately speak or move. It simply observed her with those incomprehensible galaxy eyes that saw past, present, and future simultaneously.
Then a voice emerged from everywhere and nowhere at once.
Not from a mouth, the figure had no visible mouth. The voice seemed to be an amalgamation of thousands upon thousands of different voices overlapping each other in perfect harmony, speaking in absolute unison. Male and female, young and old, living and dead, god and mortal.
One word. Simple. Final. Absolute.
"Begone."
BOOM!
A terrifying explosion of pure erasure tore through the vast emptiness of space. Pure conceptual erasure.
Space itself it was shattered even before the sound reached it, hurling backwards through time. Dimensions fractured like glass. Time shattered into fragments that tried desperately to reassemble themselves incorrectly.
Her spawn screeched and roared in confusion and terror before they were utterly erased from the fabric of reality itself.
He didn't kill them . Killing implied they had existed in the first place. They were removed from causality entirely, retroactively unmade. Every action they had ever taken was undone. Every world they had corrupted was restored as if they had never been there.
Even the strongest ones, the eldest spawn who could have challenged entire worlds and won, were simply deleted from existence like mistakes being erased from a page.
Shub-Niggurath screeched, unleashing a horrifying sound that destroyed countless distant civilizations just from the noise and psychic trauma of hearing it across dimensional barriers. Entire species went extinct from the sound alone. "UMBRAZOTH!"
The small silhouette began growing larger and larger, expanding at an exponential rate. Until it towered over even her massive, incomprehensible form. A titan made of living darkness with eyes like burning galaxies locked directly onto her central mass.
When it spoke again, the voice was somehow softer than before, almost gentle. Like a parent correcting a misbehaving child.
"I prefer Kokabiel."
Shub-Niggurath's rage intensified, her corruption spreading wildly. "How dare you stand against your own kin, Umbrazoth! How dare you reject what you are! Even with your tainted origin, your contaminated and corrupted existence, you are still one of us! You are still an Outer God whether you accept it or not! This is your nature!"
Kokabiel's expression, if the vague outline of a face in the darkness could be said to have an expression, remained completely neutral. Unmoved.
"I am nothing like you, Black Goat. My existence is fundamentally beyond your understanding. I have become something you cannot comprehend."
Shub-Niggurath laughed, but it was a chilling sound that would send shivers down the spine of any being capable of experiencing fear. "A newborn pup like you thinks he can face me? I have existed since before the first universe drew its first breath! I was ancient when your father Hastur was young! Even he could not defeat me in our clashes! What makes you think you can succeed where he failed?"
Kokabiel showed no visible emotion. His voice remained eerily calm, carrying the weight of absolute certainty. "You forget something important about what I am, what I truly represent. I am not gentle like Hastur . I do not create. I do not dream reality into being. I am something else entirely."
"And what is that?" she mocked.
"I am the inevitable end. The eternal night that comes for everything eventually. Even you."
Shub-Niggurath suddenly lunged forward, her massive form moving with impossible speed that violated every law of motion. "Then I shall devour your precious darkness! Consume you whole and birth our child from your absorbed essence! You cannot escape destiny, Umbrazoth!"
Her tentacles reached out, each one capable of crushing entire planets into dust. Her countless mouths opened wide, revealing gullets that led to impossible places where the laws of physics had forgotten how to function properly.
Kokabiel didn't move from his position.
He simply raised one hand, slowly, deliberately.
The darkness around him condensed, compressed, became denser and denser until it seemed to swallow even the concept of existence itself. Reality bent around the concentration of power.
"No," he said quietly, his voice carrying across the void. "This ends here."
The surroundings around them started to twist and disappear. Shub Niggurath watched in surprise as the reality in front of them changed, until it revealed itself truly.
They were no longer within the Omniverse. This was Kokabiel's realm. A world beyond the stars.
Shub Niggurath screeched. "Impressive. But you are foolish to think your dimension can contain a being like me."
Kokabiel made a motion that seemed like cracking his neck. "We shall see."
The battle between Outer Gods was about to begin.
And reality itself was not prepared for what was coming.