War came days later.
Heaven's "transport" was as subtle as a cathedral dropped in the middle of a street.
A heavily warded convoy of exorcists and angels moved through the outskirts of Kuoh under cover of night. The air around them wore a faint golden sheen; holy sigils floated like translucent feathers, deflecting stray spirits and curious familiars.
At its head walked Griselda, robes pristine despite the dust, bearing herself with a quiet authority that made even devils glancing at her talismans feel an instinctual respect. Chains of light wrapped around several reinforced cases within the central carriage—Excalibur fragments, sealed and bound with as many redundancies as Heaven could fit into one operation.
Rias' peerage walked alongside.
Rias herself in front, crimson aura held tight but ready, long hair swaying with each step. Akeno at her side, purple-black lightning occasionally crackling across her fingertips before she smoothed it away. Issei trudged along with every muscle tense, wearing a tactical jacket he complained about but hadn't taken off. Koneko moved near the front as well, taller than before, curves now unmistakable, her touki a calm, dense weight around her. Kiba paced on the other side, hand resting lightly on his sword's hilt, eyes scanning shadows.
On the other flank, Sona's peerage formed a disciplined line. Sona floated just above the ground, standing on a demonic platform etched with complex formation sigils. Tsubaki's Mirror Alice hovered at her side, reflective surfaces rippling. Saji's Absorption Lines coiled around his arms like wary snakes, occasionally flicking as if tasting the air.
Xenovia and Irina marched near the center, holy swords at the ready. Xenovia's expression was hard, jaw clenched, Durandal sealed for now but heavy on her back. Irina's twin tails swayed with each step, her face a mixture of forced cheer and underlying tension.
Ren was nowhere to be seen.
But his Saint Kingdom spread thin over the area, invisible and intangible, a second sky layered atop Kuoh's. In some distant shrine, Amaterasu felt a subtle pressure and narrowed her eyes. In the Underworld, Sirzechs and Serafall's monitoring spells fuzzed for a heartbeat, then sharpened again, adjusted to the presence of a foreign "domain."
Above the convoy, on a rooftop some distance away, teleportation circles flickered into existence, inscribed in Fallen light and twisted runes.
Kokabiel watched the procession with a grin that showed far too many teeth.
"Walking holy swords through devil territory," he drawled, wings rustling in the night. "Heaven really has gotten soft."
Beside him, Valper hunched over a case of his own—cursed Excalibur hybrids, blades stitched together by blasphemous experiments, each one humming with warped holy power.
Around them waited a squad of devils bearing Old Satan insignia. Their auras stank of pride and bitterness, magic coiled and hungry, eyes shadowed by fanatical devotion to dead names. Katerea, Shalba, and Creuserey weren't present in person—but these were their creatures, their test pieces, their message.
"Shall we begin, Kokabiel?" Valper hissed, excitement making his hands shake.
Kokabiel's grin widened. "Let's show this little 'cultivation hub' what real power looks like."
He raised a hand.
Spears of light rained down.
...
The ambush slammed into the convoy like a hammer into glass.
Holy spears tore through the night, shattering Griselda's default barriers. Shields flared and broke. Excalibur cases skidded, chains ringing as they strained against sudden impacts. Old Satan devils dropped from the sky with spells already primed, snarls twisting their faces.
Valper's cursed hybrid blades screamed as he activated them, warped holy-demonic energy erupting outward in jagged waves.
The road exploded.
Stone ruptured. Pavement flew in chunks. Dust and rubble billowed up, mingling with the glow of clashing energies: gold, purple, crimson, and the harsh white of Fallen light.
Kokabiel descended through the chaos with slow, arrogant grace, black wings spreading wide against the torn sky. He drank in the sight of devils staggering, exorcists diving, angels bracing, and laughed.
"Rias Gremory. Sona Sitri. Little church dogs. Welcome."
Rias floated up through the smoke, dress torn at the hem, crimson aura surging. The Throne of Ruin loomed for a heartbeat behind her Soul Palace like a translucent crown—then she pushed it down, keeping it close but controlled. Her gaze was steady.
At her side, Akeno rose, lightning crackling. The second Soul Palace's influence was obvious. Her aura was deeper, her presence heavier; the Heavenbreaker Circuit pattern glowed faintly along her arms.
Sona stood on a layered platform of demonic power, glasses glinting, formation sigils spinning around her like overlapping magic circles. Lines of demonic script wove between them, feeding data into her mind. Behind her, Tsubaki steadied the Mirror Alice, its surface rippling as it began to record trajectories and energies.
Xenovia and Irina raised their swords, blades catching the scattered light. Saji's lines shot out, anchoring themselves into broken stone and enemy spells both. Koneko's touki flared, a pale, dense aura wrapping her form as she dug her heels into the cracked road.
"Kokabiel," Xenovia spat. Durandal throbbed against its seal, recognizing an enemy of old.
The Fallen Cadre spread his arms. "You think this… cultivation trick will save you?" he laughed, voice carrying. "I'll show you how weak it really is."
No one flinched.
That annoyed him.
"Why aren't you trembling?" he snapped, eyes narrowing.
Akeno's smile sharpened, electricity humming between her fingers. "Because we have a teacher who would be very disappointed if we embarrassed ourselves," she said sweetly. "It's troublesome when someone looks at you and sees wasted potential."
"And because we've seen gods," Issei added, tightening his gauntlet. "Compared to Loki, you're just a loud middle manager with wings."
Kokabiel's eye twitched. "…What did you say?"
Before he could roar back, Valper stepped forward, shoving his case toward the front.
"Observe!" Valper cried. "My masterpiece—the cursed Excalibur hybrids! Each blade fused with demonic blood and unholy experiments! This is the true evolution of holy swords!"
The hybrids ignited.
Wave after wave of warped energy tore outward, the twisted holy-demonic power shredding the air. The blasts slammed toward the front lines, rippling with conceptual damage meant to eat away at devil bodies and angel light alike.
In the original timeline, this would have been devastating.
Now?
Rias' Soul Palace rotated.
The Throne of Ruin manifested more fully behind her, a towering structure of crimson stone and collapsing stars. Its domain wasn't destruction for its own sake; it was erasure of "unacceptable things" as defined by her will. The warped energy of Valper's blades hit the invisible field around her—and crumbled.
Holy-demonic hybrid power tried to assert its concept: "unnatural evolution, blasphemous transcendence."
And the concept holding it together unraveled. The energy broke apart into inert light, washing over her like a harmless breeze.
On the other flank, Sona's formations flared. Circles layered atop circles, Myriad Epoch loops hidden under demonic script, catching and redirecting the blasts. What would have torn through ranks instead bent, streams of force diverted into prepared channels.
"Formation Alpha," Sona snapped, voice crisp. "Rooks, Knights—push forward. Bishops, stabilize defense. Saji—drain them."
"Yes, President!" Saji's lines lashed out, his Absorption Lines connecting to enemy spells like parasitic vines. Energy rushed down the cords, slamming into his Soul Palace. Myriad Origin Scripture caught the flood, compressing the excess and feeding it into his core instead of letting it burn him.
In the melee, Xenovia and Kiba moved as if they'd trained for this exact moment.
Xenovia drew Durandal, the holy sword's aura exploding outward in a pillar of light. Each swing cleaved through Old Satan shields and flesh alike, overkill power contained only by her desperate control. Kiba's Sword Intent—Heavy Earth Severing—redirected paths, carving channels in the battlefield. Enemies who thought they were dodging into safety instead found themselves stepping directly into Xenovia's range.
Irina's Excalibur shimmered with wavering faith, her heart buckling under the weight of Heaven's secrets… but Anima spark, seeded by Myriad Epoch True Self Canon, pushed her to define her own meaning of "holy" rather than collapse.
Above them all, Akeno dominated the sky.
Her second Soul Palace thrummed, chaos-refined energy reinforcing every bolt she called.
She spread Heavenbreaker Circuit wide, superimposing a vast invisible diagram over the battlefield. Lines of lightning turned every stray attack into a potential input. Enemy spells struck her field and were rerouted; Old Satan bombardments crashed down, only to be caught, run through Myriad Origin loops, and hurled back at twice their original force.
Akeno moved like a storm that had learned choreography. Each flash of lightning was precise, each thunderclap aimed. Anima glowed bright between her palaces, guiding her choices. She wasn't hiding behind sadism anymore—she was enjoying herself openly, laughter occasionally bubbling into the thunder.
Far above, Kokabiel's grin was beginning to crack.
"…Ridiculous," he snarled. "You brats think this changes anything? You rely on a foreign power, an alien system, and call it strength."
He raised his hand again.
Spears of light formed—more than before, denser, each one humming with the authority of a Fallen Governor-General. The sky darkened under the sheer volume of conjured radiance.
"Let me enlighten you," Kokabiel said, voice dropping into something like a sermon. "Your god is dead."
The words rolled across the battlefield, heavy with malicious satisfaction.
Griselda flinched, eyes briefly closing, old prayers trembling. Irina's eyes went wide, the phrase stabbing through layers of childhood devotion. Xenovia's grip on Durandal tightened until her knuckles whitened. Even some of the younger exorcists faltered, breaths catching as the foundation of their faith was dragged into the open.
The blow landed.
But not as deeply as Kokabiel had expected.
Issei's jaw clenched. "I already knew that," he said, voice rough but steady. "And I decided what I'm fighting for anyway."
In his soul, Ddraig rumbled approval. [Old god, new god—it doesn't matter, partner. What matters is what you choose.]
Akeno's lightning flared around her, tracing the lines of Heavenbreaker Circuit like glowing veins.
"Too late," she whispered, more to herself than to Kokabiel. "I already chose my god."
Her gaze flicked, just once, across the battlefield—to where she knew Ren was watching from beyond sight.
Kokabiel scowled.
He could feel them now: other eyes. Maou, Seraphs, Dragon Kings, Shinto gods. Threads of attention tugged at the edges of the battle—scrying circles in the Underworld, mirrors in Heaven, talismans in hidden shrines, even the gaze of a dragon lounging on a certain cultivator's couch.
"Damn voyeurs," Kokabiel spat. "Fine. If the world wants a show…"
He reached into his cloak.
The Ophis snakes stirred.
They writhed around his arm, shadows coiled into serpents, each one a condensed piece of the Ouroboros Dragon's infinite power. Ophis had gifted them long ago as tools for her objective: break the balance, start a war, tear down the era she found noisy. The Old Satan leaders had bitten theirs already, rising to powers rivaling their ancestors. Kokabiel had held his in reserve.
Now, his eyes shone with exultant madness.
"Let's see how far your cultivation protects you," he hissed, "when I stop caring about my life."
He lifted the snakes to his lips.
They sank into his flesh, biting deep. Their forms dissolved, sliding under his skin.
Power exploded.
Fallen light twisted, warping into something deeper, darker, stranger. The air screamed as Kokabiel's aura shot upward, ripping through Ultimate-class, smashing past Maou-class, clawing at a realm that smelled like Super Devil and then some.
The sky above Kuoh cracked, not physically but conceptually; layers of spacetime shivered, reality's fabric groaning under pressure it hadn't agreed to bear.
Rias staggered, teeth gritted under the weight of that presence. Sona's formations groaned, circles flickering. Xenovia and Irina dropped to one knee, forced down by sheer force. Even Akeno's second Soul Palace trembled, lightning momentarily misfiring before she reasserted control.
In distant watching rooms and realms:
Sirzechs rose from his chair, eyes burning crimson, power flaring around him before he forced it back down.
Michael's wings unfurled wide, hand tightening on his sword's hilt.
Azazel swore explosively, coat half on as if he'd been ready to jump in from the start.
Amaterasu straightened on her seat of light, sunfire pooling in her eyes.
In Ren's manor, Tiamat—currently in human form, legs curled under her on the couch—snapped upright, golden eyes narrowing in sharp interest.
They all tensed as if to move.
Ren beat them to it.
...
He stepped.
Just one step.
Space and causality bent to make room.
The battlefield froze for a heartbeat as Saint Kingdom unfolded in full, dropping over the area like a second sky. It was not a simple barrier. It was an assertion: this space obeys my rules first.
The chaotic dragon pressure Kokabiel was vomiting into the world crashed into an even deeper, stranger authority. Nine Fate Palaces hummed behind Ren's soul, each one a completed "world" built atop the last, their combined resonance anchoring an Ancient Saint foundation that had long since stepped beyond the limits of this universe's definitions.
Ren appeared in front of Kokabiel as casually as if he'd walked out of his front door.
"Hey," he said. "You're being noisy."
Kokabiel's eyes bulged. "You—"
Ren's hand closed around his throat.
No elaborate formation. No grand shout of technique. One moment Kokabiel was a roaring, nearly-unbound monster whose strength had just spiked beyond sanity; the next, he was a bug pinned between two fingers.
The Ophis snakes inside him writhed desperately, trying to flood more power into his circuits, to force his body to respond. Ren's Ancient Ming Bloodline stirred in response, its nature tuned to devour and corrupt foreign energies into fuel. The infinite-dragon-tainted power wasn't holy, demonic, or fallen—it was pure, stubborn existence.
Perfect food.
Ren's blood drank deep.
The alien energy that had been rampaging through Kokabiel's channels was seized, stripped, and broken down faster than any snake could replenish it. Ophis' mark was devoured, not insultingly, but efficiently, as if Ren's body was simply doing what it had been designed to do.
"You're playing with toys you don't understand," Ren said calmly, watching Kokabiel struggle. "That's dangerous."
Kokabiel choked, clawing at Ren's wrist with hands that no longer had the strength to move him. "You… you…!"
Ren's Immortal Soul Bone lit up inside him, white-gold light only he could see. Complexity—knotty tangles of energies, laws, memories—collapsed into clean diagrams in his mind. He saw the routes the snakes had used, the circuits they'd carved through Kokabiel's essence, the faint threads connecting them back to the one who had made them and to those who'd bitten from the same batch.
He smiled slightly.
"Found you," he murmured.
Then, still holding Kokabiel aloft with one hand, he did something very simple.
He turned Kokabiel into a broadcast.
Saint Kingdom flared, expanding not outward but inward, touching the layer of reality where information became images and memories could be projected. Kokabiel's recollections surged under Ren's guidance—not as raw, disjointed flashes, but as curated scenes, edited on the fly by Immortal Soul Bone to strip away static and highlight what mattered.
Across all realms, people saw.
Devils in the Underworld looked up from dinners, meetings, and late-night paperwork to see an image hanging in the air—a war room wreathed in smoke and sigils. Katerea Leviathan, eyes burning, slammed her fist into a table as she ranted about Ren erasing Loki, about the current Maou "acting like trained pets." Shalba sneered beside her, words dripping with contempt for devils who accepted peace. Creuserey smirked, voice low and venomous as he spoke of "cleansing" the Underworld.
Angels in Heaven saw Valper's experiments: silhouettes twisted in restraints, the glint in his eyes when he talked about "holy evolution," fragments of Excalibur melted and re-forged in forbidden ways.
Humans with only the faintest spiritual sense saw static and felt uneasy, minds rejecting the overload.
In Kuoh, the illusion of the war room materialized beside Kokabiel's dangling body, as if someone had dragged a distant chamber into being with sheer contempt.
Katerea stiffened, eyes widening. "That thing dares—"
Ren's fingers tightened slightly around Kokabiel's neck.
"Quiet," he said.
The word rippled not just through air, but through law.
Kokabiel spasmed. His Fallen power shattered like glass dropped on stone. Ren's Petrifying Immortal Light flared through his grip, sealing the Governor-General's essence, freezing his power in place, rendering him utterly helpless—a bug pinned not just physically but metaphysically.
Kokabiel finally understood.
He hadn't just lost.
He had never been playing the same game.
But Ren wasn't done.
He turned his gaze to the illusion of Katerea, Shalba, and Creuserey in their war room.
"You three," he said, voice mild. "You've been making a lot of noise."
They froze.
The war room projection—supposed to be one-way—saw him. The connection that had felt like a passive viewing window suddenly twisted into a two-way tunnel.
Ren reached into the void.
Not the empty space between stars, but the gap between "here" and "there," the place his cultivation paths let him touch. His hand slipped along the connection Ophis' snakes had left coiled around the Old Satan faction's leaders—lines of borrowed infinity wrapped around their souls.
Threads tugged back: Katerea's water curses steeped in Leviathan authority, Shalba's mutated Beelzebub control over experimental demons, Creuserey's Asmodeus-linked sorceries that warped desire into weapon.
He grabbed.
Reality shrieked.
In the Khaos Brigade war room, walls imploded as an invisible force yanked three of its leaders bodily from their protected chamber. Barriers shattered like paper. Curses flared and died. Followers screamed as gravity and direction inverted for a heartbeat.
From the perspective of every watching realm, three figures were ripped, flailing, out of a smoky projection and into the sky above Kuoh.
Katerea Leviathan: voluptuous, brown-haired, regal and furious, glasses cracked, dress torn.
Shalba Beelzebub: pale with shock, hair disheveled, demonic markings flaring.
Creuserey Asmodeus: black-haired, teeth bared, magic raging like a storm held barely in check.
They landed—not on the ground, but in a suspended ring of Saint Kingdom, a circular platform hanging in the air. The world itself bent around it, rules skewed to keep them contained.
The battlefield fell silent.
Devils, angels, exorcists, and students alike stared.
Sirzechs' hand, halfway extended toward a teleportation circle, froze mid-air.
Michael whispered something that was nominally a prayer but mostly just "…what."
Azazel laughed once, a little hysterical, running a hand through his hair. "This guy," he muttered.
Ren dropped Kokabiel like an empty sack. The sealed Fallen hit the ground with a dull thud and didn't move, eyes rolled back, half-aware of nothing.
Then the cultivator turned his full attention to the three Old Satan leaders.
They attacked.
Of course they did.
Katerea unleashed a tidal wave of cursed water, dark and churning, trying to drown the edges of Saint Kingdom in Leviathan malice. Each drop carried compressed hatred of centuries.
Shalba tore open rifts, calling forth twisted experimental demons—mockeries of life, stitched from curses and stolen flesh. Beelzebub's authority had been warped in his hands into something like viral code; each demon carried a seed that could spawn more.
Creuserey gathered demonic power so dense the air around him distorted. He shaped it into compressed blasts, each one a spear of Asmodeus' self-indulgent destruction, layered with old sorcery the Underworld hadn't seen in generations.
Ren raised one finger.
He flicked.
The cursed tide stopped mid-crest. The wave split down the center, parting around him in a clean, unnatural line. Myriad Origin loops seized the water's kinetic and curse energy, rewrote flow and vector, and sent it crashing back into Katerea with twice the force.
Her hastily raised wards exploded. She coughed up thick, black blood as her own malice slammed into her body.
He flicked again.
The experimental demons imploded. Immortal Soul Bone had already deconstructed their structure on contact; their existence was too fragile to withstand direct denial from an Ancient Saint who had walked paths beyond their creator's comprehension. Shalba's control snapped like a thread. The backlash smashed into his nerves; his legs buckled, his body spasming.
A third flick.
Creuserey's compressed blast unraveled mid-flight, its formation stripped apart in an instant. Saint Kingdom inverted the polarity of impact; the recoil slammed into him instead, bones cracking audibly, his body folding.
The three hit the Saint Kingdom floor, crippled in the span of three casual gestures.
Ren walked closer.
His hands stayed loose at his sides. His expression was almost gentle, the way a man might look at stains he needed to scrub off a table.
The entire supernatural world watched.
"You three," he said softly, "are stubborn stains on this era."
Katerea trembled, hatred burning bright even through pain. "You… you dare—"
"I don't care who your ancestors were," Ren cut in, tone flat but not loud. "Leviathan, Beelzebub, Asmodeus, or some cat that climbed a tree. Status is decoration. It doesn't impress me."
Disdain sharpened his words; his calm pinned them in place.
His voice rolled across Saint Kingdom, across Kuoh, and through every projection still linked.
Ren's words hung in the air like a verdict.
"You're going to start another shift," he said. "Not the one you wanted—no glorious 'return of the old Satans'—but a different one. Your failure will force this era to move. The Maous, Heaven, Grigori, every little faction hiding in the shadows…"
His eyes swept slowly across the invisible watchers.
"…they can't pretend the game is the same anymore."
Somewhere behind him, Rias exhaled, heart pounding. Akeno's lightning settled around her like a cloak, eyes fixed on Ren's back. Sona adjusted her glasses, hiding the trembling in her fingers behind the shine of the lenses. Xenovia, Irina, Asia, Koneko, Issei, Kiba, Saji, Tsubaki—all of them stared at the man who had just dragged three era-defining monsters out of their fortress like misbehaving dogs.