Ren Ming's awareness dropped into the nascent inner world growing around the Grail.
Valerie's inner world was a cemetery.
Not a horror-movie one.
A quiet one.
Endless rows of gravestones stretched under a white, overcast sky. Each stone was etched with names she didn't recognize—names in forgotten scripts, fading languages, half-formed letters. Between them, flowers bloomed and withered and bloomed again, cycling through life far too fast, petals turning to dust and then rewinding back into buds.
The air was full of voices.
Murmurs overlapped in a constant low tide—last words, first cries, prayers, curses, laughter, sobbing. The dead, the living, souls somewhere in between. The Sephiroth Graal had been forcing those echoes through her since childhood, pushing the principles of life and death into her mind without asking.
She had tried to listen.
She had tried to help.
She was so tired.
Somewhere along the rows, Valerie had sat down with her back against a gravestone to "rest for a moment". Bare feet pressed into grass that never fully grew in, green always stuck halfway between sprout and rot.
She didn't remember when she closed her eyes.
She didn't know how long she'd been like that—half-asleep, half-drowned under the weight of a thousand borrowed memories.
So when she felt someone else approaching, she assumed it was just another fragment of another stranger.
"Hey," a warm, amused voice said.
"This is a depressing place for a girl your age to hang out."
Her eyes snapped open.
A man stood a few paces away, hands in his pockets, looking around at the endless graveyard with a faint, thoughtful frown.
He didn't look like a vampire.
He didn't look like a god.
He looked… normal. The kind of "normal" from half-forgotten dreams of the human world. Casual stance, calm weight, eyes older than his face had any right to be.
Valerie stared up at him, throat dry.
"…Who…?" she managed.
He smiled, easy and lopsided.
"Ren Ming," he said. "Your friend Gasper calls me a lot of things. Teacher. Monster. Guy who keeps breaking the world and putting it back together. You can pick whichever title you like later."
Gasper.
Her heart lurched.
Her hand flew to her chest, fingers curling in the fabric of her dress.
"Gasper… is…" Her voice broke.
"With me," Ren said without missing a beat. "Alive. Grown up. Still bad at dealing with crowds. Getting better anyway."
The voices around them rustled, as if reacting to his presence. The white sky brightened by half a shade.
Ren swept his gaze slowly across the gravestones, then back to her.
"You," he said mildly, "are in over your head."
Valerie let out a hoarse, cracked laugh.
"You noticed," she whispered.
Ren walked over and sat down beside her, leaving a respectful stretch of grass between them. Hands still in his pockets, posture loose, like this was a park bench instead of a graveyard built out of her soul.
All around them, the voices flowed on, still chattering about births and deaths and everything in between.
Valerie stared at her hands.
"I didn't want this," she said. "The Grail. The blood. The crown. Any of it."
"I know," Ren said quietly.
"I tried to help," she went on, words spilling faster now that they'd started. "When they asked for more power, when they said it was for the future of our people, I… I thought if I did as they said, fewer people would die. But…"
Her fingers clenched.
"They never stopped," she whispered. "They kept… taking. And every time I tried to refuse, they said—"
Her voice twisted, the echo of old adults slipping out of her throat.
"'This is your duty. You're special. You were born to be used.'"
Silence fell between them for a moment.
The cemetery wind moved down the rows, carrying the whispers of strangers and the faint rustle of flowers being born and unmade.
Ren let the quiet settled for an moment.
"Your father," he said at last, "should never have been allowed near you. Your brother deserves worse than what he got."
Valerie flinched.
"You know… everything."
"Enough," Ren said. "Enough that I'm very glad I erased him outside."
"Erased…" she repeated faintly.
He glanced at her, smile turning crooked.
"Don't worry," he said. "I'm not here to erase you."
He raised one hand.
Light streaked from his fingertip, sketching in the air above them. Lines appeared, thin and precise, forming the outline of a sphere hovering over the graveyard—a small, flickering world, half-transparent.
Her Soul Palace.
Or what was trying to become one.
Right now it looked like a candle flame trapped inside a storm, its walls warping under the constant pressure of the Grail.
Ren's fingers moved in tiny, sure adjustments, leaving trails of Dao essence he couldn't read but instinctively understood. Each stroke made the sphere's outline firmer, edges smoothing, structure settling.
"You've been forced to look at the principle of life," he said. "To touch the way souls are made, the way they pass on. That's something most gods only ever get a glimpse of, and only under controlled conditions."
He looked down at her.
"You've been doing it under duress. Alone."
Valerie opened her mouth, then closed it. Her throat worked.
"You… make it sound…" she tried.
He shrugged.
"Impressive?" he offered. "It is. Dumb of the people around you, but impressive for you."
The words hit something inside her she hadn't realized was starving.
The sketch of the Soul Palace pulsed in response, as if protesting its own fragility.
Ren tapped the glowing outline.
"I'm going to fix the connection," he said. "Not take the Grail away. Just… make it yours."
Valerie stared at him.
"Mine…?" she repeated, barely audible. "My… mine…?"
"Radical concept, I know." His tone turned dry. "A Sacred Gear that answers to its host instead of everyone else's orders."
He gestured around them at the graveyard.
"All of this?" he said. "This is knowledge. Weight. You're drowning in it because they made you drink straight from the source with no cup."
He tapped his chest with two fingers.
"I've already stuck a filter in between you and the fundamentals outside," he said. "Now we put walls up in here. Doors. Rules. We teach the traffic where it's allowed to go and where it isn't."
Valerie's gaze dropped to the grass between her knees.
"…Why?" she asked.
Ren blinked once.
"Why… what?"
"Why are you doing this?" she whispered. "You're powerful. You've already killed— you could do anything with my power. The Grail could let you… change things. Fix things. Break them. People would worship you for it."
Her voice shook.
"Why are you using all that… on me?"
Ren watched her in silence for a beat.
Then he smiled.
"Because you're cute," he said.
She stared at him.
"…What?"
"And because you didn't deserve any of this," he continued, voice softening around the edges. "Because I like breaking the chains people put on kids to make themselves feel big."
He leaned back on his hands, looking up at the white sky.
"Because," he added, "I have a very soft spot for stubborn girls who keep walking even when the world dumps a cemetery on their shoulders."
Valerie's eyes blurred.
"That's… a terrible reason," she whispered.
"Maybe," he said. "But it's mine. And I'm very good at following through on my whims."
He straightened a little and reached out.
Not grabbing.
Just offering his hand, palm up, between them.
"You can keep sleeping in this graveyard forever," he said quietly, "and I won't stop you. I don't drag people out of their cages just to feel better about myself."
He nodded up toward the rows of stones.
"But if you're even a little tired of watching lives from the sidelines," he went on, "come with me. I'll give you somewhere to stand that isn't a tomb."
The voices surged around them—pleas, prayers, last words, first cries—trying to drown the quiet in her own chest.
For once, they didn't feel like knives.
They sounded far away. Like waves breaking against a distant shore.
Valerie's hand trembled in her lap.
"I…" she began.
The Soul Palace flickered overhead, unstable. The Grail tried to tighten its grip, to pull her attention back into the endless flow.
Ren didn't hurry her.
He simply waited, hand still there, palm open.
Valerie took a breath that shook all the way down.
Then, very slowly, she placed her hand in his.
Warmth ran up her arm.
Light snapped from their joined hands like a struck spark, threads racing up into the twilight sky. They wrapped around the nascent Soul Palace, encircling it in bands of Dao essence and gentler Grail-light. Walls sealed. Leaks closed. A ceiling that wasn't just featureless white began to form—a sky with depth.
The graveyard didn't disappear.
But it shifted.
The ocean of headstones drew back from the center, row after row unfolding outward, leaving a circular clearing around the spot where they sat. The soil there darkened, turned rich and deep.
A crack appeared at the center.
A tiny green shoot pushed through.
Valerie held her breath as the sapling grew, leaves unfurling like hesitant hands. Roots sank into the ground of her experiences, winding around buried regrets and old pain. Its slender trunk reached upward toward the forming sky.
Ren watched the growth with professional satisfaction.
"Good," he murmured. "Primordial Tree can grow later. For now, one world is enough."
The Soul Palace above them brightened, stabilizing. In its depths, a single, faint star glowed—her Anima, her True Self, no longer completely buried under the weight of other people's voices.
Ren squeezed her hand once—light, reassuring—and then let go.
"When you wake up," he said, "you're going to feel different. Lighter. Don't let anyone tell you that means you owe them."
He looked straight into her eyes.
"You don't owe your father," he said. "You don't owe your brother. You don't owe the Tepes."
His voice gentled again, the edge smoothing into warmth.
"If you feel like owing anyone," he added, "owe me by living the way you want. That's it."
Valerie laughed, a small, broken sound that turned wet at the edges.
"…You really are unfair," she whispered.
His lips quirked.
"I get that a lot."
The cemetery wind shifted.
The white sky cracked like thin porcelain, light bleeding through the fractures. Gravestones blurred at the edges, pulled away into the distance as the Soul Palace's walls firmed.
Valerie's world faded.
...
Back in the ritual chamber, light throbbed around Valerie's body—and then dimmed.
The chains of spell-light binding her snapped, one after another, dissolving into motes that drifted upward and burned out. The crimson-gold magic circle carved into the stone floor groaned, lines twisting, sigils reconfiguring from a cage to a stabilizing array.
Valerie swayed where she stood at the array's center.
Ren stepped forward in the physical world without ceremony, one arm sliding behind her back, the other scooping under her knees. He lifted her out of the collapsing circle with easy strength, cradling her against his chest as the last of the vampire ritual shattered.
Her eyelashes trembled.
"Mm…"
"Easy," he murmured, the same calm tone he'd used inside her mind. "Take your time. You've been on standby for a while."
Her eyes opened.
For the first time in she didn't know how long, the world came into focus without a dozen ghostly afterimages layered over it. No diagrams of life and death drew themselves over people's faces. No numbers flickered in the corners of her vision.
Just a room.
Soft light. The smell of ash and incense. The lingering ozone of broken spells.
And his face.
Calm. Warm. Faintly amused.
"You're real," she breathed.
"Most days," he said.
Her gaze drifted past his shoulder—and caught on a familiar presence.
"V-Valerie!"
The voice cracked.
She turned her head.
A tall boy stood a step away, arms outstretched and frozen in mid-reach. The Gasper in front of her was broader in the shoulders, taller by far than the childhood friend in her memories. His hair was longer, his clothes different, his aura deeper.
But his eyes—red and violet, wide and wet—were the same.
"…Gasper?" she whispered.
Emotion hit him like a physical blow.
Tears spilled over at once.
"Valerie!" he choked.
He lunged forward on instinct—then flinched, stopping short, horror flashing across his face as old punishments slammed into his memory. Circles. Chains. Shouted orders to stay away from the altar.
Ren's hand pressed lightly between his shoulder blades.
"Go on," he said. "She's not glass."
The gentle push broke the last of Gasper's hesitation.
He stumbled the last step and fell into her arms.
Valerie's fingers curled into the fabric of his coat, clutching at solid warmth instead of cold stone. Years of pain and fear cracked open in her chest.
Sobs ripped out of her, raw and messy and utterly un-royal.
Gasper clung back just as desperately, shoulders shaking.
"I'm sorry," he babbled. "I'm so sorry I left, I tried to come back, I— they said— I didn't know—"
"Idiot," she gasped between tears, burying her face in his shoulder. "You were dying. I wanted you to live. I—"
Ren stepped back, giving them space.
Behind them, Rias quietly wiped at one eye, expression caught between relief and the last embers of fury. Asia sniffled openly, hands pressed together, healing light around her fingers flickering in rhythm with her emotions. Akeno's smile twisted, equal parts fondness and the sharp edge of a woman who would happily electrocute anyone who tried to hurt a girl like this again.
Ren let the reunion stretch.
Let Valerie cry out the years she'd spent alone in a chamber, chained to a Grail and a throne she'd never asked for. Let Gasper pour out guilt and promises into the shoulder of the girl who'd helped him escape while she stayed behind to suffer.
Tears soaked into coats.
The light of the broken ritual slowly faded from the stones.
When the sobs finally tapered into ragged hiccups, Ren cleared his throat lightly.
"Sorry to cut the drama short," he said, tone dry but not unkind, "but we still have a political mess to mop up. Valerie."
She lifted her head from Gasper's shoulder.
Her eyes were swollen and red, but the emptiness that had once eaten at them was gone. In its place was a fragile, newly uncovered clarity.
"…Yes?" she whispered.
"I'm taking you out of here," Ren said. "You can come back later if you choose to, but this castle? This chamber? This faction? None of them get to hold you hostage anymore."
He met her gaze steadily.
"You're going to live with me and my lot for a while," he continued. "Rest. Learn how to use the Grail without it eating you. Decide what you want."
Valerie stared at him, lips parting.
"I… I'm a Tepes," she said weakly. "They'll… need someone to lead. Father, he—"
"Will be dealt with," Ren said pleasantly.
The casual tone made it somehow more terrifying.
"And there are plenty of vampires," he added, "who haven't spent the last few years turning their own children into batteries. Carmilla can manage succession. You don't have to sacrifice yourself on the altar of their guilt."
Her fingers tightened in Gasper's coat.
"…Can… I really… just… leave?" she asked.
"You can," Ren said. "And you will."
His smile flashed, lazy and predatory.
"If someone disagrees, they can discuss it with my fist."
Koneko, standing near the back, couldn't quite hide the way her lips twitched. Akeno actually laughed, the sound sharp and bright in the aftermath of tears.
Valerie looked at Gasper.
He looked back, eyes still wet but steady, something strong and quiet in the way he held her.
"Come with us," he said hoarsely. "My… my new home, it's warm. Everyone's weird, but they're kind. You don't have to be alone anymore."
Something soft unfurled in her chest, fragile as the new sapling in her Soul Palace.
She turned back to Ren.
"…You're very unfair," she whispered.
His grin turned slow and lazy.
"I know."
Her throat worked.
"…Then… please," she said, voice trembling but firm. "Take me away from here."
Ren's smile answered before his words did.
...
They didn't walk out of the Tepes castle.
They left it.
One moment, Valerie still smelled bloodstone and stale incense, still felt cold altar stone under bare feet, still heard the last echoes of tortured chanting in the walls.
The next, the world inverted.
Space folded with a soundless twist, Ren's Dao reaching out and telling distance it didn't matter.
They emerged into moonlight.
Cool air washed over them, clean and sharp after the suffocating ritual chamber. Valerie blinked against the sudden open sky and realized she was standing in Queen Carmilla's courtyard—still wrapped in Gasper's arms, leaning against Ren's steady presence like a second pillar.
Above the Carmilla palace, the lingering projections of Marius's sins still shimmered faintly in the sky, translucent scenes of cruelty and arrogance dissolving into night. Vampires filled the courtyard—nobles in dark finery, armored guards, attendants holding half-forgotten torches in slack hands.
All eyes turned toward them.
Queen Carmilla, tall and elegant in a dress that managed to be regal even stained by the stress of war, stared.
Beside her, Elmenhilde clutched her skirt, red eyes sharpening as they swung from the fading sky-projections to the very-much-living dhampir girl in front of her.
"Valerie," Carmilla breathed.
Her voice, normally cool and composed, cracked on the name.
Valerie flinched, shoulders hunching on instinct, years of conditioned wariness making her braced for anger, accusation, commands.
Ren's hand on the small of her back pressed lightly, grounding her.
"Marius is gone," he said, tone conversational.
His words rippled through the courtyard like a thrown stone.
"Every collaborator in that chamber as well," he continued. "What's left of Tepes leadership is currently sitting in their palace wondering why their pet monster stopped sending them power."
A few Carmilla vampires made small, strangled sounds at "pet monster".
Ren rolled his shoulders once, as if loosening a kink.
"Let's fix that," he said.
He didn't ask for permission.
His Dao flared.
Across the realm, in the gaudy heart of the Tepes capital, King Tepes sat on his throne, advisors buzzing around him like anxious flies. Even as the last of Marius's projection faded from their air, they were already talking over one another.
"Obvious forgery."
"Carmilla propaganda."
"Some outsider trying to destabilize our glorious rule."
Power flickered in their hands as they debated exactly how much more of Valerie they could squeeze.
The space above Carmilla's courtyard shivered.
Reality yawned open like a mouth.
A heartbeat later, the entire throne—King, advisors, a section of marble floor—dropped out of thin air and into existence over Carmilla's courtyard.
They didn't fall.
Ren's law caught them, suspending the block upside-down in midair like a very ugly, very expensive chandelier. Dust and loose stones trickled off the edges, raining down harmlessly before formations caught and dissolved them.
Vampires screamed.
Guards scrambled, weapons half-raised, unsure whether to aim at the floating block or the man standing under it.
King Tepes—pale, proud, eyes bloodshot from years of self-importance and too little sleep—twisted in his seat. Magic flared around him as he tried to reassert control of the situation through sheer arrogance.
"What is the meaning of this?!" he roared. "Who dares—"
He saw Ren standing below.
His words strangled in his throat.
"You," he spat, trying for regal disdain and landing squarely on terrified. "The human—"
"It's cultivator," Ren corrected, sounding bored. "King Tepes. Fourth of your name. Father of the girl you turned into a tool, partner in your son's crimes, general embarrassment to your species."
Murmurs raced through the gathered vampires.
"Father…?"
"Tool…?"
"Crimes…?"
Ren lifted one hand.
This time, he didn't even have to dig.
King Tepes's guilt sat on the surface of his soul like grease on water—thick, foul, easy to skim.
Ren lightly brushed that surface with his Dao.
Images exploded into the sky above the courtyard.
King Tepes giving signed orders to keep Valerie sedated and plugged into the Grail, his signature neat and unwavering on documents that casually ruined his daughter's life.
King Tepes approving the use of her power to enhance soldiers, barely looking up as reports detailed side effects, casualties, overdrawn lifespans.
King Tepes dismissing concerned reports about her deteriorating state as "acceptable collateral" and "the natural price of glory".
The vampires in the courtyard stared up at the projected scenes, faces draining of color.
Some of the Tepes soldiers present visibly flinched, shame twitching across their expressions. Others looked sick, having perhaps suspected but never seen.
The Carmilla nobles' eyes went cold.
Carmilla herself stared, jaw tightening, knuckles whitening around the armrest of her chair.
Beside her, Elmenhilde's hands shook where she clutched her skirt.
"Elmenhilde," Carmilla said quietly, eyes never leaving the sky. "Remember this when we rebuild. We will not become this."
Elmenhilde swallowed hard.
"Yes, my Queen," she said, voice barely steady.
Above them, King Tepes struggled against invisible bonds, frothing.
"You dare show such things—! That girl is mine! That power is—"
"Shut up," Ren said.
He snapped his fingers.
Sound died in the King's throat. His mouth moved, but no voice came out. His eyes bulged, outrage and panic warring in them.
Ren looked up at him with a level, faintly disgusted expression.
"How delusional can you be?" he asked mildly.
Then he turned his head.
"Valerie."
She jumped at the sound of her name, then looked up.
Her father hung above her, bound on the throne that had sanctioned her torment. Around him, advisors who had nodded and rubber-stamped every atrocity.
Ren's gaze stayed on her, not on the man.
"Any last words you want to hear from him?" he asked gently. "Apologies, excuses, anything?"
Valerie's hands trembled.
For a heartbeat, she was a small girl again, sitting in a corner of a cold throne room while her father discussed war over her head, eyes skimming right past her unless the Grail flared.
Then another image overlaid that memory.
Gasper's broken body.
Her own repeated deaths and forced resurrections.
Marius's mad smile, the way he had treated her Longinus as his property.
The weight of all the lives channeled through her, the screams, the pleas.
She lifted her chin.
"No," she said softly.
Ren nodded once.
"Good enough," he said.
He turned back to King Tepes.
"Well," he said. "You heard the lady."
The Immortal Soul Bone along his spine thrummed.
He didn't raise his voice.
He didn't gather a grand spell.
He simply reached out and closed his hand.
King Tepes and every advisor on that floating block vanished.
No flare of light. No dramatic implosion. No screaming.
One moment they existed.
The next, they didn't.
The chunk of marble floor thumped as it settled gently back into the courtyard, now empty. Dust puffed up around its edges and drifted away on the night breeze.
A silence like a held breath fell over the courtyard.
Ren dusted his palms together as if he'd just taken out the trash.
"There," he said. "Your civil war is now missing its worst actors."
He swept his gaze across the assembled vampires.
"You still have work to do," he went on. "Resentment. Displaced soldiers. Prejudice thick enough to cut. But at least the people at the top who thought children were tools are gone."
He turned to Carmilla.
"This is where you come in," he said. "Queen."
Carmilla stared at him like she was reassessing the entire hierarchy of the world.
"You removed kings and lords like one swats flies," she said slowly.
"Hey, as flies, they started buzzing too loud," Ren said. "I just noticed."
Somewhere in the crowd, a vampire let out a hysterical half-laugh, half-sob. It spread in weak ripples, relief and shock mixing into something brittle.
Elmenhilde stepped forward, gathering what was left of her composure, red eyes blazing despite the fear.
"What do you want from us?" she demanded. "You did all this—why? What price do you ask? Our allegiance? Our blood? That girl—"
Her gaze darted to Valerie, then to Gasper clinging to her side.
"—Gasper—"
Ren lifted a hand, palm outward.
"Easy," he said. "Breathe."
His voice cut cleanly through the tension.
"I'm not here to annex you or demand tribute," he continued, tone lightening by half a shade. "I want something very simple."
He raised one finger.
"One: you stop treating half-bloods like trash," he said. "Dhampirs, mixed lines—they're people, not tools."
A few Carmilla vampires shifted, uncomfortable, remembering their own faction's prejudices.
"Two," Ren went on, "you work with the alliance instead of wallowing in your own drama. The world is messy enough without vampire pride making it worse."
He lifted a third finger.
"Three: you let Valerie choose her life without trying to shove a crown on her head as your guilt offering."
Carmilla's lips quirked, despite herself.
"You speak as if it is all so easy," she said wryly.
"It's not," Ren said. "But it's necessary."
His gaze sharpened, pinning her.
"And you?" he added. "You're competent. You cared enough to send envoys, to seek Gasper's power in exchange for peace instead of more slaughter. That means there's something to build on."
Elmenhilde's cheeks colored, remembering her earlier arrogant behavior in Kuoh compared to what she was seeing now.
"You are… extremely arrogant," she muttered.
Ren grinned.
"People keep telling me that," he said. "I'm starting to feel targeted."
A few more laughs escaped the crowd, thinner but less hysterical than before. Even Carmilla's mouth softened for a heartbeat.
Ren let the atmosphere lighten just enough before he stepped closer to the queen and her noble.
"Relax," he said, voice lowering, warmer. "I'm not your king. I'm not your god. I'm just the guy who took out your trash."
His eyes slid to Elmenhilde, amusement dancing there.
"If you really want to thank me," he added, "send good wine and don't cause trouble for Gasper and Valerie when they visit. And if you ever feel like talking in general, you know how to reach me."
Elmenhilde sputtered. "Wh-who said we— I—"
Ren chuckled.
"Thought so," he said.
He straightened.
"Alright," he said. "Cleanup's on you from here. I have a house full of women to get back to, and a newly freed girl who needs a place to breathe where no one is going to chain her to an altar again."
Carmilla inclined her head—slightly deeper than before.
"…Very well," she said. "We will honor this… favor."
Her gaze flicked to Valerie and Gasper, something like guilt and resolve mingling in it.
"And we will consider the future of our dhampirs and mixed-bloods more carefully," she added.
"Good," Ren said. "That's the kind of answer I like."
His smile turned a bit brighter, all the dangerous edges smoothing over into charm.
"Try not to miss me too much," he said lightly. "Elmenhilde, Carmilla—you both wear shock well, but I suspect you'll look even better once the dust settles."
Elmenhilde went pink all the way to the tips of her ears.
"Y-you…!"
Ren's laughter followed him as space twisted one more time.
...
Home smelled like tea, books, and triaged chaos.
The manor's lobby rippled.
The moment they appeared, half a dozen heads turned.
Ren didn't bother with a dramatic pause.
He smiled and spoke calmly, as if introducing someone at a small party instead of after decapitating a faction's leadership.
"Valerie Tepes," he said. "The dhampir you've all heard rumors about. Sephiroth Graal wielder. Gasper's childhood friend. Currently newly freed, somewhat fragile, and in need of aggressive spoiling."
Valerie made an undignified little sound at "spoiling", shoulders hunching.
Because Ren moved so quickly to save her, no one besides Gasper had really gotten a chance to talk to her. Here, in the soft lamplight of the manor, the tension of bloodstone halls replaced by warm wood and cushioned chairs, the others finally had space to breathe—and to approach.
Asia bounced forward first, hands clasped in front of her.
"Um— nice to meet you!" she said earnestly. "I'm Asia. If you feel even a little strange, please tell me, okay? I'll check your body and healing together with Ren."
Valerie blinked at her.
"You're… an angel?" she murmured.
Holy light shimmered around Asia's small frame—but it was intertwined with demonic power, and under it all, a deeper, smoother circulation of something stranger. Myriad Origin's loops hummed quietly in her Soul Palace, letting holy and demonic coexist without tearing her apart.
"A devil now," Asia said, smiling. "But I still have my Sacred Gear. And Ren's art, too."
Ravel stepped up next, posture composed, golden hair perfectly arranged, but her eyes bright with curiosity.
"Ravel Phenex," she said, inclining her head just enough to be polite without being stiff. "Welcome. Please don't hesitate to ask if you need help understanding Underworld procedures. Or if you'd like help avoiding them."
Valerie surprised herself with a tiny, choked laugh.
"Thank you," she whispered.
Rias approached last of the three, crimson hair a familiar color even to someone who'd only seen it in distorted reports and war broadcasts.
"Gremory Rias," she said. "But just Rias is fine here."
Her smile was soft, genuine.
"We've been concerned about you for a long time," she said. "I'm glad Ren moved when he did."
Valerie's throat tightened.
"T-thank you," she managed, fingers twisting in Gasper's sleeve.
Ren watched the way she carefully kept herself small, shoulders rounded as if she expected someone to scold her for existing in the middle of the room.
He took a step to her side.
"Valerie," he said quietly. "Look around."
She did.
Faces.
So many faces.
Rias, calm and steady. Asia, shining and sincere. Akeno, smiling a little too knowingly from the side, thunder humming under her skin. Koneko by the stairs, white ears flicking, gaze sharp but not hostile. Sona and Tsubaki in the study doorway; Sona's aura already calculating political fallout, Tsubaki's eyes cool and observant.
None of them looked at Valerie like she was a bomb.
No one in the room saw a tool, or a throne, or a Grail.
They looked at a girl who had been hurt and who wanted, simply, to live.
The pressure in Valerie's chest loosened.
Ren's voice cut through gently.
"You can stay here," he said. "As long as you want."
His tone made it sound like he was offering an afternoon in the shade, not rewriting the path of her life.
"No strings," he added. "No altars."
He lifted a hand and tapped the air lightly, where only she could feel the echo of her Soul Palace.
"If you want to learn," he said, "I'll teach you how to use the Grail without burning yourself. If you want to rest, there's a room with a bed that doesn't have chains anywhere near it."
His smile turned crooked, lighter.
"If you want to bake cookies and bully Gasper into trying on pretty clothes again, I can't stop you."
Gasper spluttered, face going red to the tips of his ears.
"Ren!"
Valerie's shoulders shook.
This time, when she laughed, there was more joy than hysteria in the sound.
"…You're really… unfair," she repeated, voice soft but clearer.
Ren's hand came up and he touched two fingers gently to her forehead.
Warmth sank through her skin, into her newly formed Soul Palace. The graveyard in that inner world shivered, the sapling at its center rustling with new leaves.
"Get used to it," he said with a small smile. "I'm not going anywhere."
He looked up, taking in the gathered women, the nervous vampire boy still glued to Valerie's side, the wary dhampir who'd finally been given a choice.
His relaxed grin spread.
"Alright," he said. "House meeting later about vampire politics. For now—Asia, could you and Rias help Valerie get settled? Show her where everything is."
He jerked his chin at Gasper.
"Gasper, you're on emotional-support duty," he added. "Try not to faint."
Gasper puffed up, offended.
"I—I won't faint!"
Koneko padded closer and tugged very lightly at Valerie's sleeve.
"…There's good cake here," she said, voice flat as always, ears flicking. "If Ren is being annoying, you can hide in the kitchen with me."
Valerie blinked rapidly.
"…Okay," she said.
She looked back at Ren one more time.
"Thank you," she said.
She put as much weight into the words as she could—gratitude, relief, a hesitant, budding trust.
He met her gaze steadily.
"You're welcome," he replied. "Welcome home, Valerie."
The Sephiroth Graal pulsed once inside her chest.
The newly laid filter between it and the principles of life held. Its link to her Soul Palace flowed cleanly, the raw torrent reduced to a slow, manageable river.
For the first time since it had awakened in her body, it did not whisper diagrams of death and resurrection into her skull.
It was quiet.
Valerie followed Asia and Rias down the hall, Gasper glued to her side like a nervous, overgrown shadow. The murmur of friendly voices rose and fell around them. The house seemed to adjust, already reshaping itself around a new presence in its rhythm.
Ren watched them go until they turned the corner and vanished from sight.
Then he rolled his shoulders once.
The last scraps of vampire curses clinging to his aura flaked off like dust, dissolving into the air.
Sona adjusted her glasses, expression dry.
"You realize," she said, "you just decapitated an entire faction's leadership."
A beat.
"Again," she added.
Ren tilted his head.
"They were ugly," he said seriously. "Bad for the view."
Akeno's laughter rang through the lobby, bright and musical.
Rias's amused exasperation drifted faintly from down the hall.
Ren was relaxed and smiling.
He had a house to keep lively.
And a new girl to make smile.