I had five days till visit was scheduled.
I used this time to get hold of the situation as well as the inventories.
The estate was massive.
I’d known that intellectually—the memories of the original Lucian had given me a floor plan in vague, half-formed impressions—but walking through it was different.
Room after room of sheeted furniture, dusty chandeliers, paintings of people I didn’t recognize staring down at me with the particular disdain of dead ancestors.
The place had been magnificent once.
Now it was just…
tired.
I found the library on the second day.
It was a two-story room with spiral staircases and a stained glass dome that must’ve been spectacular when the sun hit it right.
Now the glass was cracked, and half the windows were boarded up, and the books—thousands and thousands of them—were covered in a layer of dust so thick I could’ve written my name in it.
I did, actually.
Just to see if I could.
“Lucian was here,” I read aloud.
“Very profound.”
I spent the rest of the day wandering the shelves, pulling down books at random, trying to piece together what I had to work with.
History of the Underworld.
Genealogies of the seventy-two pillars.
A rather alarming volume on demonic contracts that I decided to save for later.
Cookbooks—thank god—and a whole section on magical theory that made my head hurt just looking at the titles.
I also found, tucked away in a corner behind a bust of some ancestor, a small leather journal.
It belonged to my mother, or rather the original Lucian’s mother.
I opened it and read a few pages before closing it again.
Too personal.
Too raw.
I’d come back to it when I was ready.
I settled into a chair near the window and took stock.
The Hallows hummed under my skin like a second heartbeat.
I could feel them now, separate but connected, parts of a whole that didn’t quite make sense but worked anyway.
I reached inside and poked at them.
The Wand: power.
Authority.
The ability to make magic obey me without the usual devil tools—no circles, just will.
I tested it on a teacup across the room, making it spin in a slow circle.
No circle.
No effort.
Just thought.
The cup spun faster.
I stopped it.
“Okay,” I muttered.
“That’s useful.”
The Stone: connection.
Soul magic, maybe?
I wasn’t sure.
Souls were Hades’ territory, which made the whole thing awkward.
But I could feel something there—a door I could open if I really wanted to.
I didn’t want to.
Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
Some things were better left alone.
The Cloak: concealment.
But not just physical.
It was conceptual.
The idea of invisibility given form.
I could feel it wrapping around me like a second skin, ready to make me unnoticed, unwatched, unremembered.
I’d need to test that later.
Carefully.
And under all of that, Annihilation Maker.
The Sacred Gear was warm in my chest, patient and hungry.
Creation.
The ability to bring anything into existence from pure imagination.
I’d been avoiding it, honestly—it was big and scary, and I didn’t fully understand what I could do with it.
But I knew it was important.
Knew it was the key to everything.
I thought about Ajuka’s letter.
The Evil Pieces.
The original Lucian’s memories had been hazy on the details, but the letter was clear.
That was a full peerage.
Enough to build a small OP army.
But why?
I didn’t buy the official reason.
The Marbas name had been dead for years.
Nobody cared about it.
Nobody would have bothered to assign Evil Pieces unless someone higher up was interested.
Ajuka Beelzebub.
The guy who invented the Evil Piece system.
The genius who was probably already watching me through some magical surveillance system I didn’t know about.
I didn’t trust it.
But I wasn’t going to say no, either.
I found the family magic circle in the basement.
The original Lucian had known about it, though he’d never used it—too young, too unskilled, too sad to care.
It was carved into the stone floor, worn but intact, surrounded by the faded remnants of old protective wards.
I traced the lines with my fingers and felt the magic hum.
There was a resonance there, a Marbas-family thing that connected me to my bloodline.
Mutated magic.
Something weird and specific.
I thought about Annihilation Maker.
The “mutation.” The thing that made my magic different from other devils.
I’d need to use that as my cover—pretend the Sacred Gear’s toned-down power was just family heritage, nothing worth getting excited about.
Keep Ajuka’s attention elsewhere.
“Okay,” I said to the empty basement.
“New plan.
I’m just a weird magic guy with a weird family mutation.
Totally normal.
Nothing to see here.”
The basement didn’t argue.
I spent the next two days exploring the estate systematically.
The east wing was mostly collapsed.
A roof leak had turned a whole section of the second floor into a swamp, and the structural damage made me nervous.
I marked it off as “fix later” and moved on.
The west wing was better—mostly intact, just dusty.
I found a bedroom suite that could be renovated.
A study with a beautiful desk and a fireplace that probably worked.
A bathroom with a claw-foot tub that I immediately decided was the best thing in the house.
The grounds were a disaster.
Overgrown gardens, cracked pathways, a greenhouse that had been shattered by a fallen tree years ago.
But there was a wall around the property—old and crumbling, but still standing.
And beyond that, nothing.
Just Underworld wilderness.
I was isolated.
Alone.
Nobody knew I existed.
Nobody cared.
Perfect.
I spent the evenings in the library, making lists.
Things I needed to do: learn magic (properly), practice Annihilation Maker (safely), figure out the Hallows, fix up the estate, find my future peerage members.
Things I needed to avoid: dying, attracting attention, dying, making enemies, dying.
The list got long.
I thought about Asia.
The sweet girl with the Twilight Healing.
Excommunicated and alone, doomed to wander until she found a devil who could see her worth.
She was my first priority.
Kuroka, too.
The Nekoshou with the cat ears and the heavy past.
Possibly to bring her into her peerage.
But she’d still carry the guilt.
She’d still feel like a monster.
Maybe I could help with that.
Ingvild.
The queen with ultimate power out of the box and previous-life waifu who was too diseased to wake up.
The one who’d need someone to remind her of the waking world.
I kept writing names.
On the third morning, I woke up early and sat on the windowsill, watching the grey Underworld sky do its slow transition to something approaching daylight.
I had two days before the collection of the Evil Pieces.
Two days to get my head straight.
Two days to figure out who I was going to be.
I thought about the original Lucian.
The sad kid who’d slipped away in the night.
The kid who’d never gotten a chance to be anything.
“I’ll do better,” I said quietly.
“I promise.”
I stood up and walked to the center of the library.
The stained glass dome above me cast fractured light across the floor.
I raised my hand, felt the Wand’s power flow through me, and made the light dance.
Just a little thing.
Just a test.
But it was a start.
I had three and a half years.
Fifteen Evil Pieces.
A whole lot of names.
And a world that needed saving, whether it knew it or not.
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