The heat was suffocating, dense, as if the very air itself were composed of boiling ash and liquid sulfur. The sky was nonexistent; in its place, a vault of volcanic rock glowed with a crimson hue, illuminating the immense underground cavern.
Along an obsidian path winding along the edge of an endless precipice, an unending procession of souls marched. The noise was deafening. People cried, screamed, tore out their hair, and begged gods who could no longer hear them. They pleaded for help, begged for salvation, and offered pathetic excuses for the sins they had committed in life.
Guarding this procession of misery were horrifying creatures. Demons with humanoid forms, but grotesquely twisted. Some possessed splintered horns, others multiple oozing eyes, and most carried thorned whips wrapped in black flames that cracked against the backs of anyone who dared stop moving.
Amid all this chaos of agony and despair, a young man walked.
He appeared to be around twenty years old, with dark, messy hair. Unlike the others who trembled and sobbed, he walked with his gaze fixed ahead, his hands in the pockets of trousers that seemed to fade at the edges, as though his very existence there were precarious.
"Why don't I feel anything?" he thought vaguely. No fear, no sadness, not even genuine curiosity. Just... emptiness.
He watched as the demons tore limbs from writhing souls and merely blinked, analyzing the scene with cold indifference. He knew he was dead. He knew that this was, without a doubt, some kind of hell. But the emotion, the visceral fear that should have paralyzed his heart, simply wasn't there. He felt empty.
The line came to an abrupt halt before an enormous arch of bones. Beneath the arch, seated upon a throne of molten stone, waited a gigantic demon with skin the color of burning coal and fangs protruding from its lower jaw. It held a scroll that appeared to be made from woven and stretched human skin. It seemed to be the judge of that sector.
The young man was brutally shoved forward by one of the guards, falling to his knees before the platform. The giant demon lowered its gaze, its yellow reptilian eyes scrutinizing the boy.
"Next piece of scum..." the demon growled, its voice making the stones beneath them vibrate.
It unrolled the scroll and read with disdain.
"Let's see... a generally decent life."
"You helped your mother, got good grades, never stole... but you also watched a lot of hentai, masturbated while thinking about your history teacher, and said 'I hope they die' several times whenever someone blocked your path on the street. Minor sins, but sins nonetheless."
"You're seriously going to send me to hell for masturbating and having impure thoughts? Whatever happened to that whole 'thinking isn't a sin' thing? Besides, I don't remember masturbating while thinking about those old women," the young man said, raising an eyebrow.
"Welcome to Hell, human. Here, even your most impure thoughts carry weight. Sentence: One hundred years in the Sea of Fire to purify your impurities. Then, if you haven't gone insane, you will ascend to Heaven. Take him away."
Before the young man could utter a word, a lesser demon, thin but with disproportionately muscular arms, grabbed him by the collar of his ghostly shirt and dragged him across the obsidian floor toward the edge of the cliff.
Below them, hundreds of meters down, roared an ocean of bubbling magma. The souls already there swam in torment, their screams blending into one single, heart-rending wail.
The demon held him over the abyss.
"Hey," the young man said in a calm, almost bored voice. "Despite everything that's happening, the screams, and the smell of burning flesh... I'm not afraid. Do you know why?"
The demon looked at him, first with confusion, then let out a shrill laugh, a wet and disgusting sound.
"Hahaha! Do you think you're that brave, you piece of human trash?" the demon mocked, bringing its deformed face close to the young man's. "All of you pretend to be tough until the fire melts your eyelids. Enjoy your bath, vermin."
Without further delay, the demon released its grip.
The young man plummeted into the void. Infernal winds lashed against his face. He watched as the ocean of magma rushed toward him. He felt the extreme heat steadily increasing, threatening to incinerate his spiritual form before he even touched the surface. He closed his eyes, preparing for impact, hoping that perhaps the pain would finally restore the emotions he had lost.
Just as the fire licked at his hair...
"NO!"
A desperate scream, undeniably feminine and filled with overwhelming power, echoed directly into his ears. It was not a physical sound, but a shockwave that halted time and space around him.
...
The smell of sulfur was instantly replaced by nothingness. Absolutely nothing.
The young man blinked. He was standing. He was no longer falling. Beneath his feet there were no rocks, no magma, no ground of any kind, only an infinite expanse of pure white. The sky was white. The horizon was white. There were no shadows, no vanishing points. It was an empty space, devoid of any logical dimension.
And suddenly, like a dam giving way under the pressure of water, he felt it.
He fell to his knees, gasping for breath. He pressed his hands against his chest, right where his heart should be. Fear, confusion, anxiety, and a profound sadness struck him all at once.
He could feel again. His defense mechanism had failed, but not because of the fire.
"Where... where the hell am I?" he muttered, his voice trembling for the first time. "What was that voice?"
"Well, well." "Let's be honest, it's not every day that someone gets literally ripped out of the underworld's reincarnation system just moments before purification," said a masculine voice, resonant and tinged with sarcasm and amusement.
The young man snapped his head upward. A few meters away, the white space seemed to distort. From that distortion emerged a figure. It was not human, but it had adopted a vaguely anthropomorphic form to interact. It appeared to be composed of pure energy, with flashes of red and black light constantly swirling around it. If one squinted, it almost seemed to be wearing an elegant tailored suit, though its "face" was merely an amalgamation of pulsating light without defined features.
"To think that someone like you would end up creating something so special," the entity continued, crossing its arms—or what appeared to be its arms.
The young man slowly stood up, his legs still trembling. His senses were on maximum alert, searching for any threat, but the entity emitted no hostility whatsoever, only an immense and incomprehensible presence.
"Who are you? What is this place? Are you God?"
The entity let out a laugh that sounded like the echo of a thousand swords colliding at once.
"God? Don't insult me. That old man took a permanent vacation from my universe a long time ago. No, kid. I'm not a god. I'm something a little more... conceptual."
The figure walked around him slowly.
"You know your species possesses a very particular talent, right? Humans are weak, yes. They have short lives, kill each other over nonsense, and possess an absurd fascination with breasts. But they have something the rest of the cosmos envies: imagination."
The young man frowned, regaining some of his analytical composure.
"Imagination? What are you talking about?"
"I mean that you possess the same power as the Primordial Creators," the entity said, stopping in front of him. "Once certain conditions are met, your imagination, your stories, writings, tales, legends... all that paper and ink, or digital text... if faith, passion, and collective energy reach a certain threshold, those concepts can cross the barrier of fiction. They become real. They create different dimensions. Different worlds."
The young man's eyes widened as his mind connected the dots at dizzying speed. Multiverse theory. Parallel universes. Tulpas. Creation through collective belief.
"Are you saying that... the fictional stories from my world are real worlds somewhere else?"
"Bingo! Give the dead man a prize!" the entity mocked. "Exactly. Like me, for example. Allow me to introduce myself properly. I am the concept, the will, and the guardian of one of those universes. I am High School DxD."
The silence that followed was absolute. The young man simply stared at the red-and-black entity of light, his mouth slightly open.
"Like the anime?" the young man asked incredulously. "You're telling me you're a light novel and anime full of pubescent devils, fallen angels with superiority complexes, and... and boobs?"
The entity seemed offended, and its light flickered violently.
"Hey, watch what you're saying! My universe is much more than that. There's politics, epic battles, betrayals, heavenly dragons... and yes, lots of breasts, but that's culture, kid! Anyway, I am the personification of that title. The guardian of a creation made by another member of your species."
The young man rubbed his temples, feeling a headache coming on. This was too ridiculous even for a postmortem experience.
"Alright, fine. Let's assume for a moment that fiction creates realities and that you're the manifestation of DxD. The million-dollar question is: What am I doing here? I was supposed to be roasting like a marshmallow in hell."
The entity sighed, a static sound in the white void.
"You see, the thing is that you also played God at some point in your life. You created a story as well. And against all odds, you managed to fulfill the requirements. That story of yours, that 'fantasy,' ended up accumulating enough conceptual weight to generate its own world, just like mine."
The young man felt his stomach twist. Him? He had created a world? He tried to remember the story he had written with such devotion, but the memory was elusive, like trying to catch water with his hands. However, before he could delve deeper, the entity continued.
"The guardian deity of your creation, the will of your own world, interfered in the underworld's judgment. It spent an enormous amount of energy to pull you out before you were assimilated. And after a long conversation between guardians, it asked me for a personal favor: to reincarnate you in my world."
"Wait, wait," the young man said, raising his hands and stopping the cosmic rambling. "If I created that world and its guardian has the power to pull me out of hell, then why the hell doesn't it take me to its world? Why throw me into yours?"
The entity's light turned a darker, more solemn shade of red.
"Because that is the First Law of Fictional Realities, kid. Creators are forbidden from setting foot in their own creations. The paradoxes that would arise if the 'Author' entered his own work would destroy the fundamental laws of that universe. It would collapse upon itself. They can't even see you. Therefore, your creation asked me to take you in. I happened to have an opening in the reincarnation department, so... here you are."
The young man crossed his arms, rapidly analyzing the situation. His mind was racing. If they were going to reincarnate him into the world of DxD, he had an enormous tactical advantage.
"Are you sure about this? I possess complete knowledge of your world. I know the Biblical God, Sirzechs, Azazel, the Chaos Brigade, Trihexa. I know how the plots end. If you put me there, I can change things. I can alter your story."
The entity smiled, or at least gave the impression of doing so through a curved wave of light.
"Oh, don't worry about that. When you reincarnate, your memory will be conveniently edited. You'll forget what happened here and everything directly related to the plot of my world. You'll keep your general memories, your personality, your knowledge of mathematics, science, or other anime like that one with the screaming muscular guys or the one with the pocket monsters. But not the memories you have of my world. For you, DxD will be a blank page."
Panic flashed across the young man's eyes. Were they really going to take away his greatest advantage? The world of DxD was crawling with supernatural beings who killed humans for fun.
"Hey! Wait a minute!" he protested. "If you're taking my information, you'll give me something in return, right? You know, like in those cheap isekai anime. A leveling system, an overpowered ability, a special Sacred Gear, or at least infinite magic."
"I will give you absolutely nothing," the entity replied without hesitation, its tone sharp and dismissive.
The young man stared at it, dumbfounded.
"What?! Then how the hell am I supposed to survive all the crap in your world? Rias Gremory, Fallen Angels, monsters of every size! I'm just a human!"
"I have no idea, and frankly, I don't care," the entity said with a shrug, a surprisingly human gesture for a being made of energy. "I'm only here to bring you into existence. As long as you reincarnate into my world and don't burn in lava, my job is done. What you do with your new life, whether you live a hundred years or get eaten by a stray dog in the first alley you find, is your problem."
The boy clenched his fists. Frustration and anger boiled within him. The entity wasn't joking. It was going to throw him into a battlefield of gods and demons completely defenseless and without remembering any of the plan.
"No way..." he muttered, staring at the white floor. "Send me back to hell. At least then I won't have to die again as some spoiled demon's toy... Wait."
A sudden question crossed his mind, dispelling his anger.
"How did I die in my original world in the first place?"
The moment he asked the question and tried to delve into his mind to visualize his final moments on Earth, a sharp, piercing pain shot through his skull. It was as though a red-hot nail had been driven into the back of his eyes. He fell to his knees, clutching his head with both hands, and let out a muffled groan.
"Don't even try it, idiot," the entity warned in an authoritative voice. "Once dead, souls are forbidden from remembering the exact cause of their death until their spirit becomes strong enough. It's another defense mechanism of the universe to prevent souls from being corrupted by the trauma of their transition. Let it go."
The young man took a deep breath, forcing himself to stop thinking about it. The pain gradually subsided, leaving him exhausted.
"Good," said the entity, clapping theatrically, producing a dull thunderclap. "Enough chatting. Celestial bureaucracy doesn't handle itself. It's time for your transfer. Good luck, kid. Try not to die before puberty; that would be very boring."
"Wait... damn it!"
Before he could curse the entity or demand one last explanation, the white space imploded.
...
The pain vanished instantly.
The young man regained consciousness almost immediately, but the scene had changed yet again. The white light was gone. He found himself in a dark, dense space, similar to the bottom of the ocean but without the pressure of water. He floated in the void, his limbs moving slowly in weightlessness.
"Is this the damn reincarnation process?" he muttered, feeling his patience wearing thin over the past few hours.
He spun around in space, trying to find an exit or a light to swim toward. That was when he bumped into something cold and metallic.
He stopped and felt around in the darkness until his fingers brushed against a smooth surface. As he focused his vision, he realized it was a box. It was a box the size of his torso, forged from gleaming silver metal that emitted a faint glow, dimly illuminating the space around it. Ancient runes were engraved across its surface, appearing to shift if he stared at them too long.
"I feel like I've seen this somewhere before..." he whispered to himself. A deep sense of nostalgia washed over him.
He grabbed the box with both hands and pulled. It was sealed.
Shaking the box, he tried to open it. He wedged his fingers into the corners, attempting to force it apart. Nothing.
He slammed the edges against his knee. Useless. Driven by the frustration of recent events, he even tried biting the edge, but the metal was harder than diamond and he nearly broke a tooth.
"Open, damn it," he growled, panting from exhaustion.
As he turned it over for what felt like the hundredth time, he noticed a small mechanism on top. It wasn't a keyhole. It was a circular panel, smooth as glass. A lock that looked like an optical scanner or some ancient biometric identifier.
"How strange..."
Driven by pure curiosity, and with nothing to lose, the young man leaned forward. He aligned his right eye with the small glass scanner.
The box reacted instantly.
A beam of pure, brilliant light shot from the scanner directly into his pupil.
"Shit, my eye!" The box shone so intensely that the young man cried out, jerking his face away in pain and covering his eye with his hand, seeing red and blue spots dancing before his vision.
Click.
Internal gears turned, and the lid of the dimensional box slowly opened.
The young man, still blinking to recover his sight, looked inside. Resting within the silver container was an object of breathtaking beauty. It was a sphere the size of his fist, yet it was neither crystal nor stone. It appeared to be composed of liquid energy, shining with the same intensity and pale silver hue as a full moon at its peak. It emitted a low, comforting hum.
Before he could utter a word or reach out to touch it, the sphere reacted to his presence.
It floated out of the box as if it possessed a will of its own. It spun in the air for a fraction of a second and then, with the speed of a bullet, flew directly into his chest.
The young man gasped as the sphere sank into his body, passing through flesh and bone like a ghost. An immense and expansive warmth surged inside him, spreading through his veins. His eyes burned as if magma had been injected into them, but this time it was not a destructive pain—it was a transformation.
He felt his soul being torn apart and rebuilt simultaneously. The dark void surrounding him began to crack apart like shattered glass, allowing a blinding and unbearable light to pour through before he lost consciousness once again.
...
Cold. That was the first thing he felt. A sharp chill on his damp skin.
Then came the sounds. The echo of hurried, distorted voices speaking in a language that his mind registered as Japanese, yet it was overwhelmingly loud.
The young man tried to open his eyes, but a bright artificial light blinded him. He tried to speak, to complain about the disturbance, to curse the Entity, but the only thing that escaped his lips was a sharp, uncontrollable cry. The cry of a baby.
He felt gloved hands rubbing his back firmly. He blinked repeatedly, and his blurry vision finally focused on the masked face of a doctor, who held him gently and with relief beneath the surgical lights of a delivery room.
The memory of his encounter in the sterile white space and the Entity's promise seemed to sink rapidly into the depths of his subconscious, fading like smoke in the wind, just as he had been promised.
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Okay, that's the first chapter. Just a heads up, this will have a short crossover with two anime. The MC is broken, super broken, but he's still human, so who cares. See you in the next chapter.
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( ̳• · • ̳) ~ ♡ Thanks for reading ♡
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