Highschool DxD : Actually Satan

At first i Wanted this to be Part of the Chapter Satan Beginnings [2] but after writing i relaised I much preferred this part to be stand alone...

Alternative title : Ozymandias

2500 words

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Lucifer stood upon the dead soil of old Earth, where dust no longer carried life's memory, but above—above—the sky was with the heartbeat of a new god: Humanity.

It was not a silent sky.

It sang in electric hymns, latticework cities carved into the void, rivers of light threading through the black tapestry of space.

Humanity had soared—higher than the divine ever dared to dream.

Empires woven from ambition and fire now ruled, and their pride shone brighter than any sun.

And yet…

"I met a traveller from an antique land..."

The words fell from his lips like ash—old, worn, and familiar.

Not just memory, but authorship.

Long ago, it had been his hand that first carved those lines into the bones of history.

He remembered that distant age when the earth was young, and humanity's pride still bloomed like a fragile flower.

He had never hated them.

No, the truth was crueler—he couldn't understand them.

For what was humanity if not defiance incarnate? Each fall only seemed to sharpen their will; every ruin became the foundation for something greater.

And so, in his endless walk, Lucifer had met those who shaped the course of mankind.

He had spoken with kings and fools alike—one of them had been Ozymandias.

"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert..."

His gaze swept across the empire that now reigned supreme—a testament to humanity's boundless hunger.

Cities floated like gods above forgotten ruins.

Entire worlds bent beneath their ambition.

Yet, beneath that brilliance, the bones of old failures lay buried, silent testimonies to those who could not keep pace.

"Near them, on the sand, half sunk, a shattered visage lies..."

He remembered Ozymandias well—how the man had stared into the future with eyes full of certainty, convinced his legacy would be eternal.

And now, as Lucifer watched humanity stretch its hand beyond the cradle of Earth, he saw that same pride reflected back in the stars.

"Whose frown, and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command..."

Pride—it was their fire, their curse, their immortality.

Each empire believed itself untouchable, crowned by destiny. Every empire whispered, "We will not fall."

"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

How those words echoed now, across centuries and void.

This was not despair, no—it was wonder.

Humanity's works shone with divine arrogance, a brilliance no god had ever crafted.

But the pattern remained carved in eternity's stone.

Lucifer knew. He had always known.

"Nothing beside remains."

Not yet. But time was patient.

Empires, no matter how vast, were not immune to the slow decay of pride.

History was a wheel, and even gods could not stop its turning.

"Round the decay of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away."

Lucifer's voice fell silent.

His eyes, ancient and tired, traced the stars humanity now called home.

There was no pity in him—only admiration.

They had surpassed the heavens.

They had reached where gods had failed.

But the end would come. It always did.

And when the final empire turned to dust, when pride carved its last monument into the void, he would still be there—, watching.

The last witness to their greatest triumph—and their inevitable fall.

And fall it did.

Not with the grandeur of gods, nor the defiant roar of conquerors—but with the silence of inevitability.

Humanity, in their desperation, had forged weapons beyond comprehension—creations meant to shield them from the Storms of Grain that raged beyond their fragile cradle.

Beings of terrifying brilliance, born from fear and ambition, sculpted to survive where flesh could not.

Their creations turned on them—A-rays, forged to endure the merciless void, now hunted their makers.

And with Earth—Gaia, the Mother of All—dead, there was nothing left to protect them.

The Empire fell alongside humanity... undone by their greatest creation.

But the universe had not finished its judgment.

In the dying breath of Gaia's final lament, a message echoed across the celestial void—a summons to rid its corpse of these vermin.

One by one, the planets answered.

Lucifer thought this was it.

The end of all humanity had ever built.

The culmination of their reckless ambition, their endless struggle.

History was repeating itself, but on a scale far grander.

Humanity, no longer bound to Earth, now faced the judgment of the cosmos itself.

But then, he watched.

And for the first time, he felt astounded.

Jupiter fell first.

A single man—stood against the planetary executioner.

An Ether Liner named Ado Edem.

He wielded a blade that was not meant for men, a weapon that defied the very nature of existence itself.

He raised it against the celestial titan, and in a single, impossibly devastating strike—Jupiter was no more.

Saturn fell next.

Not by gods, not by fate, but by a man with a gun.

The last pure human.

The one they called the Gun God.

He did not have divine might.

He did not have the ether-tainted power of the last remaining humans.

He was not a beast, nor a monster.

He was just a man—the last true man—and yet, he faced down the death Saturn had sent against humanity.

And he won.

Lucifer could not look away.

This was beyond stubbornness. Beyond ambition.

This was something else entirely.

He had seen heroes, kings, tyrants, and saints rise and fall across time, but this—this was a defiance that burned like a dying star.

A refusal to fade, even when the universe itself demanded their extinction.

But then…

He just had to make it personal.

Lucifer had been content to observe, content to witness the last embers of humanity's struggle without interference.

But then, the man raised his gun and pointed it toward Type Venus.

And she—the one who had once been nothing more than an elemental, now reborn into something more, something divine—stood before him, radiant with six wings of brilliant light.

She looked so much like him when he had first met her.

The world slowed.

From Lucifer's perspective, it had stilled entirely.

His metal body, long cold, long unfeeling, heated up.

For the first time since its remaking, he felt fire surge from within him.

With every step forward, the air around him burned.

The land cracked, the atmosphere burned.

Hell was being manifested on Earth.

Earth, long stripped of its mystery, should not have been able to manifest Hell.

The Age of Gods was dead alongises the Planet.

And yet—

A lack of mystery could be compensated.

By burning Grain.

By igniting the last remnants of True Ether within him.

Lucifer refused to sacrifice the True Ether of his body.

It was a gift. A precious, irreplaceable gift.

He would not let it be reduced to fuel.

Instead, he burned something far more costly.

The sins. The authorities. The fragments of the beasts that had returned to him over the long eons.

One by one, he set them aflame.

He set his soul aflame.

His body, once a construct of metal, melted.

Molten veins ran through him like rivers of liquid fire.

His form, for so long something that could not be called angelic, began to shift.

From a walking pace, he ran.

From a hollow husk, his visage grew clearer. More defined.

More Lucifer.

And from his back—Six wings emerged.

Pure metal. Molten. Blinding in brilliance.

They shimmered like reflections on heated steel, shifting, warping, yet impossibly solid.

Haunting. Demonic. Fitting.

He reached behind him—

And drew forth Rhongomyniad.

A weapon he had helped forge, once divine, now stripped of its radiance. Just a lance.

But even so—

It was still the only weapon that couldbe of use to hi..

And this weapon was all he needed.

Ahead, the Gun God stood.

Ether Liners moved to shield him, their bodies battered but unbroken.

Their faith in him was absolute.

And Type Venus—

She prepared to strike.

The lance in his hand, once dulled by time, began to awaken.

It had been a relic. A ruin. A weapon abandoned by the divine, its purpose long since eroded.

Yet now—

It was bathed in flame.

Not the flame of divinity. Not the flame of holy radiance.

But the fire of burning sin.

The very embodiment of sin itself—Lucifer, the First, the Fallen—burned his own soul to rekindle its light.

And the lance—Rhongomyniad—responded.

The rust, the corrosion, the scars of age and irrelevance—

They burned away like an illusion.

Molten gold ran through the cracks of its surface.

The dull, battered steel gleamed brighter than the first dawn.

The weapon that had once shone at the world's end—ignited once again.

And in the next instant—

The entire world was set asunder.

The Land of Steel, the last monument of humanity's triumph over their cradle, was torn apart.

For Rhongomyniad was never merely a weapon. It was a key—a keystone that once bound the illusion of the Reverse Side to the reality of the planet's outer texture.

And even if the Reverse Side no longer existed, the lance remembered its purpose.

It turned the surface away.

It unmade what was, to reveal what should be.

And in that instant, Hell was born anew.

A world that burned with his rage.

His defiance.

His truth.

Lucifer stood among the ruins of humanity's last stand, his metal hands closing around the Gun God's throat.

The last true human, the last testament of Earth's children, struggled—but it was futile.

Lucifer's fingers crushed his body, the metal of his hands grinding against bones that were no longer just flesh.

The Gun God—a man who had slain a Type—was reduced to nothing in the grasp of the fallen angel.

And with his end, so too did the final successors of humanity begin their descent into oblivion.

What was left? A handful of Ether Liners, standing amidst a world that was now Hell incarnate.

And yet, even Hell would not last.

Lucifer could feel it—his body, his soul, his very essence unraveling.

For how poetic was this end?

He had spent his existence rejecting the title of the Fallen, despising what the world had named him—Lucifer, the King of Hell.

And yet, in these final moments, it was the only thing left to him.

The Ether Liners, enraged, struck at him, their weapons lashing out with all the hatred and grief of a dying species.

But in his Hell, he was supreme.

Even as his body crumbled, even as his molten wings cracked, he raised his hand—and with a single look, Ado Edem was erased.

The man who slew Type Jupiter burned.

His body, made of Ether, was consumed by the same flames that had torn through Heaven itself.

But eventually—Lucifer faltered.

Of the seventy-eight, only seven remained.

And they landed a strike.

But it was not a blade that struck him.

It was an embrace.

A familiar presence—warm, sorrowful, relentless.

She held him, her arms wrapped around what little remained of his form, whispering in his ear.

"You're dying."

Her voice trembled, filled with emotion.

Lucifer looked at her—at the being he had once called friend—and smiled.

"I guess I got , what I deserved...."

Hell flickered.

The flames dimmed.

And so the chapter of humanity was closed.

With humanity and its succesor dying at the hands of Venus.

And so the tale of Lucifer, the Brightest Star, and Venus, the Hidden Angel, reached its final chapter.

Or so the believed.

The cosmos held its breath as the last flame of Lucifer's soul dwindled, burning through the remnants of all that once made him whole.

No ties to divinity, no claim to the infernal, no throne in Hell nor seat in Heaven.

Nothing remained.

Gaia, was dead.

And he had made certain that what remained of him would never reach for her.

No hands left to guide him.

No voices left to call his name except for one.

Lucifer was fading.

And Venus watched.

She had watched since the first moment he set foot upon her hidden fields, since he had unknowingly shaped her form with his presence.

She had watched as he fell, as he warred against Heaven, as he was cast into the pit and rose again as something more and less than he had ever been.

She had watched him walk alone, never understanding, never truly hating, but always moving forward.

And now, she watched him die.

Venus, the planet of storms and secrets, had held its silence for eons.

But now, as her only companion was slipping beyond her reach, she broke her vow.

She spoke.

"I am sorry, Gaia."

She abandoned her body, ripped herself from the cosmic order, untethering her own essence.

It was an act that no celestial being had ever dared—a planet breaking itself for something as fleeting as a soul.

A celestial sacrifice.

The corpse of Earth and the abandoned shell of Venus began their descent, drawn toward each other in a dance that defied reason.

Lucifer's dying embers were caught between them, cradled in the collision of two worlds.

Then, the inevitable impact.

A shockwave of ruin spread through the black sea of space, a death cry of planet, a requiem for two celestial bodies that had forsaken their fates.

It should have been the end.

But in the ruin of two fallen worlds, something new was born.

The shattered remnants of Gaia and Venus fused, their molten cores entwining, their broken remains shaping something entirely unknown.

A world with two hearts.

A planet where two souls burned, neither angel nor demon, neither god nor man.

Venus, the Hidden Angel.

Lucifer, the Fallen Star.

Bound in death-Reborn in creation.

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Stones and Reviews please