03/01/2012, Underworld, Early morning
Deep beneath the Underworld's crust, in a labyrinth of once sterile corridors now choked with the stench of sulfur and spilled viscera, one of the Old Satan Faction's most clandestine facility reeks of carnage.
The air hums with the static of shattered wards, and the walls weep rivulets of blackened blood. In the innermost chamber, a vault lined with cursed scripts and glass tanks holding twitching, half-formed abominations, a shadowy figure stands amid the slaughter.
Its form wavers like smoke, edges bleeding into the darkness, as it surveys the mangled corpses littering the floor.
Scientists and guards alike lie contorted, their bodies unraveling into tendrils of void that spiral upward, dissolving into ash soon after.
The figure's grin splits its featureless face like a jagged scar, and with each step toward the exit, the ground beneath it rots, stone crumbling into blackened dust.
A desk splinters under Shalba Beelzebub's fist, its surface spiderwebbing with cracks that glow faintly with residual green demonic energy.
The Third Satan's voice booms through the control room, shaking monitors and sending a vial of crimson ichor shattering to the floor.
"What's happening!?" he snarls, his long, greasy brown hair clinging to his gaunt face like serpents. One eye, bloodshot and blazing with violet hellfire, glares from behind the matted curtain of hair, while the other remains shrouded under his dark mantle.
His black coat billows around him as though alive, its edges frayed into spectral wisps that lick hungrily at the air.
Shalba's subordinate stammers, sweat beading on his ashen face as his fingers dart across a cracked control panel.
"W-we don't know, Lord Beelzebub!" he chokes out, the words tinged with mortal terror. "Something… came through the portal. All signals are gone!" A screen flickers to life beside him, casting jagged shadows over the ruined lab.
Shalba's clawed hand slams down, crushing the panel into a smoking ruin. "Send someone. NOW."
His voice drips with venom, the air around him warping with heat haze. The subordinate scrambles backward, bowing so low his forehead scrapes the blood-slick floor.
On the cavernous wall ahead, a mosaic of screens blinks to life, each displaying static-strewn footage of the facility's carnage. Shalba stalks closer, his coat hissing like a nest of vipers. "Show me the last recording" he growls.
A scientist, trembling so violently his horns clatter, taps a glyph. The central screen flares, timestamped: 03/01/2012 04:56.
The video crackles, its grainy hues washed in the sickly green of emergency lights. A dozen devil scientists cluster around a pedestal, their long lab coats casting shadows on the walls.
At the center glows the artifact, a skull carved from cerulean crystal, its hollow eyes pulsing with eldritch light.
"Secure the artifact" orders the lead scientist, his voice distorted by the recording's buzz.
The hands of one of the scientists, clad in obsidian gloves, lift the skull from its glass prison, slotting it into a socket lined with glowing, vein-like circuits. The machine hums to life, its charge station thrumming like a heartbeat.
"Today," the scientist declares, his tongue flicking eagerly. "We harness time itself. A feat even gods fear! Devilkind will rewrite the flow of time".
Two devils grip levers of grey stone, muscles straining. Scribes hover nearby, quills poised over their notebooks to document any results . In the corner, a wizard chants, his hands weaving a teleportation magic cirlce shimmering with a blood-red sigil.
"Three… two… one… go!"
The levers slam down.
For a heartbeat, silence.
Then, darkness. Not mere shadow, but a void that devours light, sound, breath. When the recording stabilizes, the chamber is a charnel house.
Bodies lie in heaps, skin sloughed off bones, organs reduced to viscous sludge. The skull is gone.
Shalba's eye twitches. "Replay. Slower this time".
The scientist rewinds. Frame by frame, the horror repeats: one moment, anticipation; the next, annihilation.
No flash. No warning. The chronometer ticks 04:56:00 to 04:56:00. No time elapsed, it was literally instantaneous.
"Continue" Shalba rasps, his voice a blade dragged across stone.
The footage stutters. A figure materializes in the ruined lab, its silhouette wavering like a mirage.
It cradles the blue skull in one shadowy hand, the artifact now crackling with violet energy. Slowly, it turns toward the camera, a face of shifting smoke, save for a lipless grin lined with teeth like shards of ice.
It raises its free hand, wiggling its fingers in a grotesque parody of a wave, before the screen dies in a burst of static.
Shalba's roar shakes the corridor, veins bulging at his temples as hellfire erupts from his palms, scorching the walls.
"What was that!?" he snarls, spittle flying. His hand digz into the flesh of a nearby scientist, leaving charred furrows. "Who dares mock me in my own domain!?"
He storms out, his coat billowing like a stormcloud, six-winged guards materializing around him in a flash of magic sigils.
Their obsidian armor gleams under flickering torches, each devil towering at eight feet, wings bristling with serrated feathers and eyes glowing like molten iron. They march in lockstep, the floor trembling under their tread, until they reach Lab 77, its reinforced door now a twisted wreck of smoldering metal.
Inside, the darkness is alive. Not mere shadow, but a viscous, swallowing void that devours the guards' hellfire orbs and halogen lamps alike. Light dies at its edges, snuffed like a candle in a hurricane.
"Reveal yourself" Shalba hisses. "And I'll grant you a quick death".
Silence.
He jerks his chin at a guard. "You. Enter."
The devil steps forward, wings flexed, halberd raised—and vanishes into the black. Seconds pass. No scream. No sound.
Shalba's eye twitches. "Coward," he spits, striding into the abyss. His boots sink into the floor as though stepping through tar. The air reeks of ozone and rot, but his senses find nothing—no heat, no magic, no breath. "Gone…" he mutters, turning to leave.
Then, snap.
A sound like bones breaking. Behind him, his elite guards vanish one by one, their armored plates clattering to the floor, empty.
Shalba whirls, violet hellfire erupting from his palms as four layered magic circles, crimson, black, gold, and purple, spin violently around him. "SHOW YOURSELF!"
The darkness laughs, a sound like glass shattering underwater.
Shalba's breath hitches as a voice slithers into his skull, familiar venomous, clawing at memories he'd buried beneath centuries of rage.'You are weak, Shalba'.
'Uncle' realizes Shalba as fear and anxiety clench his guts.
The words are a serrated knife twisting in his gut. He sees it again: Bidleid Bashalun Beelzebub's sneer, his hand gripping young Shalba's head, forcing him to kneel in the bloodied sands of the Beelzebub Training Ground.
"Pathetic"the old devil had spat, wings blotting out the light."You'll never be worthy of our name".
"WHO ARE YOU!?" Shalba roars, hurling a blast of fire magic into the void. The flames gutter out, revealing nothing but his own trembling reflection in the lab's shattered glass.
'He couldn't even fight that Astaroth brat'.
The voice again, his uncle's voice, saccharine and cruel satisfied of his nephew's pain.
Shalba's nails dig into his temples, drawing black blood. "Get out!" he shrieks like a scared child, but the memories surge like a tide: Sirzechs Lucifer's smile as he tore Bidleid apart during the Civil War, Shalba frozen in the shadows, wings locked, terrified.
"I don't deserve my bloodline" a new voice coos, his voice, warped, wrong. "Boo hoo".
Shalba whirls.
There, in the pooling darkness, stands a mirror image of his own gaunt face, but with eyes like yellow golden moons and a grin stretched too wide, too many teeth.
"H-How dare—!" Shalba's swarm erupts from his pores, a cyclone of flies with razor wings. But the Other raises a hand, and the insects freeze, their buzzing harmonizing into a mocking lullaby.
"Don't you dare stain my bloodline" the Other purrs, stepping closer. Shalba staggers back, his heel crushing a fallen guard's weapon.
"You're just a scared little maggot. Sirzechs' shadow still chokes you, doesn't it?"
"LIES!" Shalba's voice cracks. He hurls a spear of ice, but it shatters against the Other's chest. "He cheated! Uncle would've".
"Uncle hated you" the Other croons, its form rippling. "You think he didn't see your fear? Your weakness?"
"NO! I'M NOT AFRAID OF SIRZECHS GREMORY! YOU ARE NOT ME!" as Shalba says that, the other one stops laughing and instead just grins at him.
Shalba's wings twitch, instinct screaming to flee, but the walls press closer, the air thickening with the stench of rot. The Other's skin bubbles, limbs elongating, joints cracking backward.
"I am Shadow, the true self".
The thing that was Shalba unfurls, a grotesque amalgam of every nightmarish feature a 'Beelzebub' should be.
His ten bat wings molt into iridescent beetle shells, dripping acidic mucus. Its torso splits open, revealing a worm-like core writhing with maggots that chant in Bidleid's voice.
Twelve spindled legs, black and chitinous, pierce the floor, each tip oozing green sludge that sizzles through steel. Its face is a shifting mosaic of Shalba's failures: Sirzechs' pitying stare, Bidleid's disgust, the sneers of lesser devils who mocked his stutter as a whelp. Two enormous red bulges substituting his eyes.
"N-no…" Shalba whimpers, flies swarming back to cower under his skin. His spells sputter, fire reduced to embers, ice to mist.
The Shadow lunges, a crab-leg skewering Shalba's thigh. He screams, the sound echoing Bidleid's laughter. Another leg impales his wing, pinning him to the floor as the worm-body looms, maggots cascading onto his chest feasting on the poor Shalba Beelzebub.
"You crave his approval" the Shadow hisses, a talon caressing Shalba's cheek. "Even now. Even in death".
Shalba's screams turn to wet gurgles as the sludge fills his lungs, dissolving him from within. The Shadow watches, its human face resurfacing, a perfect, pitiless mirror, as Shalba's body crumbles like ash.
"Pathetic" it whispers, stepping over the remnants. "But delicious".
"Master Nyarlathotep, Father, I succeeded in your mission! I overwhelmed my false self and imposed your blessing" says Shadow Shalba bowing to a black butterfly who was witnessing the scene from the first moment.
"Well done my child. Well done. From this moment onwards you shall be Shalba Beelzebub" says the butterfly in a dark and deep voice, flying away.
"Sir! Is everything okay!?" a squad of guards flow inside the lab that in the meanwhile has went back to normal. "Yes it is. I fixed the situation. I'm going to update Creusery and Katerea on the research" declares the shadow leaving the guards behind.
"And get back to work. Clean up this place, it's disgusting" says Shalba pointing to the bodies still on the ground of the laboratory.
With this last order he leaves the lab while the guards bow obeying their lord's order.
04/01/2012, Tartarus, Morning
And so Makoto is once again inside Tartarus.
He notices many things have changed. He doesn't see any teleporter or any mechanical debris left by the Kirijo Group's experiments, but the atmosphere is still the very same.
'It looks like an uncontaminated version of the tower' comments Makoto inwardly venturing within Tartarus new form.
He soon finds himself at the start of the main stairs on which Yukari was usual to sit down waiting the start of the operation. 'The top of Tartarus... I have to go there'. This is the only thing Makoto can think about as he starts to climb the tower as fast as he can.
He passes through the first sections of Thebel and Arqa in little time: delighted to not see any shadow, but as he arrives at the first floor of Yabbasha he's stopped by a wise and fatherly voice calling him.
"Little one, what is tormenting your heart?" asks the voice, who's owner is an elderly man with a long white beard wearing a conical straw hat and a yellow mantle and holding a cane.
"You..." Makoto looks at the old man confused at first, but he feels a strange connection to the figure in front of him.
"Kohryu? Why do you look like this?" asks the boy, however he shakes his head thinking about his goal.
"Not now, I have to reach the top of Tartarus" says Makoto dismissing the Huang Long and returning to run, but the dragon doesn't listen to the boy putting his cane in front of him stopping Makoto from running away. "Calm down and breathe boy. Speak to me" says Kohryu with calm in his deep voice.
Makoto stops and looks at the old man. "Kohryu... I don't feel Thanatos anymore, but Elizabeth said that my bond with Death is still as strong in this world". Makoto clenches his fists.
"Ryoji could be here Kohryu! I have to see him..." says Makoto with a regretful look. "This is a trivial matter boy. Death, or as you know him, Ryoji Mochizuki is indeed here, after all Tartarus is his dominion" says the dragon pointing towards a Monad door.
"But still this is permitted by the Universe inside your soul. Enter the door and cleanse your mind. Don't let regret consume you" Kohryu puts down his cane letting Makoto free to leave.
"I know... you are right. I shouldn't feel this way, but still... it's hard Kohryu" Makoto thanks the chinese dragon who nods in understanding. "It's only normal to feel fear, regret or pain Makoto. Now go" says Kohryu patting Makoto's shoulder like a grandfather does to a grandson who just needed some good old wisdom.
Makoto doesn't wait a second more and heads to the Monad. Once he's in front of the red door he opens it and enters the distorted section of Tartarus. By following Kohryu's instructions he creates a new Monad passage which leads to the very top of Tartarus and Makoto starts to ascend the tower.
Once he steps out from the Monad the door just created behind him crumbles down and he finds himself at the very top of the tower, under the full Moon.
He looks ahead and sees him. Ryoji with his usual yellow scarf is looking at the Moon. "You have freed both of us Makoto" he says smiling. Ryoji then faces Makoto, the two look at each other for a second face to face.
"You are alive..." Makoto says breaking his usual stoic face on the verge of tears. "I'm here Makoto. I promised you I'd always be by your side and now I'm here" says Ryoji reassuring Makoto. They stay in silent for some time under the Moon.
"Well, we have work to do don't we?" says Ryoji with a wide smile.on his face. "You know what my mission is?" asks Makoto surprised.
"Yes, and I hate it. Even Nyx herself warned me how much Nyarlathotep is dangerous, she described him as a rebellious yet cunning child, but I trust you and this time I won't leave" says Ryoji.
"You never left me" Makoto looks again at the boy smiling with contempt.
"Well, let's go and explore this world" says Ryoji transforming into Thanatos and delving into Makoto's mind. After this the blue haired boy returns to the Velvet Room and is greeted by Elizabeth who was still sitting at the counter.
"Has your meeting with Death gone well?" asks her to which Makoto nods smiling. "Liz have you found something about the city we are in?" says the Messiah changing subject and returning to a work mindset.
"I'm happy you asked, I have indeed found something. This city is named Kuoh Town and it's in the Kanto region" informs Elizabeth taking out a sort of map.
"Yatagarasu has scouted the area and reported back useful information. I have drawn this map myself. I hope you like it" she says proudly, giving Makoto the map.
"Useful, thanks Liz" Makoto briefly studies the map given to him not finding anything out of the ordinary, it seems a normal city.
"Well, I'm heading out" says Makoto exiting the Velvet Room. "I didn't find any shadow presence in town or in the surrounding area so it should be safe, but-" Elizabeth doesn't finish speaking that Makoto has already left.
"Oh well, I guess I'll go out too then" as Elizabeth says this she stands up 'Maybe I could try new clothes, I never actually wore anything aside my uniform' thinks the woman.
"After all shopping is a common human activity and it should be useful to acquaint myself with the city" and so Elizabeth too exits the Velvet Room.