POV: Rias Gremory
....
The first step should've hurt more.
Rias expected collapse. After the fall, the screaming, the black nothing that sucked them from their world, her body should have been broken. At the very least, her legs should've buckled under her own weight. But they didn't. She was still breathing, and still standing.
Her first thought wasn't relief.
It was confusion.
The terrain beneath her feet wasn't ground. It was something dead—pale, cracked, and cold enough that even the wind seemed to hesitate before touching it. The air tasted like static. Thin, dry, metallic. The sky was black. Not clouded. Not night. Just... wrong. Starless. Empty.
Akeno stumbled beside her, breathing hard but not doubled over. Her eyes flicked around the landscape, calculating, alert. They had landed—no, been delivered—somewhere that defied everything they knew. There were no landmarks. No magic currents. No ley lines. The world felt hollow and too still, like a painting waiting for the brushstroke that would ruin it.
And yet... they were alive.
More than alive.
Rias flexed her fingers. There was sensation. Grip. Heat beneath her skin. Her heart pounded, but her blood was moving clean and fast. Her spine ached from the impact, but already, the pain was fading. Not numbing. Healing.
Her magic, however, didn't answer.
Not gone. Just quiet.
Like a lion curled up in the corner of a cage, watching. Breathing.
Akeno coughed. "I don't like this."
Rias turned slowly. "You shouldn't."
Their bodies were responding—strong, efficient, even enhanced—but their magic? Stillborn. She could feel the mass of her potential, coiled and dormant in the marrow of her bones, but the threads refused to ignite.
Then the shadow came.
The creature moved too fast for shape. A blur of hunger and muscle, slipping over the ridge like oil made solid. Rias didn't scream. Neither did Akeno. They braced.
But someone else moved faster.
Steel split the air, followed by a scream—not from them. A weight thudded into the ice, twitching once, twice, then stopped. Dead. Cut clean.
The man stood above it.
Rias's eyes locked on him. He wasn't large. Not armored. Just there. Presence more than body. Blade black as pitch. Hood shadowing a face too young for the way he moved. She recognized nothing about him—except that he'd saved them.
"If you scream again," he said, not looking at them, "you'll die before I get bored enough to help."
Then he walked.
The rest of the day—if that's what it was—unfolded in silence.
He didn't speak.
He didn't wait.
He just walked.
And they followed.
Rias was surprised by how quickly her body adapted. Her legs moved without exhaustion. Her breath came clean. Her body devoured terrain that would've shredded her old limits. Her devil blood had always made her superior to humans—but here, it was the only thing keeping her alive.
More surprising was that they could keep pace with him.
Sunny wasn't normal. He moved with the awareness of a predator who expected ambush around every stone. And yet he moved fast—faster than any soldier she'd seen on a battlefield, even faster than some dragons she'd fought beside.
But they kept up.
Her and Akeno.
They ran without slowing. Climbed without breaking. They moved through the nightmare like they weren't just surviving—but adapting.
At one point, Sunny looked over his shoulder.
A short look. One beat.
Recalibration.
He hadn't expected them to last.
She caught a glance between him and the terrain. He had been calculating how far ahead he could go before losing them. Now, he measured something else. Risk versus potential. Utility.
He didn't speak, but his body language shifted. Slightly. Less like a lone scout, more like someone testing what could be carried.
The terrain grew more hostile. The air colder. Every ridge seemed built to shred soles. Every turn was a potential trap. There were signs—scratches too deep to be wind, claw marks in stone, bones too clean to be scavenged.
Still, they moved.
They didn't speak. Sunny didn't offer questions, and they didn't waste breath.
They finally reached a ridge of calcified bone—giant ribs arched like a collapsed temple—and he stopped. One knee down. Fingers brushed frost. A knife skated across the surface. Silent check.
Then he sat. Back to bone. Weapon across his knees.
Nothing more.
Akeno dropped beside Rias, slow but steady. Her breath even. The healing was nearly complete.
Rias stayed standing. Watching him.
He didn't look tired. Just ready.
"Is this where we rest?" she asked finally.
He didn't glance up. "Unless you're planning to keep walking alone."
"I'm not the one out of breath."
He tilted his head. Not amusement. Just acknowledgement.
"You're not human," he said.
Rias nodded. "Devils."
"Physiology?"
"Enhanced strength, stamina, endurance, fast healing. Wings. Hidden."
"Magic?"
"Still inside," Akeno said. "But dormant. It's... locked. This place doesn't let us call it."
He nodded once. "That tracks. This world doesn't play nice with outside systems. Surprised you're not corrupted."
"We've been through worse."
Sunny glanced at her for the first time. A real look.
"No. You haven't."
They sat in silence. Darkness overhead. The black sky didn't shimmer. Didn't breathe. Just... waited.
Eventually, Rias asked, "What is this place really?"
"The Seventh Layer. Final Nightmare. Doesn't matter what you call it. You're in a dream that doesn't want you here."
Akeno tilted her head. "But you're here."
"I earned it."
"How?"
He didn't answer.
A long time passed before Akeno shifted again.
"So this... this is the last level?"
Sunny's eyes remained closed.
"It's the end of someone's idea of reality. That doesn't mean it's the end of you."
"Not exactly comforting," Rias muttered.
"It's not supposed to be."
That night, as her body rested but her mind refused to sleep, Rias felt it.
A flicker.
Inside her spine. Her shoulders. The folded place behind her heart.
Not magic.
Muscle.
Wings.
Not extended. Not summoned. But aware.
She didn't release them. Didn't test them.
But she knew, for the first time since arriving, that she wasn't just surviving.
She was adapting.
And she wasn't done yet.