---
The air had stopped moving again.
They'd learned to recognize it by now — the stillness before something shifted. Whether it was the terrain, the atmosphere, or something worse, the warning was always the same. The wind vanished. The sky refused to breathe.
This time, Rias felt it before Sunny said anything.
He was already ahead, crouched at the edge of a fissure that hadn't been there an hour ago. The land had split, jagged and black, like the ground had forgotten how to hold itself together. Bones jutted from the edges. Not fossilized. Fresh.
Akeno walked beside her in silence, her expression unreadable. She hadn't spoken much since the breakdown.
Neither had Rias.
The pain hadn't gone anywhere. It had just... settled. Become part of her. A quiet ache under her ribs, like bruised pride. A reminder that they weren't just lost — they were stranded beyond understanding. Her power still hadn't returned, not fully. But the raw durability of her body had stabilized. She could move. Fight. Bleed.
But she couldn't fly.
And without flight, Rias felt the weight of everything.
---
Sunny glanced over his shoulder. "Something's coming up from underneath. We don't stand here."
That was all the warning he gave.
They moved.
He didn't explain where. Rias had stopped expecting explanations. He wasn't unkind — he was just focused. Every step was about survival, and he assumed they'd follow unless they wanted to die.
They did.
She matched his pace, Akeno just behind. The wind was still gone. The horizon ahead shimmered like melted glass.
They crossed a field of stone that looked like shattered mirrors, the pieces reflecting twisted versions of the sky — stars that blinked when they looked directly at them. Rias averted her gaze. Akeno stumbled once, cursed softly.
Sunny said nothing, but slowed. Just enough.
It took three hours to reach the next ridge.
---
When they stopped, it was on a plateau carved into the side of a jagged cliff. Above them, more bone structures loomed — architecture left behind by something too big to comprehend. Giant ribs, stone towers melted into curves. The Dream was folding in on itself here.
Sunny scanned the air, then crouched by a half-buried ruin.
Rias sat on the cold ground, letting her shoulders slump. Akeno followed suit. The silence was comfortable now — or at least, not hostile.
Finally, Rias spoke.
"What is this place, really? Not just the Seventh Layer. The system. The... design."
Sunny didn't look at her. "You wouldn't understand."
"Try me."
He was quiet for a while. Then:
"This is a dream. Not like your kind's magic dreams. I mean literally. A mental reality. What you're seeing, breathing, bleeding in — it's not physical."
Rias frowned. "But we're here. We summoned ourselves. Our bodies—"
"Are asleep," Sunny interrupted. "Still in your world. Still where you left them. What's here is your mind — your soul, if you believe in that word."
Akeno looked startled. "You're saying we left our bodies behind? That this isn't... a physical world?"
"It never was," Sunny said. "The Dream Realm is a structure built to test minds. It doesn't need bodies. That's why you didn't die when you fell in — your flesh didn't follow."
Rias shook her head slowly. "We thought we pulled ourselves in — entirely. A full-plane shift. That it was a real world."
"That's the lie it wants you to believe," Sunny muttered. "And it's good at it."
He stood, brushing frost off his gloves. "This isn't travel. It's entrapment. You didn't summon yourselves in. You were caught. Just like the rest of us."
Akeno's voice was quiet. "Caught by what?"
"The Spell," Sunny said. "It watches everything that sleeps. And on the winter solstice... it chooses."
The girls stared at him.
"The Dream Realm," he continued, "isn't optional. At least not for Sleepers. Every year, on the winter solstice, anyone who sleeps is pulled in. Doesn't matter who. Doesn't matter where. Doesn't even matter if they want to."
Rias's face paled.
"So we were... fated to fall in?"
"No. You were drawn in early. Something interfered. Your summoning tore through the veil. That's why the system didn't reject you outright. But make no mistake—"
He turned toward the horizon.
"You're not visiting. You're trapped."
---
They sat in silence for a long time.
Finally, Rias broke it. Her voice low, but steady.
"You deserve the truth. We didn't summon ourselves into this place out of curiosity. We did it to save someone."
Sunny raised an eyebrow.
Rias stared into the distance. Her voice was more memory than speech now.
"His name was Issei. He wasn't perfect — reckless, annoying sometimes, but... he gave everything for us. For me. Just a boy. But he saved lives. Over and over. And when he was dying... we made a choice."
She closed her eyes.
"We thought we could tear open a space between worlds. Pull him through. Hide him in a dimension so deep not even death could follow."
Akeno shifted beside her, voice quiet. "But we didn't just open the veil. We broke it. Something else reached in. Grabbed us. Dragged us in instead."
"And left him behind?" Sunny asked.
Rias nodded.
"We lost everything," she whispered. "My home — Gremory territory. My brother. My servants. My friends. They're probably still searching for us. Or mourning us. Or... moved on."
Akeno's voice trembled, but she spoke clearly. "My father is a priest. He hated what I became. My mother died when I was young. Rias took me in. Her family gave me everything I never had. That's why I followed her. Why I'll keep following."
She looked at Sunny. "You can write us off as liabilities. But we've been broken before. We know how to survive it."
Sunny didn't respond.
He just watched them. These girls — regal, magical, beautiful — sitting hunched and dirt-streaked under a broken sky, speaking softly about a world he couldn't touch. And yet, their grief felt... familiar.
"You risked your lives for one person," he said.
Rias nodded. "We loved him."
"Then maybe you're not useless after all," Sunny murmured.
---
Far away, in an unknown location outside the Dream Realm, a cluster of bodies lay suspended in crystalline pods, surrounded by humming machinery.
Men and women. Some old. Some young.
All breathing.
All still.
The date glowing on the chamber wall was unmistakable:
Winter Solstice.
A technician moved down the rows of Sleepers, tapping monitors, not looking them in the eye.
In one of the pods, a young woman with crimson hair twitched — once — then stilled again.
In another pod, a girl with long black hair stirred.
Their eyes didn't open.
Because their minds were no longer there.