The next morning at Kuoh Academy arrived with golden sunlight and artificial normalcy.
The school buzzed with students, laughter, and distant gossip about "mirror tricks" and "weird light shows" during the fire drill the day before. Most chalked it up to a prank—maybe the Occult Research Club again.
But Rias Gremory couldn't laugh.
She sat at her desk in homeroom, eyes sharp but distant, her posture perfect yet taut, as if every movement was a conscious decision. Even Akeno, who usually greeted her with teasing calm, hesitated.
"Rias…" Akeno whispered, leaning in. "Did he do something to you?"
Rias didn't answer immediately.
She thought about the reflection in the mirror. The pleading girl inside her—half-shadow, half-fire—asking if she was content being a pawn, even if she ruled the board.
"No," she finally said. "He didn't do anything… not really. He just… showed me something."
Akeno frowned, sensing the truth and the danger in it.
Elsewhere in the School – The Trickster Observes
Amon sat on the edge of the rooftop, legs swinging off the side like a child admiring the wind.
He wasn't invisible. He was just… overlooked. That was the brilliance of his presence—people's minds filtered him out unless he wanted to be seen. A metaphysical loophole.
Below, he watched as Sona Shitori and Tsubaki discussed club finances, unaware their voices were echoing slightly louder than normal, just enough for a student below to overhear and spread rumors.
Amon grinned. Little causes. Large ripples.
But what truly caught his attention was Issei Hyoudou, standing alone behind the gym, staring at the silver coin again.
Issei and the Coin
Issei hadn't slept well.
The coin hadn't left his hand since he found it. He tried once—set it on his desk, turned off the light—but when he woke up, it was in his palm again.
"Ddraig… why won't it go away?"
{Because it wants to be held. That coin is alive in ways we don't yet understand. It resonates on a frequency neither divine nor demonic. It's like… a law pretending to be an object.}
Issei flipped the coin again.
It never landed.
Every time he tossed it, it hovered, spinning slowly in the air before fading from sight… only to be in his hand again. No matter the angle, no matter the force.
He looked up to find Amon standing there, out of nowhere.
"Still playing with fate?" Amon asked, voice light and disarming.
Issei stepped back. "You… you left this. What is it?"
"A test. Or a toy. Depends on you." Amon smiled.
"I don't get it."
"You don't need to." Amon leaned in, whispering like a devil into a sinner's ear. "But the moment you do, the world will stop pretending."
Issei's hand clenched tighter around the coin.
"What do you want from us?"
Amon tilted his head. "Oh, Issei… I don't want anything. I just enjoy watching what happens when people are no longer caged by lies. Especially the ones they tell themselves."
Azazel's Viewpoint – The Strategist Watches
Far above Kuoh, cloaked within a bubble of suspended time, Azazel floated with arms folded. His black-feathered wings tucked neatly behind him, and his golden mechanical eye glowed with sigils.
He was observing—always observing.
The feed he monitored didn't come from cameras or clairvoyant spells, but a shifting lattice of emotional disturbances, logical ruptures, and symbolic incongruities rippling across the fabric of reality.
Amon had triggered 37 in the last 48 hours.
Not catastrophes. Not explosions. But… contradictions.
Mirrors showing unrecorded reflections.
Students confessing truths they shouldn't know.
One girl reported seeing her future self scolding her from a window.
Azazel muttered, "He's not attacking. He's… eroding."
Another screen showed Issei's aura, warped slightly by the coin.
"Ddraig," Azazel said aloud, "you can feel it too, can't you?"
{Yes. He has touched a higher realm than ours. The logic of this world breaks around him.}
"He's introducing an alien concept. Something this dimension has no antibodies for." Azazel tapped the air and summoned a memory image—Amon splitting into five laughing selves in the sanctum. "He doesn't just lie. He refuses truth as a concept."
And that… was terrifying.
Rias' Second Reflection
That evening, Rias returned to the Occult Research Club's room, alone.
The others had gone home. She told them she needed rest.
Instead, she lit candles, drew sigils, and summoned a mirror of revealing—an ancient artifact her father once locked away. She never thought she'd use it. It wasn't meant for physical truths. It showed the emotional scars one carried. The ones you refused to name.
She stared into the mirror, half-expecting Amon to appear behind her again.
He didn't.
But the girl in the glass had the same crimson hair. The same eyes.
She smiled. Bitterly.
"You're still just a pawn," the mirror-Rias said. "Even now."
"No," Rias whispered.
"Then why can't you throw it all away?"
Rias clenched her fists. "Because… I still love them. My family. My friends. Even if they use me. Even if they expect me to dance."
"Then maybe he's right."
Rias blinked. "Who?"
"Amon."
The mirror shattered.
The Butterfly Breaks
As Rias picked up a shard of the mirror, she felt the sting on her finger—blood drawn.
In the reflection of the shard, her eyes were glowing faintly. Not red… but gold. For a fraction of a second, she saw her face wearing Amon's monocle.
Elsewhere – The First Crack
That night, three students at Kuoh Academy vanished.
No alarms were raised.
No parents called.
They had been conceptually erased. Their absence caused no sorrow, no memory. Only the most observant—like Azazel and Sona—felt something wrong but couldn't say what.
In truth, they had entered a door behind a library shelf that should not have existed.
Inside was a room of infinite reflections.
And Amon was waiting.