The holding cell beneath Gremory estate was designed for comfort.
Silk sheets. Actual furniture. A window that showed an illusion of the human world's sky. Everything a prisoner could want, as long as they didn't mind the magic-suppressing shackles and the barrier preventing teleportation.
I sat on the bed, staring at my hands.
Riser's blood had been cleaned away hours ago. The burns from the fight had healed under Asia's reluctant touch before they'd locked me up. Physically, I was fine.
Everything else was a different story.
"You're brooding," the Fragment observed. "Unproductive."
I killed someone.
"Yes. You've established this."
After he surrendered.
"Also established. Are we done with the self-flagellation, or would you like another hour?"
I didn't answer. The Fragment's dismissiveness should have bothered me. Instead, it just felt... accurate. I'd killed Riser. I should feel something about that. Guilt. Horror. Satisfaction.
I felt nothing.
And that nothing was more terrifying than any emotion could have been.
The door opened without warning.
Sirzechs Lucifer entered alone, no guards, no attendants. He wore simple clothes - as simple as a Satan could manage - and his expression carried the weight of someone who'd been in too many meetings.
"Ryder Cross." He pulled a chair to face me, sat. "We need to talk."
"About the execution demand?"
His eyebrows rose. "You know about that?"
"Lord Phenex wasn't subtle." I met his eyes. "How long do I have?"
"If I do nothing? A week, maybe less. The Phenex clan is demanding blood. Half the nobility is backing them - some out of genuine outrage, some because they see an opportunity to weaken the Gremory position."
"And the other half?"
"Split. Some think you're a monster who violated the sacred rules of Rating Games. Others..." A thin smile. "Others are calling you the 'Phoenix Killer' with something closer to admiration. Riser wasn't well-liked outside his own clan."
I absorbed this. Political factions. Power plays. All of it swirling around the simple fact that I'd murdered a man in front of the entire underworld nobility.
"What do you want to know?"
Sirzechs leaned forward. "Tell me what happened. Not the public version. The real one."
I told him.
The Echoes. The way Dohnaseek's instincts had merged with my own. The Fragment's observation without interference. The moment when I couldn't tell which thoughts were mine and which were borrowed.
"Seventy-three percent," I said. "That's what the... analysis said. Seventy-three percent of the influence in that final strike came from absorbed memories."
Sirzechs's expression didn't change. "You're saying you weren't in control."
"I'm saying I don't know if I was in control. The Echoes wanted him dead. All of them. And I... I didn't disagree strongly enough to stop."
"That's not a defense that would work in a tribunal."
"I know."
"It also raises questions about what you are. Questions I can't afford to have asked publicly." He studied me. "You're not a Sacred Gear user. Not exactly. What the Fragment is doing to you - it's something I've never seen before."
"Neither have I."
We sat in silence for a moment. Two devils, one a Satan, one a murderer, neither with good options.
"I'm going to try to get you probation," Sirzechs said finally. "Execution is off the table if I can help it. But you'll owe the Gremory clan, and by extension, me. That's the deal."
"And if you can't?"
"Then we have other problems."
The wall exploded inward.
Stone and magic shattered together, the holding cell's wards screaming as something forced its way through. Sirzechs was on his feet instantly, power flaring -
A figure stepped through the breach.
Humanoid. Hooded. Moving with the fluid grace of something that had been hunting since before recorded history. Power radiated from it in waves that made my suppressed magic scream in recognition.
[RESTORATION AGENT #7: CHRONOS]
[Power Level: 65]
[Ability: Temporal Decay - ages anything it touches]
[Fighting while shackled: Power Level reduced to 40]
[Victory method: Echo-predicted movement patterns]
"The First Fragment." Its voice carried harmonics that hurt to hear. "You will be collected."
Sirzechs raised his hand -
The Restoration agent moved faster. Not toward him. Toward the door behind us.
A Gremory servant stood there, frozen in shock. A maid who'd probably come to check on the commotion. Wrong place. Wrong time.
The agent's hand reached for her face. Temporal Decay would age her to dust in seconds.
I moved.
Fighting while shackled was a nightmare.
My power level sat at 40 - barely half my normal capacity. The suppression magic turned every movement into a struggle, every attack into a pale shadow of what it should be.
But the Echoes didn't care about power levels.
Kiba's footwork carried me between the agent and the servant. I didn't have his speed, but I had his patterns - decades of sword training compressed into borrowed instinct.
The agent's hand swept past me, inches from my chest. Where it touched, my uniform aged and crumbled.
That would have been my heart.
I pivoted. Used Koneko's grounded stance to absorb my own momentum. Came up with my shackled hands raised, channeling what little Light Lance I could manage.
The golden spear was pathetic - half the size it should be, barely glowing. But it was aimed at the agent's eyes.
It flinched. Gave me the opening I needed.
Akeno's lightning timing. Not her power - I couldn't manifest that while suppressed - but her rhythm. The way she waited for the exact moment an opponent committed to an attack.
The agent lunged. I sidestepped.
My shackled hands caught its wrist.
And twisted.
The agent was stronger than me. Faster. More powerful in every measurable way.
But it had never fought someone with borrowed instincts from a dozen sources.
Every pattern it used, I'd seen before. Every attack, I could predict. Not through analysis - through Echo. Dohnaseek's combat experience. Kiba's sword training. Koneko's close-quarters brutality.
I couldn't match its power. But I could anticipate every move it made.
We danced through the shattered cell, trading blows that should have killed me. Its Temporal Decay aged my left arm to the bone before I managed to pull back. The pain was abstract - something happening to someone else.
Sirzechs watched. Didn't intervene. I felt his eyes on me, calculating.
He wants to see what I can do.
Fine. I'd show him.
The agent overextended - a mistake no veteran fighter would make, but it was used to overwhelming opponents with raw power. I dropped under its guard, drove my shackled fists into its chest.
Not enough force to hurt it. But enough to unbalance.
It stumbled.
I caught its arm again. Pulled. Twisted its momentum against itself.
Drove it face-first into the cell's remaining wall.
The impact cracked stone. The agent tried to rise -
Sirzechs's power finally descended.
One moment, the Restoration agent was struggling to stand.
The next, it simply... wasn't.
Power of Destruction didn't just kill. It erased. Unmade. The agent's body dissolved in crimson-black light, leaving nothing behind.
Nothing except a symbol burned into the floor.
A twelve-pointed star.
"The First Fragment will be collected."
The agent's last words hung in the air as its ashes scattered.
"You fought while shackled." Sirzechs's voice carried something I couldn't identify. "Against an opponent that outclassed you. To protect a servant you've never met."
"She was going to die."
"Many would have let her."
"Then many are wrong."
He studied me for a long moment. The maid had been evacuated, trembling but alive. Guards were sealing the breach. The crisis was over.
But something had changed in the way Sirzechs looked at me.
"The trial is tomorrow," he said finally. "This attack... complicates things. But it also proves you're willing to fight for Gremory interests, even in chains."
"I wasn't fighting for Gremory interests. I was fighting because someone needed help."
"I know." A thin smile. "That's what makes it valuable."
[POLITICAL UPDATE]
- Execution demand: PHENEX (escalated)
- Public perception: PHOENIX KILLER (mixed)
- Gremory position: PROTECTING (grudging respect)
- Trial date: MOVED TO TOMORROW
```
Rias came that night.
The guards let her through without question - she was still my King, regardless of my legal status. She found me sitting in what remained of the cell, my aged arm wrapped in bandages Asia had applied before leaving.
"You fought."
"Yeah."
"While shackled. Against something that could kill you."
"It was going to hurt someone."
"One of my servants. Someone you don't know."
I shrugged. The motion hurt. "She didn't deserve to die."
Rias was quiet for a moment. The tension from the Rating Game's aftermath - the shock, the confusion, the what did you do - still hung between us. But something had shifted.
"You didn't have to fight," she said finally.
I met her eyes.
"Yeah. I did."
She sat beside me on the damaged bed. Not close - the distance between us still measured miles. But closer than before.
"The trial is tomorrow. Sirzechs says he can probably get you probation. Community service of some kind. Not execution."
"Probably."
"He's a Satan. When he says probably, he means definitely." She looked at my bandaged arm. "You protected one of mine. Even after everything that's happened. That... means something."
"Does it?"
"To me." Her voice was quiet. "I don't know what happened at the end of that fight. I don't know why you killed Riser after he yielded. But I know you fought for me today. For my people. That's not nothing."
The Fragment stirred. "Her sentiment changes. The Echo grows weaker when she speaks."
I didn't understand what that meant. Didn't have the energy to ask.
"Get some sleep," Rias said, standing. "Tomorrow's going to be long."
She paused at the door.
"For what it's worth... I'm glad you're still here."
She left before I could respond.
"The Restoration will return," the Fragment said into the silence. "They know where you are now."
What do they want?
"Me. You. The same thing, to them."
And the Watcher? The one they mentioned?
The Fragment's voice carried something I'd never heard before.
Fear.
"Pray you never find out."