The air changed the moment her foot touched the first stair.
Not in temperature. Not in pressure.
But in meaning.
Akeno felt it like a shiver in her bones — a change in gravity that didn't tilt the world, but her soul. This wasn't a stairwell. It was a threshold. And now they were crossing it.
Sunny led. He didn't look back.
Rias followed, her crimson hair trailing behind her like a banner of blood and fire. She hadn't spoken since the battle above.
Akeno took up the rear, eyes flicking to the stone around them.
The walls were smooth. Seamless. But they weren't carved — they were grown. Bone and shadow, woven together like muscle and silk. The deeper they went, the less stable it felt. Sound echoed wrong. Light came from nowhere. Every few steps, gravity turned sideways, then reset.
But they didn't stop.
Because stopping meant asking what waited at the bottom.
And none of them wanted to guess.
Akeno noticed it first.
After the battle, her body had felt... alive. Charged. Not just because she'd accessed her Holy Lightning or spread her wings.
She felt different.
Faster.
Stronger.
Not just recovered.
Evolved.
She hadn't mentioned it at first. Thought it might be shock. Or adrenaline. But then, when they passed a curve in the stairwell that looped back on itself like a spiral of ribs, she saw the way Rias moved.
Sharper. Quieter.
Their power wasn't just returning.
It was growing.
Rias confirmed it in a whisper that night when they stopped to rest on a flat stone outcropping.
"I feel it too. Like something's feeding us. Every time we kill. Every time we bleed."
Sunny didn't comment.
Akeno leaned forward, voice low. "The beasts... they're connected to the Dream, right?"
Sunny's eyes glimmered faintly in the dark. "Everything here is."
Rias narrowed hers. "Then if we kill them—"
"You absorb part of the world," Sunny said. "That's how it works."
"Then we're changing."
"Good," Sunny replied, already lying back. "You'll need to."
Akeno stared at the ceiling of the stairwell — where veins of black light pulsed.
They weren't just surviving the Dream.
They were becoming part of it.
....
The stairwell finally ended in silence.
No echo. No wind. Just a cold, expansive space that opened before them like a mouth held shut for centuries — and now, at last, exhaling.
The three stepped onto a smooth, circular floor of pale black stone. It pulsed underfoot, almost too faint to feel — like standing atop a slumbering heart.
Before them stood the gate.
It wasn't a door in the traditional sense. It had no hinges. No seams. It was just… there. A massive surface formed from interlocked ribs, with threads of dark crystal stretched between them like sinew. Each bone was carved with unfamiliar symbols that shifted when stared at. The symbols didn't glow. They pulsed, as if alive.
Akeno squinted.
"…It's not sealed by magic," she whispered. "It's sealed by thought."
Rias moved closer. Her voice was tight. "Or memory."
Sunny said nothing. He walked up to the door and stopped only when his nose was nearly touching the center. His shadow pooled unnaturally around his feet, spreading without a light source.
Then, slowly, he raised his hand.
"Wait," Akeno said sharply. "You don't know what it—"
His fingers touched bone.
The door reacted immediately.
Tendrils of shadow lashed out — fast and silent — wrapping around his wrist and piercing into the flesh of his palm.
Akeno flinched. "Sunny!"
He didn't cry out. He didn't pull back.
He just let the blood flow.
And it was not red.
It was black.
Thick, slow, and lightless — like ink from the bottom of the sea. It slid down the tendrils and into the door, and as it did, the bone hissed — sank — and began to unravel.
Not open.
Unravel.
The interwoven ribs unspooled into threads and peeled themselves back from the center, revealing darkness beyond. True darkness. Not absence of light — absence of existence.
Sunny stepped back, flexing his hand once. The wound sealed. No scar remained.
Rias stared at him. "That blood…"
"I told you not to ask about me," he said simply.
Akeno's throat was dry.
She looked into the passage beyond the unraveling gate.
And for the first time in days, she felt real fear.
The air on the other side smelled of nothing. Not rot. Not frost. Just absence.
She reached for Rias's hand. The girl didn't flinch. Their fingers closed together, silently.
Sunny walked through first.
And the two followed.
What lay beyond was not the next level.
It was something older.
Beneath the Dream.
Beneath the system.
And waiting in that blackness… was a temple.
Not ruins. Not broken. Whole.
Alive.
Built of the same bone that littered the Seventh Layer — but dense, polished, perfect. Its walls were smooth and slightly curved inward, like a cathedral formed by the ribs of a god. There were no windows. No doors. Just one long corridor that led into the heart.
The walls breathed.
Rias stepped forward first this time. She placed her palm on the stone.
It was warm.
And then it took something from her.
She jerked her hand back with a hiss.
Akeno's eyes widened. "What did it—?"
"Memories," Rias said quietly. "Only one. A birthday."
The temple had stolen her memory of a small, happy moment.
But as they moved deeper, it gave something back.
There, in the central chamber, carved into the wall in sweeping black lines…
Was a mural.
A figure.
Tall.
Alone.
Wrapped in a cloak of living shadows.
His face was cracked. His eyes were hollow.
But they knew who it was.
It was Sunny.
Not him now.
Older.
Scarred.
And smiling.
Rias's voice was small.
"…What are you?"
Sunny stared at the mural for a long time.
Then finally answered:
"Still trying to figure that out."