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The sky trembled.
Above them, a presence unfolded.
It had no wings, no eyes, no true shape. Just the impression of mass. Of watching. A thing ancient and motionless that had decided — finally — to move. Rias felt her pulse spike. Her magic, still raw and barely restrained, thrashed in her chest like a living beast.
Sunny stepped forward, blade already in hand. He didn't speak. He didn't warn.
He just moved.
And that was when she knew: this thing was not like the others.
The descent didn't stir wind. It stirred dread.
Akeno stood beside her. She said nothing either. Her expression was tight, focused. Eight black wings spread wide from her back in anticipation.
The creature — if it even was a creature — slowed. Its form unfurled across the sky like ink bleeding into water. Too many limbs. Too many suggestions of mouths. It did not fall. It slid, gravity folding inward around it.
Rias reached into herself.
The Power of Destruction responded — slow, deliberate. It was still adjusting to this world, to this way of being, but it was hers again. And now, it burned.
She looked sideways.
Sunny didn't glance at them. He walked into the open space at the center of their camp, into full view of the falling shadow.
And then —
He disappeared.
Not vanished. Not teleported in the magical sense.
He stepped.
Rias blinked. One second, he was there.
The next — he was behind the creature.
His blade screamed as it carved upward.
The Dream answered.
And the battle began.
The monster split apart like liquid shadow, peeling open into three humanoid torsos, each one wearing a distorted version of their own faces — Rias, Akeno, and Sunny — but twisted with hollowness and lightless eyes. They shrieked in perfect disharmony.
Akeno lunged first. Lightning flared from her hand, wild and too bright — it struck one of the mirrored torsos and exploded in a fountain of melted air. But the creature twisted again, its parts reforming mid-strike, the pieces flowing like tar.
Rias tried to flank, calling destruction into her palm. The energy felt dense, heavy, like trying to breathe underwater. But she pushed — forced her will into shape — and flung a disk of annihilation toward the false Sunny's head.
It missed. Not because she was inaccurate, but because the Dream moved it.
Sunny reappeared beside her, breath steady.
"You have to fight smarter," he muttered.
"I'm not used to it bending the laws against me."
"It bends what you think. So stop thinking like it wants you to."
The creature lashed out again, claws forming from its fused torsos. Akeno caught the strike with a barrier of condensed lightning — her wings glowed like backlit obsidian. Sunny shadow-stepped again, this time mid-combat, appearing above the beast and stabbing downward.
It roared.
This time, Sunny didn't retreat. His shadow — impossibly long — surged upward and wrapped around the monster's limbs. The thing convulsed, bound by a dozen lines of living darkness.
"That's not natural magic," Akeno whispered.
"No," Rias said. "That's him."
The shadow solidified.
And another Sunny stepped out of it.
A perfect, mirrored twin. It moved opposite him — flanking, slashing, binding again.
"What—" Rias blinked.
"Shadow Avatar," Sunny said calmly.
Rias didn't hesitate. She stepped forward, cupped a vortex of pure destruction in her hands, and hurled it point-blank into the center mass.
This time, it landed.
And it screamed.
The monster buckled inward, its false faces twisting into agony as the Power of Destruction collapsed its structure. Rias gritted her teeth, pushing the core deeper, closer to rupture.
"Fall already!" she shouted.
Akeno followed up — twin spears of Holy Lightning stabbed into the collapsing body. The storm crackled like divine judgment.
And Sunny's blade — forged in shadow — carved through the final anchor holding it upright.
With a last, echoing screech, the creature imploded.
And silence returned.
The Dream held its breath.
And then, the earth moved.
The ground beneath them cracked. Not violently — but intentionally. In silence, a spiral staircase unfurled downward from the ruin beneath their feet, made of midnight glass and ash.
They stared at it.
No one spoke.
Until Sunny exhaled.
"That wasn't a predator," he said. "That was a test."
He glanced at Rias.
"You passed."