POV: Third Person (limited – Akeno to start)
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The quiet after a battle was never peaceful.
It was always waiting.
Akeno sat with her back against a warped slab of ivory bone, one knee pulled to her chest, the other trembling just enough to feel. She wasn't sure if it was from exertion, or from something else.
Her hand still tingled from the last lightning strike. Not a good tingle. A burned one. That thing — Vorak — had copied it so crudely it had nearly melted her own aura trying to deflect it. Her magic was returning slowly, but wrong. Like muscle that had been torn and reattached out of order.
Sunny hadn't said a word since they'd escaped.
Neither had Rias.
The three of them had settled inside a low-ceilinged chamber hidden in the deepest bone-troughs of the Dream. It smelled like salt and sleep — that same cold-blooded stillness that every real Nightmare left behind.
No one had asked if Vorak was truly dead.
They all felt it.
The echoes of its death had sunk into the floor like oil. The Dream itself still trembled with aftershocks. Not from the explosion. Not from the Feedback Overload.
From the event.
From the fact that something that old and that corrupted had actually been slain.
Akeno curled her fingers tighter.
She should've been relieved. Proud.
But all she felt was exposed.
"Do you hear that?" she murmured, voice barely audible.
Rias looked up. Her face was pale — not from fear, but from exhaustion that sat beneath her bones. Her crimson hair, usually immaculate, stuck to her temple in sweat-darkened strands.
Sunny was across the chamber, crouched in front of a wall that pulsed faintly with veins of residual light.
He didn't turn.
"I do."
Akeno swallowed. "It's not just silence, is it?"
"No," he said.
Rias stood slowly. "What is it?"
Sunny finally rose. His blade wasn't drawn, but his shadow was twitching at his heels like a dog hearing thunder.
"They're listening."
Akeno's stomach dropped. "They?"
He turned then. Not to look at them — but to look through them.
"The ones like Vorak."
The word hung in the air.
Not metaphor.
Not maybe.
Like Vorak.
Others.
Rias stepped closer, voice quiet. "You're sure?"
"I saw it in the soul trail," he said. "When Vorak died, something echoed. It wasn't just a death. It was a signal."
Akeno's mind flashed to the mural — the faded images of beasts worse than Vorak. Of the door not made to keep them in, but to let them out.
"And they heard it?"
Sunny nodded once. "One's already moving. Two more stirred. Slowly. But definitely."
"And they're coming here?" Rias asked.
"No," he said. "They don't come here."
He paused.
"They come to whatever kills their kind."
Akeno felt cold crawl up her spine.
It wasn't punishment.
It wasn't even vengeance.
It was instinct.
Predators drawn to the scent of their own dying.
---
Third Person Limited – Sunny
Sunny didn't answer right away.
He turned back toward the wall, his fingers grazing a crack that hadn't been there an hour ago. The surface was smooth bone, but the pulse beneath it still vibrated faintly — not from heat or magic. From something deeper.
From the soul echo.
He hadn't told the others everything.
Vorak's death hadn't just left a wound in the Dream — it had ripped open a seam in its logic. For a moment, in the aftermath, he'd seen beyond.
Not light.
Not darkness.
But… a corridor. Vast. Empty. Echoing.
With names carved into the air.
He didn't know how many.
He hadn't dared to count.
But each one had radiated presence. Pressure. Age.
And something else.
Attention.
The Dream didn't mourn Vorak.
It acknowledged him.
And now it knew Sunny was the one who'd taken him apart.
That wasn't what haunted him.
What haunted him was that one of the names in that corridor — one deeper than the rest — had responded.
Not by moving.
Not by waking.
But by smiling.
He didn't tell Rias that.
He didn't tell Akeno what it said, either.
Not out loud.
But he still heard it in his mind.
In his own voice.
Spoken with precision and warmth.
"Good. You've begun."
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Third Person Limited – Rias
He wasn't telling them everything.
Rias had known it for a while — ever since Sunny named that thing in the dark without hesitation. She hadn't confronted him. Not then. Not during the retreat. Not even when the mural all but confirmed what he'd suspected before seeing it.
But now… now it was getting harder to let the silence slide.
She watched him run his fingers along the wall like it was a living thing, like it could whisper back if he asked politely. He didn't look afraid.
He looked… resigned.
As if whatever came next, he already expected it.
Behind her, Akeno shifted uneasily. The lightning in her aura was dampened now, smothered under a layer of fatigue. They were all running dry. Devil stamina could only carry them so far when the Dream itself seemed to feed off existence.
"We can't stay here," Rias said softly.
Akeno turned her head. "Do we have a choice?"
Sunny didn't speak right away. When he did, it was without turning.
"There's a path down."
That got her attention.
"How far?"
He glanced at her. "Far enough that if we're wrong, we die without ever hearing them arrive."
"And if we're right?"
"We get ahead of them."
Akeno stood slowly, brushing her palm along the bone arch above her head. Her face was unreadable.
"We'll lose light," she said.
Sunny nodded.
"Heat?"
"Some."
"And structure?" Rias added.
Sunny finally smiled — not a comforting expression. Just weary.
"No one's ever charted what's below. Not even the Dream's echoes reach that deep."
Akeno gave a dry laugh. "So it's suicide."
"Or survival," he said. "Depending on how well we guess."
Rias looked between them.
She remembered the mural. The entry gate. The other Echo Beasts.
And the thing Sunny wasn't saying — the reason he kept looking at shadowed corners like they were old acquaintances.
"…Then we go."
Sunny raised an eyebrow. "No hesitation?"
She shook her head.
"We either go forward," she said, "or get eaten while waiting for something worse."
He didn't argue.
Instead, he walked to the back of the chamber, knelt by a wall that looked like all the others — and pressed his hand into the bone. It didn't creak. It didn't groan.
It opened.
A slit formed, thin and wet, into a spiral of raw black stone.
Cold air bled out.
Akeno took one look and muttered, "Smells like regret."
"Good," Sunny said. "That means it's real."
Rias stepped through second.
And as the tunnel sealed behind them, the bone chamber was left in perfect silence…
…until something laughed behind the sealed wall.
Not a real laugh.
Just an echo.
Made of lightning, shadow, and memory.
---
Third Person Limited – Sunny
The steps weren't real.
They existed, yes — but not in any way that could be measured or remembered. Each one shifted slightly beneath his boots. Not physically. Just wrong. Sometimes it felt like he was ascending. Sometimes falling. Sometimes moving sideways through something vast and pulsing.
Sunny didn't mention it.
He didn't need to.
Both girls were quiet behind him — and he could feel their weight in the air.
He focused forward.
His shadow, normally a silent companion, now curled unnaturally along the spiral wall, stretching and shivering like a creature trying to hold onto its anchor.
This place resisted orientation.
Worse — it remembered.
Every so often, a shape moved behind the walls. Not seen. Not sensed.
Just… acknowledged.
Like a thought waiting to be thought again.
"How long?" Akeno's voice, small. Tense.
"Until it stops," Sunny said.
She didn't respond.
He didn't blame her.
This wasn't a journey with steps.
This was a descent in worth.
The deeper they went, the less they belonged. The more the world peeled itself away from their understanding — as if saying:
You shouldn't be here. But since you are… show us something interesting before you die.
The walls grew darker.
Not black.
Colorless.
The faint soul-light in his eye flickered. Even the Dream's aura had difficulty forming here. Magic thinned. Physics unraveled. Voices stopped echoing.
Eventually, the steps ended.
Not with a landing.
With a drop.
Sunny stopped at the edge of the spiral — and looked down.
A yawning chasm stretched below, circular and impossibly wide. The far side was too distant to see. In the center, a series of thin walkways crossed like a spider's web… leading to a singular structure in the middle.
A spire.
Not tall — but deep. It went down, not up. Like an inverted fang stabbed into the world's bones.
Sunny stared.
He didn't speak.
Not yet.
Behind him, Rias stepped beside him.
She said it first.
"…That's not part of the Dream."
Sunny nodded slowly.
"No," he murmured. "That was buried in it."
Akeno peered past them. "So what is it?"
He blinked.
Looked down into the spire again.
Then finally answered:
"A prison."
---
now shift briefly into a limited third-person POV that belongs but to something already awake deep within the inverted spire.
This scene will be cryptic, atmospheric, and ominous — meant to escalate tension and hint at the true stakes.
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Third Person Limited – Unknown Presence
Scene Title: Beneath the Spire
It did not dream.
It had no need.
Dreams were the thoughts of lesser things — flickers of light caught in the teeth of hunger. No, this one had long since abandoned dreaming. It had traded sleep for something more… useful.
Stillness.
Not stasis.
Not slumber.
Coiled stillness.
The kind that meant waiting.
For eons — or for seconds — it didn't matter. Time here was a leaking concept, broken before this layer had ever formed. The stone around it remembered nothing. The air refused to circulate.
But it remembered everything.
Especially the ones like Vorak.
It had no affection for them. No loyalty. But it understood their nature.
Tools.
Probes.
Sometimes, mistakes.
But always necessary.
And when one of them died — when one of them truly expired beneath the hand of a soul strong enough to cause ripples — well…
That changed things.
The ripple had reached even here.
Weak.
Thin.
But distinct.
Like a string being plucked across the bones of the world.
It stirred now.
Only slightly.
Not enough to fracture its bindings — not yet.
But enough to test the air again.
It could feel them above. The three. Wrapped in foreign bloodlines. Shimmering with displaced power. Scarred already.
The Dream had not devoured them.
Which meant they had been noticed.
Soon, they would come closer.
Soon, it would see.
And if it approved—
Then it would teach them what lived before the Dream had a name.
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Third Person Limited – Sunny
The Path Between Worlds
The bridge wasn't made of stone.
Sunny stepped lightly onto it, testing the surface with his weight. It held — but didn't feel solid. Not the way things in the Dream usually were. It pulsed underfoot. Gave slightly, like wet bone wrapped in silk.
The worst part was: it wasn't magic.
It was architecture.
Something had built this.
Not as a test. Not as a ruin.
As a path.
He looked over his shoulder.
Rias followed just behind him, wings flicked tight against her spine, gaze focused and sharp. She wasn't asking questions — which meant she already knew the answers were worse than she wanted to hear.
Akeno was behind her. Quieter. More alert than ever.
No jokes.
No smiles.
She hadn't smiled once since Vorak died.
The three of them moved across the first length of the bridge, the spire ahead growing larger with each step — not upward, but downward. It sank into the heart of a pit too dark to see the bottom.
Sunny's shadow didn't like it.
It clung to him like it was trying to retreat back into his bones.
He couldn't blame it.
Everything about this place felt… backward.
Not evil.
Not cursed.
Just older than categorization.
He scanned the paths ahead. The web of bridges was precise — radial like a clock's face, leading to the center where the spire pierced the chasm like a fang. Every path was intact. Every angle intentional.
No weathering.
No damage.
Nothing natural ever touched this.
It hadn't been forgotten.
It had been hidden.
Sunny slowed. Listened.
No wind.
No breath.
But his soul-sight twitched.
There was something inside the spire.
It wasn't moving.
It wasn't breathing.
But it was awake.
He didn't stop walking.
Didn't look at the girls.
He just said, voice low:
"…Whatever's in there knows we're coming."
Rias responded without surprise.
"So let's not keep it waiting."