POV: Sunny
They didn't sleep.
Or maybe they did. Sunny wasn't sure anymore. Time in the Seventh Layer moved like breath in a corpse — shallow, confused, sometimes twitching without meaning. He sat with his back to the bone, eyes closed, senses wide open.
And they were still there.
Not dead.
Not crying.
Just… quiet.
That was the first thing that had surprised him.
The second was how fast they moved.
And now, the third was how still they could be.
He opened his eyes slowly.
The two devils were crouched nearby, nestled beneath the curve of the bone arch. One dozed, half-slumped in a posture that suggested she'd trained for battlefield rest. The other — the redhead — sat with her back straight, arms folded over her knees. Awake. Watching him.
Sunny didn't speak.
He just observed.
Her clothes were torn at the edges. Scuffed. Dirty now from travel. But beneath all that…
Uniforms.
At first, he thought they were ritual robes — ceremonial, maybe. But the cut was too precise. Too tailored. And too revealing.
He wasn't exactly modest. You couldn't survive the Dream Realm while caring about nudity. But even he had to admit — their outfits were… designed.
Short skirts. Tight bodices. Legwear that looked closer to stockings than armor. Decorative rather than practical.
They looked like fighters dressed for theater.
And yet — they moved like soldiers. Endured like elite scouts.
Sunny frowned. That contradiction bothered him.
Were they aristocrats? Cult leaders? Seduction-based combatants?
He'd seen all three in different zones.
But this felt different.
He turned the thought over, eyes flicking between the two women.
"Devils," the redhead had said. Rias.
But that was a title, not a classification.
Devils in this place meant corrupted Awakened — bound to forbidden relics, or possessed by dark Echoes.
They weren't that.
Their soul signatures were off-world. Structured differently. Intricate, yes — more complex than most humans. But not poisoned.
Which meant they were something else entirely.
Something wrong.
He couldn't ignore that.
He stood, slow and silent.
The dark-haired one stirred immediately. Not deeply asleep, then.
She opened one eye. Smiled.
"Good morning, stranger."
Sunny ignored her. Checked his blade. Tapped his foot once against the frozen soil.
The frost was undisturbed.
That would change soon.
"We move," he said.
The redhead stood first.
The other — Akeno — stretched deliberately. Arms above her head. Back arched. Breasts pushed forward.
"No 'good morning' back? Cold."
He didn't answer.
She smiled wider. "You don't like flirting, do you?"
He looked at her flatly. "You're dressed like a temptress in a place where hunger has teeth."
Akeno raised an eyebrow. "You noticed."
Sunny turned away. "Unfortunately."
They moved in silence.
The frost was shifting now. That meant movement.
Predators were circling.
He'd let them walk point today.
Let's see how long their perfect posture lasted once the world started biting back.
The valley ahead was a funnel of broken terrain, ribs of cracked stone forcing them through a chokehold where nothing could approach unseen. That was the good news.
The bad news was that it felt too quiet.
Even the wind had stopped.
Sunny adjusted the strap of his satchel and fell back half a pace, letting the devils take the lead.
Rias moved with her usual confidence — too upright, but still sharp-eyed. Her movements were efficient, but carried the stiffness of someone used to commanding, not adapting. Akeno was more fluid. She scanned with subtlety, eyes flicking corners. She was the better fighter — or at least the better liar.
He noted it.
They moved for another fifteen minutes in tense silence before it hit him: the layer had shifted. Not entirely — but enough.
The angle of the land was wrong.
The light didn't bend correctly anymore.
It was a pocket.
A den.
Sunny froze mid-step.
"Stop," he said.
Rias turned instantly, but didn't speak. Good. Fast learner.
He gestured to the fractured ground ahead.
"Don't take another step."
She looked, then looked again. Her brow furrowed.
"…Trap?"
"No," Sunny said. "Nest."
Akeno moved to Rias's side. "What kind of nest?"
Sunny drew his blade slowly. The hum of the enchanted edge purred like a warning. He didn't need to answer.
The frost pulsed.
Then cracked.
The ground in front of Rias exploded.
It wasn't one.
It was three.
White-armored beasts with no eyes and too many jaws burst from beneath the ice like nightmare serpents with spider legs. Their torsos split in half, jaws peeling open vertically, letting out a scream that vibrated the bones around them.
Rias stumbled back. Akeno shoved her aside — no hesitation. One claw grazed Akeno's thigh, tearing through the cloth but missing flesh.
Sunny moved like gravity didn't matter.
He cut sideways — once — and a head flew.
He landed in a crouch beside Rias.
"Still think you're not prey?"
She gritted her teeth. "No."
"Good."
He pointed at the second beast.
"Then kill it."
And she did.
It wasn't elegant. It wasn't magical.
But it was brutal.
Rias rolled with the creature's lunge, drew a length of bone from the frozen ground, and stabbed upward into its jaw. When it didn't die fast enough, she ripped out the shard and kept stabbing.
Again.
And again.
And again.
By the time it fell, she was soaked in its blood.
And not shaking.
Sunny smiled slightly.
"Better."
The third beast collapsed with a shriek, its legs cut at the knees by Akeno's stolen blade — she'd looted one of Sunny's backup weapons without asking.
Also a good sign.
He turned.
The frost was still shifting.
"…We need to go."
Rias wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Why?"
Sunny gestured behind them.
"Because that wasn't the nest. That was just the scouts."
They retreated to a slope of collapsed teeth-like rock jutting out from a frozen ridge, silent and fast. The next wave never came. Just silence.
It was later, when they paused again under the dead arch of bone, that something shifted.
Akeno sat with her arms wrapped around her knees, head bowed. Rias was silent, her eyes not watching the terrain anymore — but watching nothing. Fixed on a memory. Too still.
Sunny had seen that look before.
It was the moment after survival.
When the body relaxed… and the heart remembered.
Rias blinked hard. Her hand reached to her chest as if to grasp something missing. Akeno let out a slow breath, then another, then a sudden sound — small, sharp — a choked sob before she turned her face into her arms.
"I thought we'd… I thought we were going back," Akeno whispered.
Rias's voice was brittle. "Issei. My peerage. My brother… I didn't say goodbye. I didn't…"
Akeno shook her head, shoulders trembling. "We were supposed to protect him. That's why we—"
"I know."
Rias looked at Sunny.
Her voice cracked. "You've lost people too. Haven't you?"
Sunny said nothing.
The frost whispered.
"Yes," he answered at last.
But he didn't say names.
He didn't speak of Cassie. Or Nephis. Or the part of himself he'd left behind at the threshold of the Seventh Nightmare.
Instead, he sat in the silence of their grief.
Because that was the only thing he could give them now.