Not the silence of emptiness, nor the last breath after destruction—a silence carved from suspended reality. Sound did not fade; it simply ceased to exist. The air froze mid-vibration. Light folded inward. Even Sarah's heartbeat hesitated between two pulses.
The shard hovered before her.
A miniature star condensed into a single sliver, radiating neither heat nor danger, but something more complex and far older. A presence. A recognition.
Lilith Fragment's voice trembled—something she had never once shown since merging with Sarah:
"This… is impossible."
Sarah extended her hand despite the warning. She wasn't compelled; she was drawn by instinct, by the Proto-Ascension's internal resonance humming in perfect alignment with the shard's frequency.
Rias gripped her wrist. "Wait. We don't know what this is."
Akeno stepped closer, eyes narrowed. "Its energy… it's not hostile. But it's not inert either. It's observing us."
Koneko positioned herself defensively, muscles coiled, tracking even the slightest fluctuation.
Rossweisse analyzed the floating geometry, runes flickering across her vision as she attempted identification.
Xenovia lowered her stance, blade tilted toward the shard, prepared to intercept any anomaly.
Lilith Fragment finally stabilized her tone.
"This is not a relic of the Outer Faction. This is a core of an Ascension architecture that predates them. A primordial seed."
Sarah inhaled slowly. "And it's reacting to us."
"To you," Lilith corrected. "More precisely—your Proto-Ascension signal."
The shard pulsed. Once.
The air cracked.
Reality resumed—violently.
Sound slammed back into existence. The chamber shook, walls groaning under new stress signatures. The floor fissured beneath them as if the entire facility recognized that the shard was no longer in containment.
A wave of raw pressure pushed the group backward, but Sarah held her ground. The shard drifted toward her, floating directly above her open palm.
Rias stepped beside her. "If you take it… it will change everything."
Sarah didn't look away from the shard. "It already has."
She closed her fingers around it.
The chamber detonated in a burst of white-violet energy.
---
Ascension Surge Event
The world vanished.
Sarah felt her consciousness stretched across multiple planes at once. Not torn—expanded. Sensory overload hit like a tidal wave: gravitational maps, emotional currents, energetic flows, conceptual structures, the subtle geometry of cause and effect. She perceived everything.
Her body arched, light pouring from her skin in violent pulses.
Proto-Ascension ignited without input.
Lilith Fragment fused deeper.
Desire outputs skyrocketed.
Sarah gasped, unable to contain the influx. The shard melted into her palm, dissolving into streams of data and light that threaded through each nerve, each thought, each heartbeat.
Rias's voice pierced the distortion: "Sarah! Anchor yourself!"
Akeno: "Focus on your breath—on us!"
Koneko: "Stay with us!"
Rossweisse: "Stabilizing runes—hold still!"
Xenovia: "We're not letting you fall!"
Their hands pressed against her body—shoulders, spine, waist, arms—projecting unity into the lattice.
Lilith Fragment took command.
"Synchronize. Now."
The harem followed without hesitation.
Sarah's scream became a shockwave of light.
The Proto-Ascension rewrote itself.
The chamber collapsed into cascading dimensional fractures.
Then—the surge inverted.
Everything snapped into focus.
---
New Environment Loaded
When the glare faded, the group found themselves standing on a vast, metallic plateau suspended in an infinite expanse of layered fractal horizons. The sky was a swirling map of data streams and astral filaments. Gravity shifted gently, responsive to emotion.
Rossweisse exhaled. "This… isn't a room anymore."
Akeno smirked faintly. "No. This is a different plane."
Koneko crouched, touching the metallic floor. "Stable. Solid. But not natural."
Xenovia scanned the horizon. "We're not alone here."
Rias stepped forward. "This is a superstructure. A space built for one purpose."
Lilith Fragment confirmed it:
"We have entered the Outer Faction's Origin Layer. The first construct. The birthplace of their entire network."
Sarah staggered slightly—then stabilized as the harem caught her.
Her stats flickered in her vision.
---
Sarah – Updated Status
PV: 540
Lv: 62
Force: 310
Desire: 6100
Intelligence: 89
Agility: 112
New Trait Acquired: Ascension Seed Integration – Phase 1
Effect: initiates evolutionary sequence; overrides Proto-Ascension limitations; synchronizes emotional vectors beyond human thresholds; unknown final potential.
---
Sarah steadied her breath.
"I'm… different."
Rias lifted Sarah's chin gently. "Different doesn't mean unstable."
Akeno's smile sharpened. "Or fragile."
Koneko's voice remained unwavering. "You're stronger. We can feel it."
Rossweisse examined the filaments weaving around Sarah. "And whatever this place is… it's reacting to you."
Xenovia extended her blade, pointing toward distant silhouettes forming in the warped horizon.
"We've triggered the Origin Layer. That means something is coming."
Lilith Fragment confirmed coldly:
"Correction: something is awakening."
A long, low tremor rolled across the metallic plains. In the distance, massive structures unfolded like titans rising from slumber—angular, ancient, and armed with mechanisms older than any recorded civilization.
Sarah lifted her eyes.
She didn't fear them.
She felt ready.
"Then let them come," she said. "We finish what they started."
And far above, the sky cracked open—
revealing the true architect of the Outer Faction.