The rooftop was quiet.
Two days before the Rating Game, now one, technically, given the hour. I should have been sleeping. The team needed me rested, sharp, ready for what was coming. Instead, I stood at the compound's highest point, watching stars I didn't recognize trace patterns across a sky that belonged to a world not my own.
Footsteps. Light. Familiar.
Rias emerged from the stairwell door, crimson hair catching the moonlight like spun fire. She'd changed from her day clothes into something simpler. A white blouse, dark skirt, the casual elegance she wore when she wasn't being a King.
"You should be sleeping," she said.
"So should you."
She smiled, soft and tired. "We keep having this conversation."
"Maybe we should try a new one."
She crossed the rooftop to stand beside me, close enough that her shoulder nearly touched mine. Her perfume reached me, old books and starlight, a scent that had become synonymous with safety and danger and something else I wasn't ready to name.
For a long moment, neither of us spoke. The stars turned overhead. The mountains slept in darkness below.
"Whatever happens tomorrow," Rias said finally, her voice barely above a whisper, "I want you to know..."
She turned to face me. Her eyes caught the moonlight, crimson depths that held warmth and worry and something that made my heart stutter.
"I want you to know that I..."
She leaned in.
My heart stopped. Time stretched. The distance between us collapsed into inches, into breath, into possibility.
"48% chance of death tomorrow," the Fragment observed, clinical as ever. "Unwise to form attachments."
The calculation hit like ice water. Tomorrow. Death. The Rating Game wasn't a sparring match. It was a battle where people died, where I would fight a phoenix who'd burned stronger opponents to ash.
I pulled back.
Rias froze. Something flickered across her face, surprise, hurt, confusion all warring for dominance.
"Not yet," I said, and my voice came out rougher than intended. "I want this. I want you. But not when I might die tomorrow."
The words hung between us, raw and honest and incomplete.
"If I kiss you now," I continued, "and then I don't come back, that's the last memory. The kiss before the loss. I don't want to be that for you."
Her expression shifted. The hurt faded, replaced by something harder. Fiercer.
"Then survive." Her voice carried the weight of a command, the intensity of a King addressing her knight. "Survive, and ask me again."
She didn't step back. Her eyes held mine, crimson meeting gray, a promise exchanged without words.
"After we win," she said. "We'll figure out what this is."
I nodded. My heart was still racing, still processing the almost-moment, still cataloguing the scent of old books and starlight.
Tomorrow. Survive. Ask again.
Simple enough. If you ignored the phoenix, the fifteen-member peerage, the 48% chance of death.
Day nine was the final training push.
The urgency had shifted from exhausting to surgical. No more breaking and rebuilding. Now we refined, polished, prepared. Every ability at maximum efficiency. Every formation drilled until it was instinct.
But something was missing.
The plan relied on depleting Riser, exhausting his regeneration, then striking when he was vulnerable. I was the designated finisher, the one who understood exactly how his phoenix fire worked and when it would fail.
What I didn't have was the power to actually deliver that final strike.
Power Level 72. Riser was 85 at baseline, and even depleted, he'd be dangerous. The gap was smaller than before, but still significant. I needed an edge.
The Fragment stirred.
"You're thinking too loudly."
I need more power. For the final attack.
"Power is available. All things are available." A pause. "For a price."
What kind of price?
"You have memories still. Sensations. Certainties." The Fragment's tone carried something like anticipation. "I could offer you Battle Surge. Temporary. Devastating. The boost you require."
And the cost?
"Certainty about one truth you hold dear. A conviction you've never questioned. You'll still remember the fact, but you'll doubt it. Forever."
I considered. My convictions. My truths. Things I'd never questioned.
My mother loved me.
"That memory is already diminished. Choose another."
The team trusts me.
"Accurate. But fragile. That certainty sustains your cooperation. I won't touch it."
Then what?
"You believe you are fundamentally good. That despite my presence, despite the prices paid, your core remains intact." The Fragment paused. "Give me your certainty of that. Keep the belief. You'll still think it. But you'll never be sure."
The request hit harder than expected. My fundamental nature. My core. The quiet certainty that I was still me, still the person I'd been before Seattle, before devils, before everything.
Battle Surge. One use. Sixty seconds. A fifty percent power boost that could mean the difference between victory and death.
The price was doubt. Forever.
"Choose."
I closed my eyes. Thought about Rias. About the team. About the promise I'd made to survive.
Do it.
[FRAGMENT NEGOTIATION]
[OFFERED: Battle Surge]
[TYPE: Single-use combat enhancement]
[EFFECT: 50% power boost for 60 seconds]
[PRICE: Certainty regarding host's fundamental nature]
[TIME LIMIT: N/A]
[ACCEPTED]
The certainty slipped away like sand through fingers. One moment I knew, with absolute conviction, that I was good. That the prices I'd paid hadn't changed who I fundamentally was.
The next moment...
The next moment, I wasn't sure.
I still believed it. Still thought it. But the rock-solid foundation had cracked, and through the cracks seeped doubt.
Was I good before? Am I good now? Does paying prices in memories make me something else? Something darker?
I didn't know anymore. Might never know again.
But I had Battle Surge. And tomorrow, that might save everyone.
"Well bargained," the Fragment said. "And well paid."
Day ten was rest.
The team gathered for dinner, one final meal before everything changed. The compound's dining room felt smaller than usual, compressed by the weight of anticipation.
Akeno had outdone herself with the cooking. Course after course appeared, each more elaborate than the last. Comfort food, she explained. Tradition before battle.
Kiba raised a glass. "To teamwork."
"To survival," Koneko added, her voice soft but clear.
"To healing everyone who needs it," Asia chimed in, earnest as always.
Rias stood. The room fell quiet.
"Whatever happens tomorrow," she said, her eyes moving across each of us, "I'm proud of all of you. We've trained harder than any peerage in devil history. We've prepared for every contingency. We've become a family."
The word resonated. Family. That's what this was, what we'd become. Not just a peerage, not just a tactical unit, but people who'd bled together and grown together and trusted each other with their lives.
Something stirred in my chest. Pride. Fierce, territorial, overwhelming.
These are mine. My team. My people. Anyone who threatens them...
I caught myself. Froze.
That wasn't my thought. That possessive instinct, that territorial certainty...
Rias. I was feeling what Rias felt for her peerage. Her Echo, bleeding into my emotions, turning her protectiveness into my own.
The Fragment confirmed what I already knew.
[ECHO STATUS: 25%]
[THRESHOLD WARNING: ELEVATED]
[THE FRAGMENT SPEAKS]
"You've grown stronger. The Echoes have grown with you."
"At 30%, the bleed becomes intrusive. Others' thoughts, not clearly yours."
"At 40%, you'll struggle to distinguish self from Echo."
"At 50%... you'll need integration or suppression."
[SUPPRESSION] - Seal the Echoes, seal your growth. Permanent stagnation.
[INTEGRATION] - Accept them as self. Risk losing yourself entirely.
"Choose your copies carefully now. The price is not just memories."
"The price is you."
Twenty-five percent. A quarter of me was someone else. Other people's thoughts and feelings, bleeding into my own until I couldn't tell where I ended and they began.
And it would only get worse.
Suppression or integration. Stagnation or dissolution.
Neither option sounded survivable. But that was a problem for after. First, we had to win. First, we had to live.
The dinner continued. Toasts and laughter and the kind of warmth that came from facing death together. I participated, smiled, said the right things at the right moments.
But part of me was calculating. Evaluating my team, Rias's team, my team, the distinction was blurring, for combat readiness. Noting who seemed tired, who seemed strong, who might break under pressure.
Cold. Efficient. Strategic.
Rias's influence. Or maybe just mine now. Maybe there wasn't a difference anymore.
Night fell. The compound went quiet.
I couldn't sleep.
The rooftop called to me again, and I answered. The stars were the same as the night before, indifferent to the battles fought beneath them. The mountains slept. The world turned.
Footsteps. Light. Familiar.
Rias emerged again, as if we'd choreographed this. Same doorway. Same moonlight. Same perfume reaching me across the darkness.
"Couldn't sleep either," she said.
"Too much to think about."
She crossed to stand beside me. Closer than before. Her shoulder pressed against mine, warm and solid.
"What happens if we lose?" she asked.
"We won't."
"Humor me."
I thought about it. Really considered the possibility. "If we lose, you marry Riser. The peerage becomes part of his household. I..." I paused. "I don't know what happens to me. Nothing good."
"That's not going to happen." Her voice carried conviction. "We're not going to lose."
"Forty-one percent odds say otherwise."
"Forty-one percent odds said we'd win. That's not nothing." She turned to face me. "And odds don't account for people. For what we're willing to sacrifice. For what we're willing to become."
The words hung in the air. Sacrifice. Become. She didn't know about the Fragment, about the prices I'd already paid, about the pieces of myself I'd traded for power.
But she understood something. She always had.
"Whatever you're carrying," she said softly, "you don't have to carry it alone."
The moonlight caught her eyes. She leaned in, slower this time, giving me space to retreat.
I wanted to close the distance. Every fiber of my being screamed to bridge the gap, to claim the moment, to take what was offered.
But was that me? Or was it Echo? Was the wanting genuine, or was I feeling what Rias felt, her attraction reflected back through the Fragment's distortion?
I pulled back. Again.
"I want to," I said. "God, I want to. But I need to know it's real. That what I'm feeling is mine, not borrowed from someone else."
Rias studied me. Something shifted in her expression, not hurt this time, but understanding.
"After we win," she said. "We'll figure out what this is."
The same words as before. But now they carried a different weight. An acknowledgment that I was struggling with something she didn't fully understand, and she was willing to wait.
"After we win," I agreed.
She stepped back. The distance between us felt both safer and lonelier.
"Get some sleep," she said. "Tomorrow, we fight."
"Tomorrow, we win."
She smiled. Soft. Real. Then turned and walked toward the stairwell, leaving me alone with the stars and the doubt and the promise of what came after.
Morning came too fast.
The team assembled in the compound's main hall, dressed for battle. Rias stood at the center, crimson hair flowing, demonic power radiating from her in waves. Akeno beside her, lightning crackling between her fingers. Kiba and Koneko flanking, sword and fist ready. Asia behind them, healing light already gathering in her hands.
And me. Power Level 75. Echo at 25%. Battle Surge waiting like a loaded gun.
Rias's eyes met mine across the room. Something passed between us, the rooftop, the almost-kisses, the promises of after.
Survive. Ask again.
I intended to.
The teleportation circle flared beneath us. The Rating Game dimension awaited.
Tomorrow had arrived.
"Shall we see what you're willing to burn, little thief?" The Fragment's voice hummed with anticipation. "The game begins."
The light consumed us.
Everything was about to change.