The entrance was not a door.
It was an absence.
A smooth, circular curve of black stone at the spire's base simply opened as they approached, rippling inward like oil disturbed on still water. No creak. No whisper of magic. It accepted them.
Sunny was the first to step through.
The moment he crossed the threshold, the pressure changed.
Not gravity. Not heat.
Something in the air itself adjusted. The rules thinned.
He moved cautiously, one hand on the hilt of his conjured blade, shadow curled tight around his body. The room beyond the entrance was enormous, spherical, and unnaturally still.
It resembled a heart chamber—vast and enclosed, with rib-like pillars curving from floor to ceiling. The walls were covered in carved etchings, impossibly detailed. They pulsed faintly, like veins through stone.
The light was strange here. Not absent — but uncertain. The illumination didn't come from above or below. It came from the walls themselves, the carvings subtly glowing in rhythmic pulses. They weren't merely artistic — they were alive in some manner, reflecting a memory the structure itself refused to let die.
Akeno entered next.
Her wings twitched immediately. "This place... it's too quiet."
Rias followed, her eyes drawn to the carvings. She reached toward them without touching. "These aren't random. They're stories."
Stories, yes. Sunny agreed silently. But not human ones. Not written by hands that feared or worshipped. These were stories told by power, shaped in agony, and sealed in permanence.
He said nothing.
He walked to the center of the chamber, where a low pedestal stood.
Upon it, not a statue—
—but a mark.
A sigil burned into the stone, blacker than shadow. It shimmered slightly as he approached, shifting its shape. It was responding to him. Measuring.
Behind him, Rias whispered, "What is that?"
Sunny exhaled.
"A lock."
The mark pulsed again.
And something far below them moved.
The floor trembled — not violently, but with the subtle roll of something ancient shifting its weight.
Rias stepped closer, instinctively brushing her fingertips across the sigil's edge. It didn't burn her. But it reacted. The sigil coiled inward briefly, curling like a serpent recognizing a second scent.
She frowned. "It knows us."
Sunny nodded. "It recognizes power."
Akeno, eyes narrowing, circled to the far side of the pedestal. Her expression darkened.
"This isn't the only one."
They turned.
There — embedded in the wall behind her — was a second sigil. Larger. Incomplete. Like a broken lock that had once sealed something enormous. Or someone.
As they stared, the central mark on the pedestal flared to life.
From the pit below the spire, a sound began to rise.
Soft at first.
Then deeper.
Not mechanical.
Not magical.
Breathing.
Sunny drew his blade. His shadow slithered outward in response, low and wide.
Rias and Akeno flared their auras at once — twin pulses of destruction and holy lightning humming through the room.
Akeno said what they were all thinking:
"Something's alive down there."
Sunny stepped to the edge of the pedestal, watching as the black sigil shifted into a spiral. A spiral with seven loops.
One of them dimmed.
One lit.
He whispered, not to them, but to himself:
"…First seal."
The wall behind the sigil rumbled.
A panel of ancient stone slid back, revealing a staircase spiraling down. Not carved. Formed. Offered.
They stood for a long moment in silence, none of them moving. The stairwell exhaled a low, cold breath — not wind, but awareness. It was not welcoming.
It was acknowledging.
Rias met Sunny's eyes.
"You said this was a prison."
Sunny nodded.
"Then why is it inviting us in?"
He stared into the stairwell.
And answered:
"Because it wants witnesses."