POV: Rias Gremory
---
The summoning circle was already cracking when the blood hit the final rune.
Rias didn't blink. Her palm stayed open over the obsidian stone, blood sliding from her fingers into the spiral pattern carved by her own magic hours earlier. All around her, the battlefield screamed — explosions, demonic howls, the warping sound of time-distorting magic ripping the air into glowing ribbons.
But she didn't look up. Not at Akeno, not at the others dying behind them. The sky was burning. If she flinched now, all of it would be for nothing.
"Now, Akeno."
Akeno's voice was steady, but only just. "Binding to target plane: unlocalized entropy field. Ignition."
A burst of violet-black lightning pulsed through the circle. The stones trembled. The outer rings lit — concentric rows of ancient infernal script burned into blue flame, pulsing in patterns no living scholar could interpret.
"Power levels rising," Akeno whispered. Her eyes gleamed with controlled panic. "Something's answering."
Good. Let it answer faster, Rias thought.
She knew what this was. What it meant.
They weren't calling a god.
They were trying to pull something in from outside creation. Not heaven, not hell, not anything structured or bounded by known law. The forbidden texts called it Voidborn. A being not recognized by fate. Not touched by karma. Not known by any Pantheon, nor protected by any rule.
It wasn't a legend. It was a gamble. But gambles were all they had left.
Sirzechs was gone. Azazel, sealed. Ophis had vanished two days ago.
And now the Devourer had come — a creature not of flesh or magic, but of erasure. It didn't kill. It didn't corrupt. It unmade.
Issei had been its next target.
He wasn't just the Red Dragon Emperor anymore. He was the last living anchor to everything Rias had spent her life protecting — her brother's legacy, her peerage's heart, her own damn hope.
So she did what no devil had dared since the Old Satans fell.
She broke the boundary.
Her fingers trembled slightly. Not from fear — from rage.
If the world wasn't enough to save him, then something from outside the world would have to do.
The summoning circle surged. Rias staggered a step.
"Target link unstable," Akeno said. "It's not… it's not coming to us."
"What?"
"It's not… above us. Or around. It's—" Akeno faltered. "It's beneath. Below everything."
The air cracked like glass. A hairline split ran through the stone beneath them — not jagged, but clean. Blacker than space. The kind of darkness that made your eyes slide off it.
The circle buckled. Light collapsed inward, not outward. Rias stepped forward, trying to stabilize the anchor. Her foot never touched the ground.
Because the ground wasn't there anymore.
It was gone.
The world beneath them had peeled open like torn cloth — exposing something vast and wrong.
Not void. Not hell. Something worse.
Then came the pull.
Not wind. Not gravity. Choice.
"I can't stop it—!" Akeno cried. She reached for Rias, but her body was already tilting, sliding toward the black. The sigils still burned with their blood — and that mattered.
They weren't summoners anymore.
They were sacrifices.
Rias opened her mouth to cast a severing spell — to cut the circle, to break the field — but the words dissolved on her tongue.
The light blinked out.
And then there was nothing.
No noise. No ground. No breath. No sensation of falling.
Only… inside-out.
---
She hit something hard.
It wasn't earth. It was bone — or ice. Frozen and jagged and impossibly dry.
She rolled, skidding across brittle terrain. Air knocked from her lungs. Her body barely felt real.
She didn't scream. Couldn't.
The cold went beyond temperature — it drilled into her. Like her blood didn't belong in this place. Like her existence was being rejected.
She sat up — slowly — and saw a sky that didn't move. Black. Unnatural. Featureless.
Akeno lay a few meters away, curled tight, blood on her lips. Breathing. That counted.
Rias pushed to her feet, spine aching, teeth clenched. Her magic—
She reached inward.
Nothing.
Her demonic aura, her bloodline power, even her flight magic — all of it was dead.
It hadn't just been sealed. It had been cut off. Like she was no longer registered as a being capable of power in this world.
"This wasn't supposed to happen," she whispered.
But even as she said it, she knew that was a lie.
She had known — in some quiet, buried part of her — that summoning something from beyond the order of things might come at this price. The ritual's final line had been clear:
Only the unanchored may touch the outer path.
And now she was unanchored.
So was Akeno.
A scream echoed across the plain — too wet, too animal to be human.
Rias turned, scanning the jagged terrain.
Something was coming.
And they had nothing to fight with.
---
The creature appeared suddenly — hunched, jointed wrong, too fast to track. It slithered with limbs that didn't align. Its head had no eyes. Just a wide, snapping mouth full of wet black teeth.
Rias stepped between it and Akeno.
She raised her fists. No magic. No weapon.
Just Rias.
"Try me," she snarled.
The thing moved.
So fast she couldn't react.
But something else moved faster.
A blur slammed through the air — dark, soundless, final.
A knife in the night cut through the monster. It split. Screamed. Died mid-leap.
Rias stumbled back.
A boot crunched beside her head.
A figure stepped between her and the corpse.
He wore no armor. No mark. Just shadow, stitched to muscle, and a blade that bled darkness.
He didn't look at her.
His voice was hoarse. Low. Bored.
"If you scream again," he said flatly, "you'll die before I get bored enough to help."
Then he walked away.