Mephistopheles lurked in the void, his eyes locked on Nero's back as she transformed into her demonic form and left the warship. For once, the devil's face lacked its usual smug grin. His brow furrowed, far from the theatrical meltdown he'd shown Nero earlier. He muttered to himself, voice low, "What's the deal? Why can't I ever satisfy her?"
This devil, a master at tempting hearts, mulled it over. "Is it that she doesn't want anything? Nah, the despair when I yanked her wishes away wasn't fake. She craves those things. So, what—hiding her true desires? Does she want something bigger, something more?"
With so little to go on, he couldn't crack the puzzle. Mephistopheles stopped his pondering, a wild guess flickering in his mind. "Or… could she really…?"
He didn't finish the thought. Instead, he watched Nero's silhouette fade, silently slipping back into the void.
At the pyramid's peak, the battle between the Servants and Pavone had hit fever pitch.
As time dragged on, the Sphinx's Noble Phantasm tightened its grip, its binding power growing stronger. Pavone, meanwhile, was getting hammered by the evil dragon's flames. With the sun still below the horizon, she was weakening fast.
Transformed into an evil dragon, Kriemhild's flames were no longer just the fires of fate—they were the raw power of the dragon itself, finally able to wound this ferocious beast. Pavone, scorched relentlessly, felt the sting of mortality creeping in. She could no longer see a future where she fully became the beast.
That left her with one option. The dormant mind of the young beast finally stirred awake.
"Human…"
Pavone's voice rasped, dry and hoarse. "Sphinx. Your riddle. The answer is human. In the morning, it's a baby, crawling on all fours."
In an instant, the invisible chains of the riddle shattered. Pavone shook out her emerald feather cloak, shedding the beastly, four-legged stance for a touch of the regal grace befitting a "Prideful Demon King."
"At noon, it's adulthood, standing tall on two legs," she continued, her voice steady. "At night, it's old age, hobbling along with a cane—three legs."
With a sharp, crystalline crack, the Sphinx's Noble Phantasm broke apart. The backlash of her own oath drained the color from her cheeks, robbing her of the strength to fly. She plummeted to the ground.
"You finally awake, huh?" The divine beast-girl's face twisted in pain, but she forced out a defiant shout. "Master… it's up to you now!"
By all accounts, Pavone should still be blind and deaf, yet she'd recognized the Sphinx purely by the feel of the Noble Phantasm's bindings and guessed her riddle perfectly. The Sphinx, for her part, showed no surprise—like she knew Pavone would figure her out.
Ritsuka, who'd been focused on countering the demonic aura with magecraft and hadn't gone deaf yet, caught this exchange and felt a spark of confusion. She glanced at the Sphinx, catching the fierce determination in her eyes.
Pavone had shed her mindless state, halting her transformation into a full beast. But the divinity of the sun god still clung to her. If fully unleashed, especially now with the Sphinx down, Pavone could easily overpower Kriemhild's dragon form and turn the tide.
The Sphinx, though, had one last move.
With a lion's grin, her razor-sharp teeth glinting, she spat out her final riddle. "Apollo's prophecy: a king's child will kill their father. If that child is Apollo, he'd be slain by Zeus. Apollo's no fool—he wouldn't doom himself. So, is the child Apollo? Answer! Or forsake your divine power—*Riddle of the Sphinx!*"
Blood sprayed from her mouth as she forced the Noble Phantasm out, crafting a vicious riddle that bound Pavone no matter her response. Her aura withered, fading fast.
In that moment, Ritsuka realized the sun god whose power had been stolen was Apollo—Greek god of light, prophecy, and music. Not a sun god in the strictest sense, his solar powers stemmed from his domain over "light." Yet, through countless poems and plays, the true sun god Helios had been folded into Apollo's myth, swallowed by his legend.
So, Apollo was a sun god, tied to the concept of the sun.
Using Apollo's name, the Sphinx had pulled a brutal move, stripping Pavone of her right to wield that power. Pavone was clearly the "king's child" in the prophecy, fated to kill her father. If she were Apollo, killing her father would mean slaying Zeus—a prophecy that would doom Apollo himself. Since Apollo wouldn't make a prophecy to destroy himself, Pavone couldn't be Apollo.
The riddle's core was to force Pavone to admit she wasn't Apollo. And once she did, she'd lose access to his divine power. The Sphinx had even sealed off any chance of dodging the question—answer wrong, or don't answer at all, and the power would still slip away.
The cost? The Sphinx teetered on the edge of vanishing.
Not far from the fading Sphinx, Ritsuka pieced together the riddle's trap and suddenly understood Pavone's true identity—or rather, who she was as a Heroic Spirit before becoming a demon.
Prophesied by Apollo to kill her father, deeply tied to the divine beast Sphinx—there was only one figure in Greek myth who fit.
Oedipus.
Ritsuka's gaze flicked to the Sphinx, seeking confirmation. Though the Sphinx couldn't see Ritsuka under her invisibility helmet, she seemed to sense that Ritsuka had unraveled Pavone's identity from the riddle.
Facing the sky, the Sphinx left her final words—for her allies, her nemesis, her enemy, and the one opponent who ever solved her riddles.
"Please… end Oedipus's vengeance. Let him find peace."
Only Ritsuka heard her. But another voice cut through the air, answering the Sphinx as she faded completely, returning to the Throne of Heroes. "I'll do it."
It was Nero, arriving at the pyramid's peak in a flash, cloaked in the same peacock feathers as the Prideful Demon.
After smashing through every obstacle, she'd finally reached the final battlefield.