The throne room stretched into shadow.
Cracked marble columns rose like broken ribs toward a ceiling I couldn't see. Crimson light bled from nowhere and everywhere, painting the decay in shades of old blood. The floor was littered with chess pieces - some intact, others shattered, all of them silent witnesses to a game that had ended long ago.
And at the center of it all, she waited.
The throne was a monument to conquest. Kings and Queens and Pawns fused together in a twisted sculpture of ivory and obsidian. She sat upon it like she'd been born there - legs crossed, chin raised, eyes fixed on me with the cold calculation of a predator assessing prey.
Rias.
But not my Rias.
This was the Rias who had stood in the Gremory summoning circle when I first arrived. The one who looked at a dying man and saw only potential. The one who asked "Will you serve me?" like she already knew the answer.
The Tyrant Queen.
"Well," she said. Her voice echoed through the ruined hall, carrying the weight of absolute authority. "The Pawn finally arrives."
I stood my ground.
Four integrations behind me. Four pieces of myself reclaimed and understood. I should have felt stronger.
Instead, my legs trembled.
"Rias." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "I know what you are."
"Do you?" She didn't rise from the throne. Didn't need to. Her presence filled the room without movement. "Tell me, then. What am I?"
"An Echo. A piece of her I absorbed when - "
"When I saved you." Her smile was cold. Beautiful. Terrible. "When I reached into a dying man's chest and pulled him back from the edge. When I gave you power, purpose, a reason to exist."
She gestured at the ruined throne room.
"Everything you are started with me, Ryder Cross. Every ability you've stolen. Every battle you've won. Every breath you've taken since that night."
Her eyes gleamed crimson in the blood-colored light.
"You are my Pawn. You are nothing without me. You exist because I saved you."
The words hit like a fist.
Nothing without her.
I wanted to argue. Wanted to throw back all the training, the sacrifices, the memories I'd paid to become stronger.
But the voice in my head - the part that had always doubted - whispered back.
She's right.
Without the resurrection, you'd be dead.
Without her guidance, you'd have been killed by Raynare's group.
Without her protection, the trial would have ended with your execution.
Everything you have, she gave you.
I opened my mouth to respond.
Nothing came out.
"Kneel."
The command wasn't loud. It didn't need to be.
Power - not demonic energy, but something deeper, something woven into the fabric of this Soulscape - pressed down on my shoulders. The Master/Servant bond that every Pawn felt toward their King, amplified a thousandfold.
My knees buckled.
I caught myself. Barely. Arms shaking, legs screaming, every muscle fighting against the force pushing me down.
"You're fighting it," the Rias-Echo observed. Her tone was almost curious. "Interesting. Most Pawns accept their place."
"I'm not..." The words ground out through clenched teeth. "...most Pawns."
"No?" She rose from the throne. Each step toward me increased the pressure. "Then what are you?"
I don't know.
The thought surfaced before I could stop it.
What am I, really? A collection of stolen abilities? An empty vessel filled with other people's power? A Pawn who got lucky?
My knee hit the ground.
"There it is."
The Rias-Echo stood over me. Close enough that I could smell her - old books and starlight, the scent I associated with safety and warmth.
Here, it smelled like judgment.
"The truth you've been running from." She crouched, meeting my eyes. "You're afraid you don't deserve any of it. The power. The trust. The love."
The love.
The word cut deeper than any blade.
"You look at her - the real me - and you wonder what she sees in you." The Echo's voice was almost gentle now. "A Phoenix Killer? A Fragment host? Or just a broken man who happened to be in the right place at the right time?"
My second knee hit the ground.
I was kneeling before her. Before the throne. Before every doubt I'd ever had about my own worth.
"You exist because I saved you," she repeated. "Without me, you are nothing."
Is she right?
I stared at the cracked marble beneath my hands.
I didn't earn the Fragment. It was an accident.
I didn't earn the resurrection. I was dying, and she saved me.
I didn't earn any of the abilities I've copied. I just... took them.
The weight pressed heavier. My forehead touched the cold floor.
Maybe I am nothing without her. Maybe I'm just a vessel. A tool. A piece on her board.
"Stay there." The Rias-Echo's command was absolute. "Stay where you belong."
I closed my eyes.
Where I belong.
A Pawn. Forever a Pawn.
*Unless - *
My eyes snapped open.
Unless I choose something different.
The thought crystallized like ice forming in winter.
She saved my life.
True.
But I saved my soul.
I pushed against the floor. The weight of the command pressed back, crushing, inexorable.
"What are you doing?" The Rias-Echo's voice sharpened. "I told you to stay."
"You saved my life." My arms trembled. My muscles screamed. But I pushed. "You pulled me back from death. You gave me a second chance."
One knee left the ground.
"But you didn't make me. You didn't create who I am."
The pressure intensified. I gritted my teeth and pushed harder.
"The training - I did that. The sacrifices - I made those. The choices, the growth, the person I've become - "
I rose to my feet.
The Rias-Echo stared at me. For the first time, something like surprise flickered across her perfect features.
"That was all me."
"You think you're more than my Pawn?" Her voice carried an edge now. Uncertainty, barely hidden. "You think you can stand without my support?"
"I don't think." I met her gaze. The pressure still pushed, but I stood against it. "I know."
I took a step toward her. Toward the throne.
"You saved my life. But I saved my soul."
Another step.
"Every battle I've fought. Every enemy I've faced. Every time I could have given up and kept going instead - that wasn't you. That was me."
Another step.
"I'm not nothing without you. I'm something with you. Something we built together."
The Rias-Echo retreated. Just a step. Just a fraction.
"And I don't follow you because I have to."
I stopped in front of the throne. In front of the monument to conquest and ownership.
"I follow you because I love you."
The pressure shattered.
Not gradually. Not in pieces. It broke like glass struck by a hammer, fragments of enforced obedience scattering into the crimson light.
The Rias-Echo stared at me. Her cold mask cracked, revealing something underneath.
Fear? Hope? Both?
"You love me," she said. The words came out uncertain. Almost... vulnerable.
"I love her." I reached past her, toward the throne. Toward the mass of chess pieces welded together in mockery of a seat. "The real Rias. Not the King who commands. The woman who worries. Who stays up late planning to protect her family. Who asked me to be more than a Pawn long before I believed I could be."
My hand closed around one of the pieces embedded in the throne.
The King piece.
Black. Obsidian. The symbol of absolute authority.
"I'm not a piece on your board." I pulled. The King came free with a grinding crack. "I'm not a Pawn you can move wherever you want."
I looked at the piece in my hand. At everything it represented. The hierarchy. The ownership. The belief that my worth was measured by my place on someone else's game.
"I am a player."
I crushed the King piece in my fist.
The throne shattered.
Not with violence - with release. The chess pieces fell apart, clattering to the ground like autumn leaves. The crimson light softened, warming from blood to sunset.
The Rias-Echo stood in the wreckage of her throne. But she didn't look defeated.
She looked... relieved.
"There you are." Her voice was different now. Warm. Familiar. Real. "I was wondering when you'd figure it out."
I stared at her. At the cold mask dissolving to reveal the face I knew. The face I loved.
"You wanted me to break free?"
"I wanted you to choose." She stepped forward. Close enough to touch. "Not obedience or rebellion. Not dependence or isolation. Choice. Your choice, made freely, about who you are and who you want to be."
Her hand touched my cheek. Warm. Gentle. The Rias I remembered.
"I didn't save you so you could be my Pawn forever, Ryder. I saved you because I saw someone worth saving."
```
No blue box. Just a feeling.
The authority. The leadership. It's mine now.
But I won't use it to command.
I'll use it to stand beside her, not behind her.
[RIAS ECHO: INTEGRATED]
The Rias-Echo smiled.
The real Rias's smile. The one that made everything worth fighting for.
"Now go." She began to fade, crimson light softening to gold. "Finish what you started."
"Wait - " I reached for her, but my hand passed through empty air.
She was gone.
The throne room was empty. The chess pieces lay scattered across the marble floor, game finally over.
Five down. One to go.
I looked toward where the Core should be. The tower I'd seen from the Glass Desert, the goal of this entire journey.
It should have been close now.
Instead, the throne room began to rot.
The decay started at the edges.
Marble blackened. Columns crumbled. The crimson light curdled into something sickly, yellow-green like infected wounds.
And the feathers began to fall.
Black feathers. Drifting down from a ceiling that no longer existed. Coating the corrupted floor like dark snow.
The smell hit me next. Decay. Old blood. And underneath it... perfume. Familiar perfume. The kind worn by a woman who'd pretended to love me, then tried to kill me.
No.
The rot spread faster. The throne room dissolved into a landscape of corruption and memory.
And a voice spoke from the darkness.
A voice I hadn't heard since the church.
"So noble."
It came from everywhere. From nowhere. From inside my own head.
"So heroic."
The black feathers parted.
She emerged from the rot like a corpse rising from its grave. Black wings. Black hair. A smile that promised pain and nothing else.
Raynare.
But wrong. Twisted. Her eyes burned with phoenix fire, and flames licked along her feathers - orange and gold against the black.
Riser.
Raynare.
Merged.
My guilt given form.
"Shall we see what's really underneath?" The Raynare-Riser amalgam tilted its head. The motion was too smooth. Too predatory. "Shall we see the monster you really are?"
The last Echo.
Not copied.
Created.
By me.