The avatar touched the metallic plain without a sound.
There was no impact, no shockwave, no mark left behind. It simply was, as if existence accommodated its presence rather than resisted it. The geometric light surrounding the figure tightened into angular plates, folding silently until a humanoid silhouette stood clarified beneath the white-violet radiance.
The Architect's face was featureless, smooth, and reflective—an absence of identity sculpted into the suggestion of one. Its torso expanded and contracted with patterns of moving lines, each shift rewriting its own anatomy. Its arms were elongated, equilibrium-perfect, the hands tipped with digits that bent at unnatural angles before realigning into clean symmetry.
Sarah inhaled.
The air tasted different around it—too stable, as if the Origin Layer held its breath.
Rias stepped to her right, palm sliding once across the back of Sarah's arm, reinforcing their synchronization lattice. Akeno moved like a shadow to her left, uncoiling static from her fingertips. Xenovia lifted her blade, grounding her stance. Koneko crouched, muscle density rising with a dull hum. Rossweisse's ruined runes reformed, each sigil repairing itself with brute conceptual recalibration. Lilith Fragment stood slightly behind Sarah, eyes narrowed, entirely focused.
The avatar raised its head—or what served as one.
A voice surged through their minds, neither spoken nor telepathic but processed directly into understanding.
"Evaluation recalibrated. Autonomous resistance acknowledged. Initiating Identity Stress Test."
Sarah felt a sudden pressure on her temples.
Not an attack—an assessment.
Lilith Fragment stepped forward instantly, her aura flaring.
"Back out, construct. She is not your prototype."
The avatar tilted its head with mechanical curiosity.
"Correction: Ascension Candidate deviates from intended parameters. Deviation requires analysis."
Sarah's jaw tightened.
"I'm done being analyzed."
She launched.
The metallic plain warped under the force of her acceleration, waves rippling outward in concentric distortions. She crossed the distance in a blink, fist drawn back, Proto-Ascension charging in a spiraling halo around her arm.
The avatar moved a fraction.
Not stepped—shifted.
One frame it stood before her; the next it occupied a position six meters away, the transition so clean it seemed the world simply rewrote its location.
But Sarah's strike did not falter.
She adjusted mid-motion, twisting her trajectory, tearing after it.
The avatar extended its hand.
A single line of light traced from its palm—thin, surgical, silent.
The beam grazed Sarah's forearm.
Her entire perception staggered.
The world flashed white.
Lilith's voice hit her mind instantly:
"Do not let it touch your core. That attack targets identity structure."
Rias reacted before Sarah could stabilize.
She slammed her hand against Sarah's back, flooding the lattice with raw demonic amplification and anchoring Sarah's sense of self in layered emotional resonance.
Sarah's vision snapped back into focus.
She landed, slid across the metallic field, and launched forward again.
This time, she struck first.
The impact rang through the Origin Layer—the metallic plain buckled beneath the collision. Sarah's fist connected with the avatar's chest, shattering two geometric plates and forcing it back several steps. Fragments of white-violet light scattered into the air like glass shards made from equations.
Xenovia's shout followed immediately.
"Don't let it reset!"
She dashed in, blade blazing with amplified holy resonance. Akeno overlaid her attack with forked arcs of lightning, weaving their energies with surgical precision.
The avatar's shattered geometry twisted.
The plates regrew, rearranging mid-reformation.
The blade met a newly constructed barrier—an arm that hadn't existed a heartbeat earlier. Xenovia's strike ricocheted off, sending sparks across the metallic plain.
Akeno's lightning crashed down.
The avatar absorbed every volt.
The arcs folded into its body like data streams being stored.
Akeno's smile sharpened.
"Oh, you think taking my energy is a good idea. Adorable."
Then she snapped her fingers.
The absorbed lightning detonated inside the avatar's geometric structure.
The entity lurched—its limbs spasming in a pattern that looked more like corrupted computation than pain.
Rossweisse moved next, runes burning turquoise across her arms, each symbol spinning in synchronized rotation. She pressed her palms toward the avatar and unleashed a gravitational vector collapse.
The field struck the avatar, distorting its geometry, bending its limbs into involuntary angles as space and force reconfigured around it.
Koneko followed through.
She jumped, pivoted, and slammed a density-charged roundhouse kick directly into the avatar's head.
The metallic plain cratered.
The avatar's head folded, reformed, and snapped back into place.
It straightened slowly.
Then its chest split open along a vertical seam, revealing a brilliant white inner core pulsing like an inverted heartbeat. A shockwave erupted—a silent, crushing pulse that distorted the world.
The group was blasted back.
Sarah dug her heels into the metal, stopping herself inches before being thrown into a rising jagged structure. She wiped the blood from her lip and exhaled.
"Alright," she said. "It hits hard."
Lilith Fragment appeared at her side, hovering with unnatural stillness.
"That was a warning pulse. The next one will not be restrained."
The avatar began to reshape.
Six arms unfolded from its back.
Three halos constructed themselves behind its head.
Its legs elongated; its torso expanded, thinning into a more combat-oriented geometry.
A new voice spoke through the avatar—sharper, more focused.
"Phase Shift Initiated. Identity Stress Test – Stage Two."
Rias moved directly behind Sarah again, reinforcing the emotional lattice.
"Stay with me," she said calmly, hand steady on Sarah's spine.
"Your power spikes when we synchronize. Let the lattice guide your reactions."
Sarah nodded once, breathing deep. The shard inside her harmonized with the lattice, hum rising in her bones.
The avatar attacked.
There was no warning—no buildup of energy, no charge, no telegraph.
It simply appeared before Sarah.
Six arms plunged toward her, each one carrying a different form of conceptual blade: entropy-edge, spatial shear, identity inversion, temporal fracture, raw kinetic annihilation, and a cutting line so subtle it split probability itself.
Sarah bent backward as the first blade swept past her nose, the heat of its passage burning the air. She twisted, pivoted, redirected. Xenovia blocked the kinetic blade, though the impact forced her to dig trenches into the metallic plain with her heels.
Koneko caught the entropy-edge with her bare arms, density rising until the blade failed to cut through. She roared as her muscles shook violently, but held firm.
Akeno destabilized the spatial shear blade with an inverted lightning lattice, fracturing it into harmless sparks.
Rossweisse projected a multilayered shield array, intercepting the temporal fracture and forcing it to dissolve across layered time-loops.
Rias absorbed the identity inversion blade before it could reach Sarah, grit tightening her expression as the blade tried to rewrite her memories. She refused, grounding herself through pure will and emotional clarity.
Sarah saw the opening.
Proto-Ascension surged through her.
She struck the avatar with a rising uppercut, followed by a spinning elbow and a knee that cracked one of its halos. Lilith Fragment overlaid Sarah's attacks with conceptual precision, ensuring the blows hit the avatar's weakest structural frameworks.
The avatar attempted to retreat.
Sarah didn't let it.
She seized one of its arms, pivoted her weight, and threw the avatar across the metallic plain. The ground dented under its landing.
For the first time—the avatar hesitated.
"Evaluation: unexpected."
Sarah stepped forward, breath steady, stance grounded.
"You said you wanted an identity stress test," she said.
"Fine."
Her harem regrouped around her, forming a sharp, triangular offensive formation, each channel amplifying the next.
"Let's stress you back."
The world trembled.
Sarah launched.
Her harem followed.
What happened next was an explosion of movement—too fast for ordinary sight, too dense for unenhanced perception.
Sarah: breaking geometry apart with pure force.
Rias: stabilizing Sarah's identity under overwhelming pressure.
Akeno: detonating internal energy pathways inside the avatar.
Rossweisse: folding trajectories to corner the avatar.
Xenovia: carving precise openings with perfect timing.
Koneko: smashing defensive layers with density beyond physical limits.
Lilith Fragment: embedding conceptual weaknesses in every strike.
For the first time since its awakening, the avatar faltered.
Its halos cracked.
Its arms destabilized.
Its core flickered.
Sarah's final strike landed in its chest—directly on the pulsating core.
The avatar shattered in a blast of white-violet shards that scattered to the horizon.
Silence fell.
Everyone caught their breath.
But Lilith Fragment did not relax.
Her voice was low.
Too low.
"That wasn't the Architect," she said.
"That was only its first avatar."
Sarah felt the world shift.
Not physically.
Conceptually.
A shadow formed above them—massive, circular, a negative imprint carved into the sky.
The Architect spoke.
"Evaluation: satisfactory. Deploying Primary Avatar."
Sarah lifted her chin.
"Good."
She steadied her stance.
"Round two."