“Pass.”

Her eyes widened “What?”

“I said pass. I'm not dumb enough to make a deal with an entity I don't trust.”

She came closer her eyes centimetres away from mine “I already told you! I am you!”

“But you're not only me, are you? You said it yourself. You are the universe, you are god or at least a fragment of infinity.”

Rage warped her features making her look like a monster of old shedding his disguise “Why do you refuse me? Look at the life you gained. Look at the opportunities you gained. Every being in existence would kill, do unspeakable things to be you and what do you do with all this power? What do you do with all this potential? You fucking complain. Boo ooh, I’m scared. Boo ooh, I’m scared of the future. Boo ooh, morals.”

A chuckle escaped me “What do you laugh?” Sophia asked me.

“You’re now showing the true you, the monster I knew existed behind the curtain. You are god but what is god before a non-believer?”

Her eyes began to glow “A non-believer before God is nothing but a fool, one who will be condemned to the abyss where maggots will crawl in their skin for all eternity.” I could see in her eyes endless torments, endless suffering, suffering promised to me.

“Where is the politeness? Weren't you the one who said I could go back if I didn't agree? Also little advice, you really suck at selling stuff. You wouldn't have made it selling cars.”

“Can’t you see?” she spoke. “This is you. This is the sum of you. Always talking, speaking, thinking, never acting.”

She began to fade yet I could still hear her voice “You’re a sinner, one who committed one of the greatest sins. You're wasting your gifts!”

The white world surrounding me changed taking the appearance of a destroyed Kuoh. All around me, I could only see destroyed buildings, homes, dismembered corpses and blood covering the ground like a red river.

The blood was covering my shoes and the end of my pants making them really uncomfortable “Yeah, you brought me to my favourite place. You truly are all-knowing.”

I heard her voice speak both from nowhere and everywhere “Sarcasm doesn't mask to my eyes what you truly think, what you truly feel, what you truly are.”

She was truly boring me. The only reason why I hadn’t used my power of destruction was that I wasn't sure if attacking a possible fragment of infinity even with my essence was a good idea.

“And what I am?,” I spoke. “Let me guess. You're going to call me a sinner again or something as dumb. I don’t care about what you think of me. I don't care about what others think of me.”

“You’re a liar , not even a good one. The thing with you is that you care too much about what others think. You care too much and think too much that in the end, you do nothing. The truth is that you're scared when you shouldn’t be! This world was originally just a fictional one! It still probably is! A part of you know this. You may lie to yourself but you can’t lie to me.”

I did think about it in the past. Maybe worse than realizing that all of this was a hallucination, learning that this world, my new life was nothing but written words, written words made to distract, to entertain was something I knew would truly break me.

I didn't want to think about this because if it was true, then nothing I was doing was truly from my own will. I didn't want to think about this because if it was true, nothing mattered.

What would be the point of trying, of thinking, of living, even of dying when none of those came from my own will?

The world unfurled around me like a flower doing the inverse of blooming. A shadow stood above, the world held in its palm “You see! This is your problem! This is why I hate you! Who cares about all of those things? If nothing matters, everything does. This world is not real, can’t be called real. You and I are the only ones who truly can be called so.”

“You have a pretty egocentric way of seeing things. Even if this world is nothing but mere fiction. What you’re advising doing wouldn't be right!”

Killing when I was annoyed, doing things when I wanted, disregarding completely the will of others just to fulfil my will, my wishes, my greed. This was the reasoning of a monster. I ignored how enticing it sounded.

“Right? Wrong? Search in the universe and you won’t find any atoms of justice! The universe never cared about those concepts! You think about love, you yearn and do everything to keep it when you could have everything if you were selfish enough. Want to be loved? Create someone who will always love you! Does someone anger you? Curse them to a point where tortuous death would seem a mercy.”

“I'm not what you're describing. I could never be such a monster.”

A smile split the face of the shadow. From its mouth, an ocean of blood fell and swallowed everything.

It submerged me, making me fall deeper into its embrace. I didn't try to escape because I knew I had nothing to fear at least for now. Sophia seemed more focused on me agreeing with her than trying to destroy me entirely.

I felt a head lean on one of my shoulders “You're right. You're not a monster,” Sophia whispered softly in my ear almost with love “You’re worse, you're a Daemon. A being who chose to do something the Archdaemons of old would be proud of. You ate a god while he was alive. Kronos should have taken lessons from you.”

“What did Olethros say to you? Stop trying to change yourself. Right now, the lives of your family are in danger.”

A hand moved softly to grab the right side of my face. Images appeared in the ocean of blood. Glimpses of an unwanted future, of the head of a nun on a stick “Imagine what could happen to sweet Asia because of your weakness.”

“Fuck you!”

That was enough! My power of destruction surged around me, erasing everything close to my skin.

A vacuum formed in the middle of the sea of blood. A vacuum that knew better than trying to fill the void I had created.

She appeared just above me, a savage grin displayed on her face “What? Just showing you the truth.”

I didn't think. My body moved instinctively sparks of black surrounding my right fist. My punch met dead on her face. Instead of feeling the particular sensation of something breaking, of something being thrown away, I was met with nothing.

Her grin grew even more looking now more like a line separating the higher and lower sides of her face “You may be cheating with demonic energy but it doesn't change the fact that a black flash is an act of total focus, total self belief. How could you hurt me when you're so full of doubts? Let me show you how it is done!”

“Black Flash!”

Faster than I could see, I felt something crash against my face sending me ragdolling in the air. I ignored the pain. I pushed through the agony I could feel coursing through me. It was painful, just more than it should have been. I had fought against things that had only left me a blackened husk yet her singular punch did hurt as much if not more.

With a flick of my will, a portal opened behind me, one that opened just before Sophia. Destruction danced at my fingertips. ‘Consume, eat as much as you want to’ I commanded my power of destruction.

It rushed like a laser just in front of her face. She opened her mouth and my destruction instead of hurting her was sucked into her mouth as if it was a black hole.

“Didn't I tell you? I am you, I am everything. How could your power of destruction hurt me when it is also mine?”

She rose and twelve bat wings covered in the power of destruction bloomed from her back. Scarlet light began to emit from her. She rose to a point where she looked with her radiance like a faraway star.

Even though she was far away, I could still see her face. That grin on her face, even though it wasn't wise, I wanted to wipe it out.

“Don’t you understand *? You just have to stop playing the role of the weak. You're a Daemon! The past, the present, the future, they are there to be taken by Rias Gremory! You only showed uncertainty! If I was at your place, I would have made them crumble one by one!”

“If you're me, Do you think they would like it? Do you think Akeno and the others will still love you?!”

“You said it yourself! They are dead and Akeno and the others, if they stop loving me, I'll just force them to do so and if I get bored, I will simply find or make new toys!”

An orb of shadow and fire began to form in her hands. “Don't you see?! Don't you understand?! You only screw things up and when you act, it is never enough!”

As she spoke, the ball of fire and shadow left her hand to raise above her. It began to grow and grow and grow.

“Failures upon failures! You are always given everything and you always squander it! You don’t see it as clearly as I can but I see the script and I see how your story will end!

I saw her eyes change from the blue-green she had shared with me to an all-encompassing white that swallowed her sclera “You know what’s funny? Everyone around you will suffer because you were not selfish enough! Everyone around you will suffer because you let lesser concepts like morals or indecision get a grip on your heart!”

I couldn’t detect any lies in her voice, in her words. Was this truly how things would end? Maybe Sophia was right? Maybe I should give up, maybe she would be a better Rias. A new start where I wouldn’t directly or indirectly fuck everything up.

This would be the kindest thing to do, the most reasonable thing to do yet I hated the notion of it! I hated the notion of bowing, of running away!

I had already been to the Eiffel Tower even though I hadn’t wanted to and only did it because my mother at that time forced me to do so because honestly, only foreigners went to visit it. The orb of fire was now as big as the memories I held of the French monument

Sophia threw the mini star at me. With a bat of my one wings, I rushed toward it. I crushed against it hands first and it burned, burned so much, hurt so much. “Why are you fighting now when later you won’t do what needs to be done?! What are you fighting now Rias?!

“You are right when you say I lost myself too much in my head.” She had said it to me a long time ago. My greatest enemy wasn’t the world, it was me, it was my own brain. As long as I didn't believe, as long as I didn't believe in myself and my actions, I would never go forward.

“I don't care what you saw. As if I would let the curse future you saw happen!” I understood now. It didn't matter if I saw what I was doing like not enough. It didn't matter if I was full of doubt. Victory could only be achieved if I wished for it!

“GOOD! You finally understand!” Sophia shouted The only way forward is by crushing everything on your part to nothing! The only way forward is to disregard every doubt cast by the world and your own ego!”

I pushed and the ball of shadows and fire broke. I appeared before the now smiling face of Sophia a blade of destruction in my right hand. I am thou, you are I. My essence never activated because I had never been in danger. She hadn’t lied.

‘This was truly a persona cliché’ I thought before my blade pierced through her chest.

The smile on the face of Sophia grew even more but this time, it was softer, more humane “I threw so many references. You took so much time to understand.”

Persona, an evil doppelganger beach style. Yeah, I should have seen it earlier. “This world, it is a false one isn't it?” I asked her even though I already knew the answer.

“Actually, your body fell asleep in the bath. If you were human, it would have been a problem but you're not. False, this world may be, but it doesn't change it is real. When you cast Unlimited blade work using Archer Aria instead of Shirou’s Aria, you summoned me. If it had been the Aria of a younger Shirou, you would have succeeded but because you cast the one of Archer, you created something new, something more appropriate.”

“A marble phantasm,” I whispered.

Let's say you got 100 marbles. 99 nines that are black and one that is white. The white marble is the jackpot that allows you to create the effect you want. A reality marble cheat by turning all the marbles into white ones. The problem with that it is breaking the rules and the world hates cheaters. Sooner or later, what you constructed will be destroyed by the world. The second and last disadvantage is that with a reality marble, you reject the world but in rejecting it, you can only impose a precise law in a delimited space.

A Marble Phantasm is the inverse. A marble phantasm is the ability to raise the chance to pick the white marble to one hundred per cent and definitely pick the white one amongst all the black ones. Because you didn't reject the rules of reality, there is no boundary created. Reality itself is what you control. The disadvantage of a marble phantasm is that you can only create phenomena that could technically be called natural. I wouldn’t be able like Shirou to create an unlimited amount of mythical swords but I could instead if I wished so create natural disasters and catastrophes, even control matter at a rudimentary level. I could create almost every phenomenon that technically could be said to be natural if I knew what I was doing.

“* died,” Sophia told me softly. “You’re now Rias. You're a Daemon, you're a god slayer. Stop doubting yourself. You were given a fragment of infinity. Stop caring about the world. As long as you believe in yourself, nothing that you'll do will fail. It's only if you hesitate that you'll fail.”

“Thanks for the therapy. I'm grateful,” I told her.

A chuckle escaped her “Liar, No you're not. If it was only you, nothing would have happened.”

“About you being the root, wa-”

“I lied,” she cut me shamelessly “I lied about that but I wasn't when I said I was you. I am just the big voice in the back of your mind always full of doubts and fears made manifest.”

I felt myself smile softly “You’re truly a bitch.”

“Of course, I am just like you.” She began to disappear, fade away slowly.

“About the portals you showed me, is this possible?”

“Everything is possible for us. You just only need to grab what you want.” She finally faded to nothing.

“Don’t make me come back,” I heard say. It was as if she was going away further and further.

“Also, Akeno found you unconscious in the bathtub. Good luck dealing with that~! Were her last words to me before I was the only one left in this world, in this possible representation of my Marble phantasm.

I had been scared of what could have happened to my peerage, to my family when the solution had been before me all along. I closed my eyes. I just needed to destroy every possible menace to the ones I cared for.

I opened my eyes to the sight of her crying face. I could feel my head resting on her knees “Hey Akeno,” I told her softly as her eyes widened with joy “I Love you”.