She arrives, slowly walking into the room. What she sees are three large painted glass windows in front of the round, stretched out marble floor.
At last, she's made it to the end of the long road, after going through a door that suddenly appeared in the wall. However, instead of relief, fear begins to cloud in her mind. She can practically feel the oppressive air of this place where the spirits of the dead still linger. This is her goal.
She walks to the center of the room, looking around her. All she sees in a curtain of black, with only the round floral carvings of the floor and the three glass windows being illuminated. She frowns, now unsure of what to do.
Further in, she notices that someone had collapsed, the person's body lying still on the ground. Upon examining him, she realizes that she was staring into the face of the student that was tailing Leo.
Calling out to him, she bents down and grabs him by the shoulder, shaking him gently in an attempt to wake him up when she notices- he is stone cold, showing no sign of life in him. Gasping, she immediately withdraws her hand and backs away.
Her eyes go wide as she turned as pale as the corpse before her. She can no longer think coherently, her mind going blank as she stared back at the unmoving body in bewilderment, not even a rise or fall of the chest to indicate that he was still breathing.
It was at this moment that she noticed something twitching next to the body. The fallen effigy next to the male student comes to its feet with a clatter, twisting its head towards her menacingly. After fighting several enemy programs to get here, it was obvious that this thing was an enemy too. The girl rises to her feet, her effigy already positioned in front of her.
Without warning, the fallen effigy suddenly twists its body around and comes charging at her, attacking her effigy by punching it in the face. Her effigy is thrown back by a few feet, looking disoriented as the girl tries to get her head together, opening the window to input her commands.
In horror, she sees that there is no actions inputed by the enemy. She makes a hasty glance at the two dolls, with her own slowly being cornered. Was the fallen effigy fighting by its own will?
Biting her finger, she tries to analyze the enemy's movements, but the effigy was too fast for her to make a predicament. Meanwhile, her effigy had already lost an arm, and looked to be putting up a pathetic struggle.
Looking at her window, she inputs a few commands, taking out her ether crystal as she fed it to her effigy and initiated it to follow her commands, praying for the best. The effigy immediately gets into a stance as it begins fighting the enemy effigy.
However, it seemed as if the enemy could predict all of her effigy's movements. Striking her effigy down, the enemy effigy proceeds to tear apart her effigy before it could rise back up again.
Within seconds, her effigy was already beginning to fizzle and fade away. All alarms were going off in her head as her backed away from the enemy effigy as much as she could as she recalled what the voice had warned her back inside the labyrinth. "Please keep in mind that if your effigy is ever destroyed in battle, you will no longer be able to shield yourself from harm. To put it bluntly, you will die."
The enemy effigy turns, acknowledging the female student as its next victim. Dashing towards her, the girl didn't even have time to react before she could feel its metallic arm piercing through her torso. Her eyes go as wide as saucers as her mouth opens in mute shock. Mercilessly, the enemy effigy withdraws its arm, tearing a hole through her torso as she collapses onto the cold, hard ground.
She feels an indescribable pain tear through her body. She wants to yell, she wants to scream, she wants to howl out in pain, yet she finds that she is unable to do so, her body lying flat like a beached whale. "...Hmph, you seem to be lacking as well."
...She can hear the sound of a distant voice. "The time has come. With your inevitable loss, I will consider this round of preliminaries to be over. Farewell. I pray that you find peace in your annihilation." That is the voice's final words to her.
She doesn't even have the power to protest. All she can do is stare at the floor. She vision blurs as her body slowly turns cold, her breathing get slowly with each passing second. Panic rises in her, the girl gradually finding it harder to see and to breathe. Is she...going to die here?
Suddenly, at the edge of her now hazy vision, a number of grey coloured lumps seem to rise from the ground. Actually, it might be that she had just noticed them now; they may have been there from the beginning for all she knew. After all, those grey lumps are the bodies of an untold number of fallen Tsukumihara Academy students.
Despite the pain that threatens to swallow her whole, she manages to glance towards the classmate that had fallen. He wasn't the only one to fall. All the others who made it here also died, unable to do anything. And in a very short while, she'll become one of them as well.
Her breathing becoming shallow and soft, the girl beginning to surrender to her fate. Maybe it's best that she just closes her eyes there and then. She did all she could, so maybe it'll be better for it to end now. Her vision blackens for a few brief seconds, signalling her call of death.
...No, she couldn't give up here. She couldn't give up here in this dark place after coming so far. She refused to give up. Gritting her teeth, she summons all the strength she had in an attempt to get back on her feet.
However, as she tries to move, an familiar yet unbearably intense pain shooting through her entire body. She opens her mouth to scream, yet finds her voice caught in her throat. If that was how it was going to be...no...if this is...
Remnants of a flashback appear in her mind; she had suffered through this pain before, meeting her own demise. However, unlike last time, she wasn't going to let the pain devour her.
...That's right. She couldn't possibly give up now. Even if she's forced to concede defeat eventually, it would be unforgivable to do so now.
In that moment, she feels as if something was wrong. All her senses grow faint. By then, the pain running through her body has long passed its ability to endure it. She now knows what the damned suffer.
Even so, she must stand.
The drive to go on is something even she doesn't understand. It wasn't as if the fear of death was urging her not to give up. In fact, she just wanted to be at peace. Keeping that in mind, why was she trying with all her might to get back on her feet?
She couldn't figure out the reason why. She doesn't know why her life needs to be ended here. Why was she...?
Her vision distorts once again, a realization clearing her previously clouded mind. She understands now, that must be the reason why. Pressing her hands against the floor, she forces her body to slowly get up, rejecting the thought of passing onto the afterlife.
There were those many corpses. There were those many questions. Now, she can't continue without knowing. No, now that her spirit has been awakened, she could not allow things to come to an end without knowing...!
"...Hmm...as a representative of the holy grail, I can hardly ignore such overpowering doubt." The girl looks up defiantly, glaring back at the owner of the voice above her. "You question your own existence even as it comes to an end, and see your own shortcomings as death approaches. Very well, I expect much from that spirit of yours. There's a servant left that fits a human like you."
A servant? What did it...? "A nondescript Legendary Soul fighting for a nameless master. I look forward to your valiant efforts in battle."
The sound of breaking glass is accompanied by a light cutting through the gloom, the room blaring to life with colour. The girl manages to move her weary body and aching head to see what's happening, seeing that two of the large glass windows had shattered, leaving one in the center. What was going on...?
It was then that the female student noticed something slowly rising in the middle of the room through a disc of light emerging from the red magic circle that appeared on the floor. Her eyes go wide as a man appears, his back turned to her. From the looks of it, the man was impressively tall by almost more than six feet and had a well built body, his skin being tanned and having snow white hair, dressed in crimson.
The appearance itself isn't much different from that of a human being, but something was diferent...clearly so. The power emanating from him transcended that of any human, or of any human she's faced before getting here. An awesome power that seems as if it'd vaporize anyone swirls within her body against her will.
"Man, this sucks. I was praying that I wouldn't be summoned but I can see that my hope was misplaced. Showing self-restraint is difficult, regardless of one's age. I guess I'll just flounder around pointlessly," the man before her grumbles, clicking his tongue in displeasure.
"I came here in response to a voice calling for me. Now then, what kind of moron would needlessly call for a servant like me?" The guy turns, twisting his head to reveal his face as his copper-grey eyes met her chocolate brown ones.
The girl doesn't say anything in response, her mouth agape in awe of the man standing before her. She didn't know why he came, but something in her clicked in that moment.
Yes, as fate would have it, it was at that moment that their meeting would change her life forever.