Sunny stood there.
Unmoving.
A monument to judgment.
To vengeance, fulfilled.
The wind carried ash.
The scent of blood.
The stillness after slaughter.
And only when the severed head of Anvil—
crowned once in golden pride,
now emptied of command—
rolled to a stop,
did he stir.
No theatrics.
No celebration.
Only—
Necessity.
Five incarnations turned, silent and obedient,
their edges blurred with dusk.
Dissolving to shadows.
They flowed to him,
as water to a well,
as sins to their sinner.
One moved.
Elsewhere.
Still hunting.
A certain wench.
Still fulfilling the sentence passed down
from a god that had once been a man.
Sunny himself turned,
his obsidian eyes falling on the wreckage
of what was once a city,
a citadel,
a crown.
Then—
he exhaled.
Not relief.
Not peace.
But release.
A whisper from the grave.
With that breath,
he recalled them.
The legion.
The devoted.
The damned.
The Prognosticates of Death
All across Bastion,
they stirred.
Ancient silhouettes.
Formless beings, born of nothing but intent to destroy.
Shadows made solid.
Nightmares given purpose.
They loomed high—
devouring Saints,
destroying towers.
But only for a moment.
Then—
They knelt.
And vanished.
Into the shadows.
As if they had never been.
Like a plague that showed mercy,
or a dream too afraid to linger.
Their task was done.
And with them,
so ended the reign of Valor.
So ended Anvil.
So ended the Bastion
that had once stood tall.
Where once stood a Sovereign's rule,
now stood only ruin.
And one man,
or something no longer a man,
among the ruins.
Then, from behind the veil of destruction—
a voice.
"Sunny…"
Soft.
Graceful.
Real.
Nephis.
---
Rain's mouth hung open.
A breath caught between awe and disbelief.
"You're… my brother?"
Her voice was thin. Fragile.
Like a thread pulled too tight.
Her face—
a tapestry of bewilderment and wonder.
As if the truth had struck her like a stray star—
beautiful,
blinding,
and utterly unexpected.
Sunny studied her.
Not out of longing.
Not even out of guilt.
But reflex.
Habit etched into his bones
from lives he barely remembered.
His own face remained unreadable.
A marble façade.
Cold.
Still.
Yet—
There was something behind the silence.
A ghost of sentiment.
Too faint to name.
Too stubborn to die.
Just there.
Lingering.
Like the echo of a memory that refused to fade.
In his lap, the Soul Serpent rested.
No longer blade,
but beast.
It coiled with reverence—
nestled against him like a child seeking warmth from the storm.
It had been there when he forgot himself.
When his name had become meaningless.
It remembered him,
when he could not.
When he seeked for an end,
it refused.
"Yes," Sunny said simply,
his voice level—
a quiet finality that left no room for doubt.
"I am your brother."
A truth spoken not by choice,
but by the binding curse of his Flaw.
Around them,
the cohort gathered in a loose circle.
Some silent.
Some uncertain.
All changed.
To his left—
Cassie.
He'd forgiven her.
But not from love.
Not from kinship.
Not even out of grace.
He simply had no hatred left for her.
Only a cold acceptance that she, too,
had carved his damnation.
However unintended.
Scars would scab.
Perhaps even fade.
One day.
Maybe.
Rain turned, slowly, toward Nephis, seated beside her.
She didn't need assurance.
Not really.
She just needed one more voice to say it was real.
Nephis met her gaze.
Eyes solemn.
Unblinking.
And nodded once.
Rain slumped.
Not in despair.
Not in fear.
Just—
overwhelmed.
A child at a table surrounded by legends.
Champions of humanity.
Her brother, now known—
Was a Sovereign.
A Supreme.
And not just any—
the one who had razed the knights of Bastion.
Who had beheaded Anvil like it was an afterthought.
…
The Ivory Tower now stood in Bastion.
Sunny had claimed the ruined city as his citadel,
not out of pride,
but necessity.
The Nightmare Spell—
if left unchecked,
it would bleed into the masses like rot through silk.
No one needed to know that, of course.
Let them sleep.
The tale of his rampage never reached the public.
The official story?
Anvil, Sovereign of Valor,
had perished from grievous wounds—
earned while defending Bastion against a Cursed nightmare creature.
A fiction.
A bitter one.
It painted Anvil a hero,
and left a sour taste in the mouths of the cohort.
But it was the best path forward.
The masses didn't need another horror.
To them,
Nephis of the Immortal Flame—
a Transcendent—
had taken up leadership over Bastion.
In truth?
The one who ruled it walked in shadows.
And his name was Sunny.
As for the Knights of Valor—
those who bent the knee were allowed to remain.
Those who didn't?
Exiled.
Cast out into what little remained of the Chained Isles.
Their Sovereign had fallen.
Their era had ended.
And Morgan. She… had been forgiven.
After a few spars.
…
"Teacher— I mean, Brother…"
Rain's voice was tentative.
Soft as a question never meant to be asked.
Each word carefully chosen,
like stepping across thin ice with bare feet.
Sunny looked at her.
That same stillness.
That same unreadable calm—
but behind it, something stirred.
Not quite warmth.
Not quite grief.
Just the hollow ache of presence.
"Where were you the past year and a half?"
She didn't ask out of blame.
She asked because the silence had weighed on her.
Because his absence had left a hole no lie could patch.
Sunny didn't hesitate.
There was nothing to consider.
No illusion to maintain.
No gentler version to offer.
There was only the truth.
And the truth had no softness left.
"At the end of my third Nightmare,"
he said, voice low, even.
"I was attacked by a Cursed Terror."
The words hit harder than they should have.
Gasps didn't erupt.
But faces shifted.
Shock.
Stillness.
That shared, sacred pause before sorrow takes root.
He had never spoken of this.
Not to any of them.
Why?
Because no one had ever asked.
Not directly.
Not like she just had.
He continued—
not because he wanted to,
but because the words were already moving,
drawn out by old wounds refusing to stay closed.
"I escaped to the Shadow Realm,"
he said.
"But the Memory I used… was destroyed by the Terror."
His gaze did not waver.
His voice did not break.
"So I was stuck there."
A single sentence.
But it rang like a sentence passed down by the gods.
Rain blinked, trying to process it.
She didn't know—
not really.
But the others did.
They had seen glimpses,
dreamlike-fragments of his damnation.
Through Cassie.
Sunny, as always, pressed forward.
Cold. Controlled.
"Time worked differently… I think," he murmured.
"In that version of the Shadow Realm. I walked… and I walked…"
His tone didn't rise.
Didn't tremble.
Just dripped.
Like a leak from a cavern ceiling—
steady, quiet, corrosive.
"Until I forgot who I was."
A pause.
A beat of silence that throbbed like a bruise.
"And then I died.
I killed myself."
Rain drew back slightly.
Not in fear—
but heartache.
Sunny looked around the room,
not searching,
just… taking note.
"It didn't end there…. but,"
His voice was flat.
Like stone scraping across bone.
"There's a more efficient way to show you."
Cassie flinched before he even said her name.
She knew what was coming.
"Cassie."
Her name landed like a sentence.
She stiffened.
His voice—
not angry, not bitter, just hollow.
Like all his emotions had been filed away centuries ago,
and only the shapes of them remained.
"Share the rest of my memories.
It'll be easier."**
Why did he say that?
Why now?
Was there… hope?
That maybe, if they saw it all,
they'd understand him?
Could he be helped?
He didn't know.
But some part of him,
buried deep beneath ash and shadow,
wanted to be seen.
Cassie hesitated.
She turned to the others—
Nephis. Kai. Effie. Jet. Rain.
Then back at him.
Her breath caught.
Then, a quiet sigh.
The blind oracle stepped forward.
Each step careful, like approaching a dying pulsar.
Like approaching a god she'd once betrayed.
She stopped just before him.
Paused.
And then—
removed her blindfold.
Eyes once veiled, now exposed—
pale, hollow.
She gazed into his.
Not to see—
but to receive.
And then—
Her world turned dark.
Not the darkness of blindness,
but the darkness of memory—
thick, ancient, grieving.
Sunny stood,
a lone silhouette adrift in a dead realm.
He walked forward—
not truly herself,
but a shadow retracing the steps of one who had long since stopped being human.
And behind him…
a Serpent followed.
Not summoned.
Not ordered.
Not bound.
It followed because it chose to.
Because it had nothing else to follow.
Because it loved.
Sunny had died.
Yet he walked.
This time, not out of will—
but because the realm itself would not let him rest.
Where once he had marched for millennia against the weight of this desolate plane,
now he was drifting toward its apex.
Toward the end.
Toward… something that might resemble mercy.
But the will to live was gone.
Evaporated.
Worn thin by time and pain until even memory could not find it.
And still—
the Serpent followed.
A creature of ink and soul.
Black as mourning.
Silent as devotion.
It slithered behind him not as a weapon,
but as a companion.
Because he was all it had.
Because it remembered when he could not.
Cassie skipped forward—
Days.
Months.
Years.
Centuries.
Millennia.
And still… the Serpent followed.
Not out of duty.
But out of something far crueler.
Love.
She pushed forward again.
And again.
Until—
The shadow stopped.
Sunny, or what little of him remained, had reached the apex.
There was nothing.
No god.
No salvation.
No warmth.
Not even an end.
He stood there, unmoving.
And behind him… still, the Serpent.
She watched.
Waited.
But nothing stirred.
So she pressed time onward,
through an eternity she was not meant to glimpse.
And still—
The Serpent remained.
Sometimes it curled around him,
as if trying to anchor his fading shape against the wind.
Sometimes it nudged him,
softly—
like a child waking a sleeping father.
Begging.
Begging without words.
Begging through motion.
For anything.
A flinch.
A twitch.
Even a tear.
But there was nothing.
Only the weight of existence unmoored.
And then—
The runes appeared.
Floating before him, ancient and final.
[Shadow God peers into His realm.]
[A lost shadow is noticed.]
[An offering is made…]
[Lord of Shadows. Receive your salvation—The Mercy of Death.]
Outside the memory, Cassie trembled.
No words escaped her lips.
This wasn't salvation.
This wasn't grace.
This was annihilation dressed in divine form.
Inside—
The Serpent moved.
It knew.
And it refused.
It would not let him die.
Not like this.
Not unloved.
Not unseen.
It would fight a god.
It would die for him.
But gods are not things to strike—
so it did the only thing it could.
It dove into him.
Into his soul.
And did something.
She didn't know what.
She couldn't see it.
But something changed.
And then—
after eons of stillness—
he moved.
Sunny—
the dead, the forgotten, the withered—
moved.
He rejected the mercy of the Shadow God.
He refused to die.
Why?
She knew not.
But the realm recoiled.
Shadows surged.
They screamed.
They raged.
Tenebrific Weapons took form.
They lunged toward him in protest.
To punish his defiance.
And the Serpent—
it leapt to shield him.
Cassie watched, breath caught like a blade in her throat,
as the Serpent tore itself apart defending him.
Defending the man who had nothing left.
She watched it fall.
And Sunny—
now more shadow than soul—
stood still.
One pace away.
And then…
he looked.
A flicker.
Recognition?
No.
Something older.
Deeper.
Maybe it was grief.
Maybe it was the first thing he had felt in eons.
She would never know.
Because in the moment after,
she saw the impossible.
The shadows,
those things that felt no fear,
trembled.
They wept.
Not with tears,
but with silence.
And then—
a pulse.
A change.
A shift in the very fabric of the world.
Something profound and forbidden.
A moment the realm itself would not share.
And Cassie was cast out.
Thrown from his mind like an intruder unworthy of witnessing what came next.
She faltered backward,
gasping in the light of the Ivory Tower.
Tears on her cheeks, unseen.
She turned her hollow-eyed face to Nephis.
And spoke, quiet—
"Do you want to see? What I saw."