Nephis didn't speak.
She didn't have to.
Her gaze said it all.
Not a request.
A need.
So Cassie stepped forward,
and Nephis rose to meet her.
No words exchanged.
None needed.
Only gravity between them.
Cassie stopped—
a single pace apart.
Close enough to share breath,
far enough for memory to strike like lightning.
One blink—
and Nephis was no longer in the Ivory Tower.
She was inside it.
The remnant of what had once been Sunny.
The same memory she had glimpsed once before…
only now, whole.
He had died.
She had seen it.
But here he stood—
not alive.
Just… not allowed to end.
Not yet.
A shadow.
A scar.
Walking because the world refused to bury him.
And behind him,
a Serpent.
It did not slither out of command.
It did not trail like a weapon.
It followed because it could not not follow.
Because even in death, it loved.
Nephis saw it all.
The damned walk.
The silence that wasn't stillness but surrender.
With every millennium that passed,
she unraveled.
Why?
Why him?
What curse had he earned?
What sin had he committed?
And still—
He walked.
Until he reached the realm's final breath.
A place where even gods turned to silver ash.
Where divinity was no shield.
And there—
he stopped.
Waited.
Not for salvation.
Just… for anything.
But what broke her heart wasn't his stillness.
It was the Serpent.
It would curl around him—
not as armor,
but as memory trying to hold a shape together.
It would nudge him—
not to move,
but to remember that once,
he had been alive.
Begging.
For a blink.
A sigh.
Even pain would have been proof.
But he remained silent.
As if already gone.
Then the runes came.
And the false mercy.
And the execution.
But the Serpent saw what she saw—
and it refused.
It fought.
Fought something no living thing should dare resist.
Not out of courage.
Out of love.
The kind that makes monsters weep.
The kind no oath can replicate.
And when the blades rose against their master,
it shielded him.
Knowing it could die.
Knowing it would.
And still—
it shielded him.
When the realm turned against him,
he turned back—
finally—
and saw the Serpent fall.
And then—
he moved.
Not to escape.
Not to fight.
But because something inside him cracked.
Because for the first time in eons…
he felt.
The shadows around him recoiled.
Felt pain they were not built to feel.
Because he had felt pain.
And his will bled into them.
Even they suffered.
And as Nephis reached the edge of that truth—
whatever that moment had been—
It ended.
The memory shattered.
And she was back.
Standing in the Ivory Tower.
Eyes wide.
Breath shallow.
Hands still trembling from a loyalty too profound to put into words.
There was no slap this time.
No surge of fury.
Only silence.
Cassie lingered.
Wondered if pain might've been easier than this weight.
But it wasn't her burden anymore.
So she turned to Rain.
And Rain…
did not move.
Did not blink.
Did not flinch.
She only stared,
expression unreadable—
like a page too soaked with ink to decipher.
What had Nephis seen?
What memory could leave her—
the scion of Immortal Flame—
shaken to her bones?
What pain could twist the hands that controlled seas of flame, into trembling leaves?
Cassie stood still before her.
A strange hush settling over the Ivory Tower.
Not silence—
something heavier.
A sorrow woven in the root of her stance.
A grief too old to scream.
There was no request.
No invitation.
Only the inevitable.
And Rain, without a word,
nodded once.
Cassie stepped forward.
Slowly.
Gently.
Each step quieter than breath.
She stopped—
close enough to share warmth,
though neither of them radiated any.
One moment,
Rain was staring into empty blue eyes—
eyes hollowed by truths too sharp to speak aloud.
The next—
the world fell away.
Darkness rose to meet her.
And in it—
she saw.
Not a vision.
Not a dream.
But a life lost to time.
Her brother's life in the shadow realm.
The truth,
in its entirety.
It did not start with pain.
It started with hope.
With the smallest flicker—
a light still trying to glow.
She saw the struggle.
The defiance.
The will to endure.
But each mile bled it thinner.
Each step scraped it raw.
Each breath came harder than the last.
And slowly, steadily—
the light dimmed.
Hope dulled.
Diminished.
Until it was just a memory.
Then a whisper.
Then—
Nothing.
She watched emotions die one by one.
Joy.
Anger.
Grief.
Love.
Not in dramatic cries,
but in absence.
They faded like color in winter.
Like warmth in a dying fire.
He fell.
He died.
And yet—
he stood,
he walked.
Not because he wanted to.
Because the realm commanded it.
No longer man.
Just shadow.
And still—
he walked.
And always behind him,
the Serpent.
That loyal creature of ink and soul.
It never left him.
Not once.
Even as centuries collapsed into dust.
She saw it all:
How it curled around his legs when he faltered—
how it brushed its head against him when he forgot how to move.
How it begged without words.
Pleaded without hope.
Cried without sound.
Please.
Wake up.
Remember.
She felt its loyalty.
Felt it like a scream muffled by eternity.
Too pure.
Too painful.
And then—
the runes.
That false mercy.
The offer of release.
And the Serpent's refusal.
She watched it shield him.
Watched it fight fate itself.
Watched it fall.
Watched him—
finally—
react.
He moved.
A single step.
And the world shuddered.
The shadows wept.
She saw it.
Felt it.
Suffering ripple across the void.
And then—
It ended.
The vision collapsed,
spat her out like breath held too long.
And Rain…
Rain was no longer the same girl.
She didn't speak.
Couldn't.
She sat small in her seat,
shoulders trembling under weight she never asked to carry.
She had only just met her brother.
She hadn't known the face behind the title.
Hadn't known that the man called Sovereign, called Supreme,
had once been just that… a man—
Alone.
Forgotten.
Shattered.
Alone again.
A soft sound escaped her.
A sob—
choked and unsure,
as if even crying felt too disrespectful for what she had seen.
And there she remained,
a little girl,
no longer happy, no longer angry—
Just broken.
Sobbing quietly
for a brother she never got to love
before the world took him
and left behind
a shadow.
…
As Cassie turned to the rest of the cohort—
ready to unspool the final stretch,
the last leg of Sunny's long and lonesome descent… or ascent—
Rain rose.
Slowly.
The tears didn't stop.
But they weren't loud.
They fell quietly,
like the kind of sorrow that doesn't need sound to be heard.
Her legs were unsure beneath her,
steps measured,
more to steady herself than to approach.
She walked toward him.
Toward Sunny.
Toward a name that had once meant teacher,
then friend,
and now—
something else.
Something heavier.
Stranger.
Deeper.
The others watched,
but none moved.
None spoke.
The silence held its breath.
She stopped before him.
Her gaze didn't plead.
It didn't waver.
It searched.
For what, she couldn't say.
But it wasn't certainty that moved her—
It was grief.
Not for the brother she now had.
But for the brother she never got to have.
The boy who had walked into the abyss.
Alone.
Without anyone waiting on the other side.
And then—
She stepped in.
Her arms wrapped around him.
Not out of impulse.
Not out of drama.
Just…
because it felt wrong not to.
It was not the hug of reunion.
Not celebration.
Not relief.
It was mourning.
A small, trembling gesture
trying to say I'm here now,
even if it came too late.
She didn't say his name.
Didn't call him brother.
She didn't need to.
Because this wasn't about names.
It was about presence.
Sunny had been leaning forward,
silent as ever,
a weightless god in a too-heavy world.
For a moment?
Nothing.
A beat passed.
Then another.
His hands didn't move.
Not yet.
But something did.
Somewhere beneath the thousand-year quiet.
Something… cracked.
Not pain.
Not joy.
Just the faintest echo of recognition.
Like a shadow remembering it once had form.
And slowly—
mechanically—
he moved.
His arms returned the embrace.
Stiff at first.
Like a reflex his soul had forgotten.
Then—
Slightly softer.
The warmth of family didn't heal him.
Didn't fill the holes.
Didn't return what was lost.
But it reached him.
And in a world where gods had failed to claim him—
that was no small thing.
A moment stretched between them.
Not perfect.
Not whole.
But real.
And for now—
that was enough.
---
Within a palace carved from obsidian,
a woman sat upon a throne.
She was a corpse—
and yet, Supreme.
Draped in a gown the color of spilled royalty,
its folds pooling like blood beneath her seat.
A sword had been driven through her chest,
pinning her to the cold throne like a final decree.
And still, her face—
so breathtaking it dared memory to forget—
was marked not by death,
but by worry.
Beside her, a puppet stirred.
Flesh and will forged to speak in her place.
"What do the reports say?"
The voice was not hers,
yet all in the room bowed as if it were.
A Master knelt.
Beautiful, even beneath tension.
"Bastion has fallen," she said.
"Officially—Anvil died to greivous wounds.
received when battling a Cursed one."
A pause.
The words lingered.
Too neat.
Too convenient.
The puppet turned, its head tilting slightly.
A question hummed beneath the quiet.
"And what of our sources?"
The Master's voice lowered,
as if the truth itself might offend the stone.
"They whisper of the other one.
The new Sovereign.
Unconfirmed,
but… they say he's with Changing Star."
A name passed her lips,
soft as dread.
"A man called… Sunless."
The words lingered,
like the first tremor before a storm.
Then—
the echo of footsteps.
Measured.
Elegant.
Final.
A woman entered.
Her skin was the color of ash kissed by moonlight,
her beauty strange, like a dream misremembered.
Grace clung to her like a veil.
Not soft.
But sharp.
She moved without sound,
and bowed before the throne—
before her queen.
Before her mother.
Seishan.
Her voice, low.
Deliberate.
Etched in memory.
"I know of this Sunless…"
she said.
"He was with me—
on the Forgotten Shore."