Sunless had memories.
Faded. Fragmented. Filtered through time's cruel sieve.
But they were his.
He remembered—not clearly,
Not as a man recalls,
But as eternity does.
With echoes.
He remembered enough to function.
To think when thought was required.
To walk when there was ground beneath him.
By now, his Sovereign mind had reordered memories.
The millennia of wandering—
Collapsed into a single, breathless moment.
His death—
Catalogued, devoid of ache.
His defiance—
Not prideful. Not loud. Just a truth.
His rise—
Not triumphant.
Just inevitable.
And most dangerous of all…
He remembered before.
The warmth of laughter in shared battle.
The weight of shoulders pressed against his.
Names. Faces.
Not whole. Not sharp.
But there.
Nephis. Rain. Effie. Jet. Kai… Cassie.
A feeling swelled at the mention of the last name.
Yet he paid no heed, for he had none to pay.
He remembered.
He thought.
And still—
He could not feel.
Not truly.
Not deeply.
Not anymore.
The fire was gone.
Only embers remained.
Cold things.
Memory-shaped.
What he had been was buried beneath centuries of silence.
What he had become—
A shadow sculpted by loss.
And now, standing upon the ice,
With the wind whispering through the carcass of winter itself…
He did not mourn.
He could not.
The heart had stopped screaming long ago.
All that remained was the quiet.
…
The Winter Beast approached like a storm carved from myth.
A hurricane of frozen wrath and ancient hunger.
Its form towered above the whitewashed ruin—
A cathedral of bone and glacier-flesh,
Wreathed in winds that howled like mourning wolves.
It did not walk.
It descended.
Like judgment.
Impenetrable.
Inevitable.
A primal horror made manifest.
And yet—
To a Sovereign who had forgotten his own name until moments ago,
It was… nothing.
It posed no challenge.
No threat.
Not truly.
Because Sunless—
The thing that had once been Sunny—
No longer knew what fear felt like.
All that remained inside was the echo of rage.
Directed at the Titan.
But not for any conscious reason.
He didn't remember why.
Not clearly.
Only fragments remained—
The shiver of blood on snow.
The silence after a dozen screams had been swallowed whole.
The absence of laughter that once belonged to warriors who had followed him into death.
His soldiers. His friends. His comrades.
Gone.
Taken by this beast.
A wound that time did not heal—
Only buried.
And now, standing face-to-face with the creature that had dug that grave,
Sunless did not weep.
The memory was old.
The grief fossilized.
But the rage?
Still alive.
---
He didn't ready himself.
Didn't brace.
He simply stood.
Not from confidence.
Not from arrogance.
Instinct.
Instinct deeper than flesh.
Older than memory.
Rooted in the marrow of a Sovereign who had shaped battlefields as easily as others shaped breath.
He had forgotten how to fight.
But he remembered how to win.
He remembered the weight of his will—
And the way the world bowed under it.
He remembered how a sword felt in his hand.
How it acted as an extension of him.
And so, as the Winter Beast bore down on him,
A living cataclysm carved from ancient ice—
He willed gravity itself to twist.
The storm slowed.
Snow crystallized midair.
The winds lost their voice.
Not because he planned it.
Not because he wanted it.
It was reflex.
Intuition.
The muscle memory of godhood.
He raised his hand—
A sword manifested in his hand, yet this one had no hilt.
Just blade.
Everything else was deemed trivial.
No spell. No name. No flourish.
Just intent.
And vanished.
The shadows folded around him.
No sound.
No warning.
Just absence.
One moment he stood before the storm—
The next, within it.
Below the Beast's core.
Its underbelly of glacial sinew and corrupted light.
It didn't see him.
Couldn't.
He would have struck—
If not for the voice.
Not sound.
Thought.
Soft, like snow on an open wound.
Too her.
[Sunny… is that— you?]
A name he hadn't worn in ages.
A chain more than a memory.
Cassie.
Oracle. Blind. Beloved once.
Twice-born in betrayal.
The memory stirred no image.
No warmth.
Just a stillness.
The kind that comes before a storm.
He gave her nothing.
Not even breath.
But something shifted—
A splinter in the silence.
Not pain. Not longing.
Just… pressure.
As if the past had reached through time's veil
And pressed two fingers to the throat of the present.
Not enough to choke.
But enough to remind him
That once—
He had bled.
The blade in his hand whispered for release.
But the hand didn't move.
The Sovereign didn't rage.
He simply endured.
Let the voice pass through him—
Like a gust through broken halls.
When it was gone,
Only silence remained.
And the rage.
Steady. Cold. Unspoiled.
The sword in his hand burned with shadow.
His eyes held no light.
His silhouette devoured the horizon.
He had once been a man.
Had once loved.
Had once hoped.
Now?
All of that had eroded away with time.
All that remained was hatred.
And that hatred would be channeled to the vile beast before him.
The blade moved before thought.
No battle cry.
No theatrics.
Just consequence.
A blur of absence.
A line carved into existence itself—
Across sinew.
Across spirit.
The Winter Beast shuddered.
Not from pain.
But from instinct.
Something deep.
Primal.
A warning older than ice.
Run.
Too late.
Sunless stepped forward—
Not walking.
Not teleporting.
Just… replacing where space thought he should be.
A second cut.
Vertical.
The Beast's body split like parchment—
Bone, glacier-flesh, radiant marrow—
All unraveling under a strike that had no weight,
Only will.
Its roar came after the damage.
Too slow.
Too mortal.
Sound fled.
Light dimmed.
And for a heartbeat, the world held its breath—
Then collapsed.
The Titan didn't fall.
It was dismissed.
Unwritten.
Forgotten.
Turned into a memory that the snow refused to keep.
Sunless exhaled.
Not because he needed to—
But because the body remembered breath.
Around him, the storm began to dissolve,
Its center gone.
Its god gone.
All that remained
Was the echo of impact.
And a single, whisper-soft question
Still trapped in his mind.
[Sunny… is that— you?]
'My name is Sunless.'
He thought—not out of want.
Not out of warmth.
But because he had to.
His Flaw.
The ever-burning brand etched into soul and silence.
It compelled truth.
And so he answered.
The blind oracle did not speak again.
Perhaps she understood.
Perhaps she remembered what she did.
And then—
Another presence brushed against the snow.
Radiant. Pale. Familiar in ways that scraped against memory.
A silhouette he had once trusted.
Once followed.
Once loved.
"Sunny…"
His head tilted—mechanical.
Like a doll remembering its first motion.
That voice.
Soft. Frayed.
Laced with hope and resolve.
Nephis.
The name unfurled like ash in the wind.
It meant nothing now.
But the shape of it stirred something deep beneath the frost.
Someone he had once held close.
Someone whose face had blurred beyond recall—
Was now here.
"Where were you all this time? A—and your runes…"
She faltered.
Stammered.
A crack in her poise.
And it bought him time.
Time he didn't need.
For he no longer chose to speak.
Speech was a mechanic. A byproduct. A triggered function.
He had forgotten the texture of words.
But not the structure.
Shadow Dance remained carved in his marrow.
Language flowed like instinct.
The tongue moved like ritual.
So he answered—
Not kindly.
Not cruelly.
Just honestly.
A single phrase.
Weighted with finality.
"Dead."
Nephis took a step closer, voice trembling.
"You… you're back."
Sunless didn't move.
"Back where?"
Her breath caught.
"Back home…"
He looked past her.
Through her.
"What home."
A pause. A breath. The wind shifted, carrying her scent.
Ash and radiance. Familiar. Faint.
She whispered, "Do you remember me?"
A beat.
Then another.
Long enough for the snow to gather on his shoulders.
"I remember…"
His voice wasn't cruel.
But it was hollow.
"I remember trusting you."
The words hung like frost in the air.
And then—
A twitch. A flicker.
Not in his face.
But in the air around him.
A single flake of snow—refusing to fall.
Caught in an eddy of heat that shouldn't exist.
A whisper followed.
Not loud. Not planned.
Just… escaping.
"I remember loving you."
It wasn't a confession.
It was a wound.
And it bled quietly into the silence between them.