"Cassie," Nephis said,
her voice quiet—yet cutting.
"Explain."
Above them, Sunny slept.
Tangled in silk sheets and silence,
dreaming—if he still could dream—
in Nephis's chambers.
Below, in a dim-lit room of the ivory tower,
four pairs of eyes pinned Cassie to the present.
Kai.
Effie.
Jet.
And Nephis.
The silence stretched.
Not heavy.
Just… expectant.
Like breath held before a blade falls.
Cassie didn't answer.
Not yet.
Her lips parted—closed.
Opened again.
A beat.
Another.
Then—
"I… I saw a way to win."
Her voice cracked like old glass.
"We needed power. A weapon against the Sovereigns.
And I saw one."
No one interrupted.
No one spared her.
So she went on.
"All it would take…
was him surviving the Shadow Realm.
A year and a half. That's all.
Then he'd be strong enough. Stronger than any of us.
He'd come back with the way to natural Supremacy."
Her voice frayed like thread.
Dull. Hollow.
Dead in places.
Where tears should've come—there was nothing.
She had none left to give.
Still, silence.
Not mercy.
Just judgment in still skin.
Then Nephis spoke.
Soft.
Slow.
Terrifying.
"A year and a half?"
She tilted her head—just slightly.
"We both know Sunny.
You and I."
"He doesn't change in a year and a half, Cassie."
Her voice grew colder,
words coated in grief more than ice.
"He was in the Shadow Realm for far, far longer."
A pause.
"Long enough to forget the taste of sunlight.
Long enough to forget the warmth of everyone he cares for.
Long enough to become what you see now."
No one spoke.
Yet the air—
It grew warmer.
Not heat, not flame—
but something older.
A slow-breathing hush,
like wrath curling beneath skin.
"So…"
The word sliced the silence.
Effie's voice.
Unsoft. Unjoking.
Strangely still.
"Are we just gonna pretend Sunny didn't come back as a Supreme?"
Every gaze turned to Nephis.
The question was hers to answer.
It always was.
She sighed.
A soft sound.
But in Nephis… rare.
Weighty.
"All he told me was…"
A pause.
"He died. Alone."
Her voice didn't tremble—
but something behind it did.
"There was no one with him while he suffered.
And then…
he lived.
Because of his soul serpent."
She leaned back into the velvet chair,
as if the memory had weight.
"And… Just now,"
Something flickered in her tone.
Not sadness.
Not anger.
Just something… unreadable.
Everyone stilled.
The air thinned.
Her fingers curled into fists,
knuckles whitening on the chair's arms.
"He looked at that Serpent…"
A breath.
"And he smiled."
A silence like prophecy.
Heavy with the shape of things to come.
No one spoke,
Not for a moment.
Then—
Another voice.
Kai.
Gentle. Earnest. Fraying at the edges.
"I think we should wait.
Ask him ourselves.
See if he even knows…
how long he was in the Shadow Realm."
A beat.
"Or if time still means anything to him at all."
---
It was the hour of dusk.
That solemn place where light forgets the day,
and shadows begin to speak.
They sat in a circle.
Not comrades.
Not yet friends again.
Just souls orbiting a silence…
with Sunny at the apex—
No one spoke.
Not yet.
Tension coiled in the air like smoke.
They needed to know—
what it had cost him.
What price their absence had carved into his bones.
It was Kai who stepped into the silence.
He seldom did.
"Sunny…"
His voice was gentle, laced with the weight of too many answers he didn't want.
"It's been… about a year and a half for us.
But for you—"
He hesitated.
"How long was it?"
Sunny's gaze swept over them.
Hollow.
Not cold—cold requires life.
Just…
absent.
"I stopped counting…"
A pause.
"After the first hundred millennia."
A silence fell.
No, it collapsed.
Like a cathedral brought down by quiet.
No one breathed.
No one dared.
But then—
he kept speaking.
Why?
There was no rage in him.
No guilt to give.
No tears to weaponize.
And yet…
he spoke.
Because maybe—just maybe—
some broken thing inside him
still hoped it could be mended.
"It wasn't hunger that killed me.
Not thirst.
Not a Nightmare Creature."
A breath, sharp and slow.
"No…
It was me."
His voice dropped like a blade.
"I killed myself.
Because I couldn't take it anymore."
A hand—soft, shaking—touched his.
Nephis.
Not in comfort.
Not in pity.
But to feel him.
To remind herself that he was still real.
Then—
A flicker in the circle.
Jet.
She leaned forward, eyes narrowed—not in suspicion, but focus.
"Maybe… we need to see it."
Her voice didn't plead.
It offered.
She turned to Cassie, her tone even.
"You could use your Transcendent Ability.
Look into his memories.
Let us understand.
So we can help."
All eyes shifted.
Cassie.
Small beneath their gaze.
Smaller beneath her guilt.
This wasn't what she wanted.
She only meant to save them.
So what if he had to endure alone, for a while?
Except…
It hadn't been a while.
It had been eternity.
Her lips trembled.
But she nodded.
She stood.
Hesitated.
Then took one step.
Then another.
Each footfall unsure—like approaching a grave.
When she reached him,
she removed her blindfold.
And for the first time in eons…
Cassie looked into Sunny's eyes.
Not at him—
into him.
And the moment she did,
the world was gone.
She saw darkness.
Endless…
unchanging…
patient darkness.
A void without teeth,
without breath,
without even the mercy of hunger.
And within it—
a single figure,
walking.
A shadow among shadows.
Treading across a land where even time forgot to weep.
Behind him, somewhere far away,
a flicker of light…
small, stubborn, dying.
But with each step he took,
it grew dimmer.
It wasn't following—
he was leaving it behind.
She moved through the memory,
jumped across centuries like pages in a book.
But nothing changed.
He walked.
And walked.
There were no monsters.
No trials.
No epics to survive.
Just silence.
Just steps.
Just the rhythm of nothing.
Until—
She saw it.
A creature.
Monstrous, shifting, formed of raw, living night.
Vast as a mountain.
Unmoving.
A horror that should have devoured thought itself.
And yet…
There was no fear in him.
Only revulsion.
He hated it.
Sunny summoned a blade—
long, jagged, beautiful in its emptiness.
An odachi made of deeper night than even the world around him.
He approached.
And thrusted the weapon, into the figure of darkness.
No resistance.
No struggle.
As if the thing had been waiting to die.
Like time had frozen—
or worse, never begun.
And Cassie understood then:
He walked not for purpose,
but because time itself betrayed him.
It did not flow.
It crawled.
It ceased.
It forgot to exist.
But for him, it moved forward—
second by second,
cutting through his mind
like falling sand through flesh.
She watched him walk again.
Watched him kill another.
And another.
And another.
But none screamed.
None fought.
They simply… died.
Maybe if they had fought back—
if they had tried to kill him,
to hurt him—
Maybe then, he could've felt something.
Could've remembered who he was.
Could've hated.
Could've lived.
But they didn't.
They let him be.
Just like the world did.
Just like they did.
So he walked.
Until walking was no longer an action,
but a condition of existence.
And then—
He stopped.
Cassie's breath caught.
Why?
What had changed?
He had walked for eons.
What was another step?
But he didn't move.
His head tilted.
His soul shivered.
And then—
he summoned it.
Weaver's Mask.
The artifact of secrets.
The creation of the daemon of fate and lies.
The mask that hides the truth itself.
He activated something.
An enhancement.
A revelation.
An ending.
Cassie tried to follow—
to see what he saw—
But there was nothing.
Only static.
Only absence.
Whatever he witnessed…
it was not meant for her.
Not even memory allowed her in.
And then—
He collapsed.
The echo of a man who had lived too long.
The god of a grave that never knew light.
The prisoner of a cage built from himself.
Sunny… died.
Not with a scream.
Not with a fight.
But with a breath too tired to continue.
A breath that had carried centuries,
and now, carried nothing.
One tear slid down his cheek.
Not sorrow.
Not hatred.
Regret.
The kind that curdles the soul—
not for his suffering,
but for having trusted,
for having hoped.
For believing someone—anyone—would come.
From the still pool of his shadow,
another shape rose.
A Serpent.
Loyal.
Ever-watching.
Ever-following.
It had no name,
for it needed none.
But it had love.
And in that silence,
it saw the body.
Its master.
Its anchor.
Its father.
It slithered forward.
Nudged him.
Gently.
As if shadows could wake the dead.
It should not have hoped—
shadows do not hope.
It should not have grieved—
shadows do not grieve.
And yet…
It coiled around him,
tender as dusk.
Wrapping what little warmth it had,
around what little life remained.
A silent promise:
If you die, I die too.
Not out of despair—
but out of devotion.
Let the world forget him.
Let time erase his name.
Let gods abandon their ways.
Let daemons abandon their ideals.
The Serpent would not.
It would lie with him,
cradle him beneath oblivion,
and wait for the end.
Cassie's hands trembled.
Her vision blurred—
not from grief,
but from being too full of it.
From witnessing a love
too silent for words,
too loyal to ever be human.
Her vision blurred—not from grief.
From being too full of it.
From trying to carry something
that had never been meant to be carried.
She looked away.
Slowly pulled the blindfold back over her eyes.
Not to protect herself—
but to hide from the world she had just seen.
One tear fell from her own eyes.
Just one.
Because there was no space for more.