Nephis would have improvised a fire if not for the fact that she didn't know this island. What if fire attracted more dark hunters? Or maybe... maybe those demons had been the last? Who could tell? Maybe the entire island was a nightmare creature, like that giant shell they'd once found.
So she chose to be cautious.
She had already explored the entire cave some time ago, and when she reached the end, she was surprised to find that... well, there was nothing. Empty. Silent. Stable.
With nothing else to do, she let Sunny rest. He had suffered too much that day. He deserved a proper nap.
⸻
Sunny opened his eyes slowly. His entire body ached... but that was good. It meant he was alive.
He didn't want to open his eyes fully. They hurt, and a strange exhaustion weighed down his bones — something unusual for an Ascended like him.
But if he could feel pain, it meant he and Nephis had won... right?
How had she managed?
Well, he could always ask her... but when he finally forced his eyelids open, still reluctant from the exhaustion, he saw it.
Or rather... he didn't see it.
Nephis was gone. There was no sign of any nightmare creature. Instead, a beautiful crystalline lake stretched out at his feet.
It was so unnatural... and, at the same time, so beautiful.
When he lowered his gaze toward the ground —or the sea, or whatever that impossible place was— he felt a weight in his heart. It wasn't an attack on his soul or a physical injury. Sunny had experienced all kinds of pain in his life, but this... this was different. He couldn't even call it pain.
It was something deeper.
In the reflection of the crystalline water, he saw his silhouette. The lake reflected him with perfect clarity, like a polished blue gem.
And there they were — his eyes.
Black as onyx. Dark as a bottomless sea.
Sunny had never cared much about his appearance. He'd never really paid attention. Though, to be fair... ever since meeting Mordret, he'd avoided mirrors and reflections like the plague.
But now, he didn't look away. Because, for the first time, he knew exactly where he was.
A dream.
Right?
Sunny had had bad experiences with dreams since his second Nightmare... even before that.
But in the end, that's all this was: a dream. What could happen?
However, the moment he took a step forward, something twisted. Reality warped.
He felt like the motion of his leg was delayed, as if the world responded with a lag foreign to his will. The water, once crystalline, began to change. First to opalescent, whitish tones... then gray. Until it turned pitch-black.
And then, the entire lake —infinite, perfect— became dark.
It wasn't shadow.
It was darkness.
A darkness without texture, without form, without depth. Sunny felt his soul grow heavier. He couldn't see. Couldn't smell. Every sense was devoured.
Seconds passed. Or maybe an eternity.
Until suddenly... he could see.
The darkness dissipated as easily as it had come. The sea was gone. And yet, he recognized the place instantly.
How could he not?
He was back in the Outskirts.
The stench of rot struck his nose with violence, denser and more toxic than any poison could be. It was a stench that clung to the bones, that chilled the blood.
Not just the smell of filth, of rust and decay.
It was the scent of abandonment.
Of loneliness. Of hopelessness.
It filled the air, soaked into every broken street, every crumbling wall, every collapsed building ravaged by years of neglect.
Sunny took a step. What kind of twisted game was this?
He tried to summon Nightmare.
...
Nothing.
He couldn't even reach his soul sea.
The dream wasn't normal. It wasn't his.
Something —or someone— was dragging him through this memory... no. Through this scar.
So, with hesitant but inevitable steps, he kept walking. Each step echoed another life. One he had tried to forget many times. And failed just as many.
Because truthfully, he never had. His memory, almost inhuman even among Ascended, wouldn't let him forget. Not even the things he should forget.
And he had spent more than half his life in this place.
In fact... he'd barely lived a third of his existence since the Spell had infected him. Everything before that had been misery.
As he walked on, the smell grew stronger. The weight in his chest more suffocating. In the distance, blurry figures —faces without names, without identity— slipped through the shadows. They ran. Hid. Maybe he would have too, if he could.
But he didn't stop.
Until he reached a dead-end alley.
And saw him.
Pale skin. Sickly.
Black hair, dirty, lifeless. A body too thin, skeletal. Bones protruding even without close inspection. As if the skin couldn't fully cover them. As if he might shatter just from existing.
A child... who looked more like a ghost.
But Sunny knew.
He felt the knot in his chest tighten brutally. A raw, tearing pressure. There was that child, digging through trash with trembling hands, without hope.
His hand —Sunny's— trembled.
Why was he trembling?
It was just a dream. That part of his life had already passed. It was over. Two separate worlds, two different existences.
But when the boy turned and looked at him directly...
He knew. He had always known.
The pain in his chest... it wasn't fear. Or nostalgia. It was the truth he had denied for so long.
It was him.
Little Sunny stared at him. With those same onyx-colored eyes. Dark. Cold. Ancient.
And in them...
There was no fear.
No sadness.
No despair.
Only disgust.
A pure, deep disgust, aimed directly at him.
Sunny didn't speak.
He couldn't.
The boy —his younger self— stared at him with an expression so raw, so violently silent, that it was hard to meet his gaze.
It wasn't sadness. It wasn't fear.
It was abhorrence.
Pure revulsion, as if the figure standing before him wasn't him... but a corrupted distortion. Something that had lost its original form. As if he couldn't recognize himself in the adult before him.
Or worse.
As if he could recognize him — and that's why he hated him.
Sunny knew exactly how that boy thought. How he felt. After all, he was still him, wasn't he? The same pain. The same anger. The same emptiness.
But he also knew that distant thought. The one he had always tried to bury.
Because if that child could speak — if he could understand what he had become — he would despise him. With every part of his being.
What he was now... what he had done... what he had accepted.
His relationship with Nephis... his dependence, his need, his surrender. That painfully real bond that had begun when she was his Master, and he... nothing but a slave.
Sunny tried to say something, though he wasn't sure what.
An explanation. An excuse. Perhaps a plea.
But his mouth didn't open.
Why would it? Why try to justify himself to his own childhood reflection, inside a dream?
And yet...
The boy's voice echoed through the air. Broken. Hoarse. Almost breathless. As if the very barren soil of the Outskirts had stolen the breath from his lungs over the years.
He didn't speak words.
There was no need.
The gesture was enough.
The subtle movement of his lips, that twisted expression — not a smile, but a sentence. An accusation.
Sunny understood it. Felt it in every corner of his soul.
"You shouldn't have survived this way."
And then, the thoughts he had always avoided came flooding in.
The ones he buried in every fight, in every joke, in every silence beside Nephis. The ones that made him wonder, deep down, if he had ever truly healed... or if he had just learned to look away.
But before he could drown completely...
He felt it.
A warm embrace. Real. Not in his body, but in his soul. An invisible bond that wrapped around him with tenderness, as if someone —she— had reached him even inside that dark corner.
Nephis.
Color returned to the Outskirts. The ash dispersed. The gray walls dissolved like smoke. And in the blink of an eye, everything became a crystalline lake again.
His reflection was gone. The boy, too.
Only the silver-white sky remained, stretching out like an infinite shroud.
Maybe his younger self hated him. Maybe he would never fully forgive himself.
But if, despite it all, he was happy...
Wasn't that enough?
After so much suffering... after being a broken creature, a slave to hunger, a prisoner of his own shadow... now he had something real.
Something his.
With that thought in his chest, Sunny finally woke up.
As the dream crumbled like sand between his fingers, he looked up one last time at that silver sky.
It was beautiful.
A shame he didn't see his reflection... the real one.
If he had, he would have seen his adult self staring back from the lake, with a subtle smile on his lips.
A smile that didn't match the beauty of the sky.
A smile... that didn't seem like his own.