The silence of Nocturnum was not empty—it breathed, like a wounded god exhaling between screams.
Sunny stood at the edge of a shattered plain, where broken stars hung low over a river of black glass. The air tasted like forgotten dreams, and every step felt like it pressed against the skin of another's memory. He wasn't alone—he never truly was, not in this realm.
A voice echoed in his mind, cold and slow.
"You've stepped into the marrow of reality now, Dreamwalker."
Sunny turned, but saw no one. Just a figure glowing faintly in the distance, surrounded by constellations that moved like thoughts.
It wasn't a person.
It was a Starborn.
They didn't walk. They drifted. Neither living nor dead—beyond both.
Legend whispered that Starborn were once human. That they had suffered so deeply, they shed mortality like old skin. Not gods, but echoes of human will that refused to fade.
This one was called Veyra, the Starborn of Regret. Her hair shimmered with dying galaxies. Her voice could turn hope into ash.
"Why am I here?" Sunny asked, his voice breaking. "What is this place?"
Veyra's eyes flickered like twin moons drowning in oil. "This... is Nocturnum. The realm born from choices. The birthplace of guilt. The womb of betrayal."
"And you?" he whispered.
"I am what remains when pain refuses to die," she said.
The sky cracked open above them for a moment. A scream—a real one—split through the clouds. Not from a throat. From the world itself.
Sunny fell to his knees. It was too much. The weight of this dimension was not physical—it was emotional. It carried grief older than language.
"You don't belong here," Veyra said.
"But I have nowhere else," he whispered.
"You will belong," she replied. "If you survive. If you suffer enough."
A distant mountain, floating in the void, pulsed like a heartbeat. On its peak, more beings stood—each a Starborn. One radiated silence so absolute it devoured sound. Another bled fire that screamed the names of the forgotten.
Veyra pointed to them.
"Those are the ones who have surpassed memory and meaning. The Starborn. Carved by agony, worshiped by those who remember."
Sunny clenched his fists. "If suffering is what makes you gods, then I must be close."
Veyra's smile was hollow.
"You're not even at the beginning."
She vanished, leaving behind a single whisper in the wind:
"The stars don't shine in Nocturnum. They burn."
"Some are born great. Others are born broken. But the ones who survive their breaking... become something far worse than great. They become eternal."