Sunny had gathered enough information for today. Cassie's arms were irresistibly comfortable, tempting him to sleep. Having completed his task, he gladly surrendered to the call of rest.
There were still several hours left before the second and last meal of the day, so he ordered his shadow to wake him up. The shadow could have done so earlier, when he fell asleep, but he hadn't ordered it to. Feeling like he was in heaven, Sunny's consciousness drifted away.
He didn't manage to sink completely into sleep because he was gently shaken. With resignation and drowsiness, Sunny groaned:
"Is something wrong?"
"Sunny, I had another vision... and there are things I haven't told you yet."
Those words completely snapped him out of his relaxation. He opened his eyes and sat up. There he could see Cassie's face, full of tears. His heart skipped a beat.
'Damn... It's a bad one, right? Although, I don't think any of Cassie's visions have been particularly good, except for the one about the castle...'
'Even so, I don't have a good feeling about this.'
He hurriedly took her by the shoulders and helped her sit up. The sadness and desolation on her face worried him even more. However, an urgent need arose, which made him ask:
"Are you feeling okay? If not... we can talk about it later... Do you need anything?"
Cassie, who was concentrating on processing what she saw, raised her head. Her tears stopped. She wiped the moisture from her eyes with her sleeve and said:
"...I'm fine, thanks for your concern, but I don't need anything right now. Let me tell you everything I remember seeing... The vision was about you, Sunny."
He cursed in his mind. 'Of course it couldn't be something that happened to someone else; it had to be me.'
"There was suffocating darkness, so I could barely recognize what was happening. I could see that you were alone in a room and you left on your way to the castle..."
"But something was wrong, there were no nightmarish creatures, and the worst part was when you arrived at the castle, it was in ruins, falling apart."
"A few other things happened that I can't quite understand, or aren't worth mentioning, but I did realize one thing: from start to finish, you were completely alone."
After saying that, Cassie fell silent, letting them both process the information. Sunny tried to construct hypotheses or find some thread of coherence between what Cassie was telling him and what might happen, but it was too radical to simply comprehend.
'Darkness, no nightmare creatures, a castle in ruins, and I was alone... This is quite unreal, but we are in the Dream World, so...'
What made him raise an eyebrow the most was not the fact that the vision showed him the ruined castle or overwhelming darkness, but that there were no nightmare creatures. Throughout this world, the place was plagued with these creatures. Even large citadels were not exempt from occasional sightings. Although they were sporadic, there was at least one creature lurking in every place, but the fact that there were none here did not seem natural.
'And what the hell was I doing alone in a place like this? Was it even the same castle Cassie was talking about?'
He tried to come up with an explanation for his eventual loneliness. All the explanations were chilling: he could be lost, perhaps left behind, or he could have exiled himself. 'Or also... everyone else was dead except him.'
Sunny felt his brain ache as he tried to process the information and make sense of it. At the same time, he felt sorry for Cassie, who must be racking her brains even more over this news.
"This vision could be from much further in the future, I suppose. Maybe there's a reason you're there."
Cassie tilted her head and replied,
"You were trying to get out of there, I think. You were also talking to yourself, besides..."
Frowning in annoyance and her voice laden with irritation, she protested,
"You declared your love for a bed. Could you explain what this means, Sunless? Am I so insignificant that you would trade me for a mattress?"
Sunny immediately panicked, forgetting everything else. His honesty flaw spoke for him. He waved his arms unconsciously as he replied as if she could see him.
"What?! I wouldn't do that! Oh... well, I guess I would... But... I... There must be an explanation! You know I wouldn't leave you for a bed!"
He almost shouted, trying to explain himself, struggling to do so with nothing to hold on to but empty words. Crossing her arms, Cassie said sternly:
"The facts speak for themselves, Sunless. Am I really that insignificant to you?"
She said the last part with a hint of sadness that was too exaggerated to be taken seriously, except by the nervous Sunny. Realizing that his attempt at justification was fruitless, he bit his tongue and felt a tingling sensation run through his entire body.
"No! Y-you... you're everything to me now... and nothing will change that," he said, turning his head away in embarrassment, finding that staring at the corner of the room was more important.
"Without you, I don't know what I'd do..."
Those words came out timidly, like a whisper, but Cassie caught every one of them perfectly.
"Oh."
Cassie's mask of annoyance broke, causing her mouth to twist into a smile. 'I didn't expect her to say something like that... at least not so quickly.'
Cassie laughed softly, as she always did when she was happy.
"You fell for it again, Sunny. Effie was right when she said this was fun."
He blinked, slowly realizing that she had just played with him, again. 'I knew it, it was Effie, I swear when I see her... What would I do? That gorilla could throw a house at me if she wanted to...'
Resigning himself, Sunny simply sighed, defeated.
The mood had changed radically in just a few moments, but the conversation was not over. Sunny and Cassie took several breaths to return to a serious mood and face what was to come.
"So, apart from that vision, you said you had something else to tell me."
The mockery and amusement vanished from Cassie's face as she continued to confess the last thing she had to tell him. She hesitated about whether to tell him or not; she preferred to keep the truth to herself, trying to find a solution in private. Just as Sunny preferred that she not know the condition of his real name, she didn't want him to know what fate had in store for him. She couldn't explain the reasons, but deep down it was a selfish motive: she simply wanted to no longer depend on him. This time she wanted to save him, and no one else.
But she soon realized how unrealistic that was. With no other choice, she decided to talk to him and try to avoid the fatal destiny that seemed to await him.
"Sunny, do you remember the vision I told you and Nephis about an angel and a dying shadow?"
"Yes, I remember," Sunny replied.
"I suspect that shadow is you... I can't make sense of the other parts of it yet, but I'm sure that shadow is you and that, in a way, that vision is a prelude to the vision I had just now."
"I know that with what we have, I can't come up with a definitive theory about the future, but I think it's better to talk about it now so we can figure out a way to avoid these visions. Maybe not now, but we should keep it in mind."
Sunny was not happy to receive so much news about the future that awaited him, which was not bright at all; on the contrary, it was dark, lost, and without light.
"Huh, lost from the light, that makes sense."
"Do we have time to prevent whatever is going to happen to me from happening? Assuming it's something bad, which it seems to be..."
Cassie took a while to respond, but finally said:
"I don't really know, but given how drastic all this is, I don't think it will be soon, at least not immediately. In fact, I could see that your hair was a little long, I guess that's something to note."
Sunny rubbed his forehead and closed his eyes before saying,
"So basically we're nowhere, right? We have no way to—"
He felt lost. They had no way to connect their present with the future or how events might unfold until that moment. But something clicked in Sunny's mind.
"Cassie, you said earlier that in the vision of the shadow and the angel there was a red needle, right?"
She nodded. Sunny turned to one of the cracks in the stone wall. There he saw the blood red of the tower.
'There it is, our starting point.'
There was much to discuss and work on to prevent a future disaster, but one thing was certain. 'That needle is not good.'
They spent the afternoon and evening discussing possibilities. After the revelations, they lost their appetite and skipped the last meal of the day. They considered and discarded theories. It was clear that they would not find the answers in a single night, but they laid the groundwork for their hypothesis.
The hasty conclusion they reached was terrifying. They both hoped they were wrong. The best they could come up with was:
An invasion of the Crimson Needle led to the death of everyone, or at least a large group of people from here. Sunny escaped that disaster and took refuge where he could.
There were many loose ends, such as what happened to the castle or why there were no nightmarish creatures, and the most inexplicable: what happened to the sun? With a lack of information and exhaustion surrounding their minds after hours of discussion, they now found themselves lying back in their shared bed.
Despite their exhaustion, their minds did not rest, thinking and mulling over the matter. Everything was confusing and meaningless, but one thing was clear. 'The Crimson Needle is the source of everything.'
His mind explored the last possibility he had refused to question until now. If he was alone, what happened to Cassie? There could be many answers, but none of them seemed encouraging. He thought about her death, feeling dread; he thought that maybe she was lost just like him, but that didn't calm him either.
'What if... maybe she was able to leave and reach the Awake World? If she could, why did he remain lost and alone?'
'What if... I had to sacrifice myself so that she could leave somehow? ... That's very far-fetched. There are thousands of other ways; in fact, I don't think it's worth thinking about right now.'
He shook the thoughts from his mind, turning over in bed. Lying on his side, he looked at Cassie, who was sleeping peacefully. Unlike him, she was able to fall asleep. Her beautiful face led him to one last question:
'In the event of... would I sacrifice myself for her?'
He weighed whether his life was that important to him. In the eyes of some, this mere question would be cause for reproach, but he was a rat from the outskirts. He didn't know what real food was until he entered the academy.
'And that's where I met her.'
Had his life changed and he met her? Or did his life change when he met her? Sunny wondered about that.
If he woke up, a comfortable life awaited him. He would be a person in the eyes of the government, maybe he could have a house of his own. But... now that he had her, did he need all that?
'If all those luxuries meant abandoning Cassie, would it be worth it?'
Sometimes he questioned his parents' actions when he was older, questioning why they brought children into the world when they would condemn them to a future just as terrible as his own.
'I think... I'm starting to understand them a little.'
He never took his eyes off the sleeping Cassie, so he could admire firsthand how her brow furrowed and her little nose wrinkled.
"Achoo!"
A stream of air hit his face, followed by saliva and snot. He managed to close his eyes, but his face took the full brunt of it. He kept a poker face, still, for a couple of breaths. He let out a small chuckle and raised his left hand to wipe his face with the fabric of his armor, running his forearm across his face.
The balance inside Sunny's head was completely destroyed. There was nothing to put at stake.
'I choose her. Did I really question it for a moment? Cassie should find someone better... no, better not, I would rise from my grave just to ward off the lewd looks they give her. If I died, I would prefer that she at least think of me for ten years.'
He chuckled again.
'Besides, I've already risked my life for her many times, it wouldn't be difficult to do it again, I'd gladly do it.'
He moved the hair covering her face with his hand to see her better.
'I would cross the Forgotten Shore again if it meant seeing her smile.'
With that thought, Sunny surrendered to sleep.