Hidden away in a quiet, secluded alley of the Bright City—caught between the path to the towering castle and a dead end—Sunny and Nephis finally stood face to face after what felt like a lifetime.
"So," Sunny finally broke the silence, right as the heavy quiet between them began to border on unbearable. "How have you been?"
The question slipped out naturally, though tinged with a rare hesitance. A meager offering of words.
"I'm fine," Nephis replied, her gaze dropping to the ground.
Obviously, she was lying.
Sunny let out a slow, heavy breath, his pitch-black eyes dropping as well. They had plenty to say, and more than enough time and patience to say it. Yet it felt as though both of them were—consciously or not—tiptoeing around the matter, actively avoiding the matter that weighed like a boulder on their hearts.
The one to finally shatter that agonizing quiet was, surprisingly, Nephis. She blurted out, completely out of the blue, "You were so cool."
"What?!" Sunny's head snapped up, his eyes going wide, locking onto hers. He noticed a faint, uncharacteristic tint of red coloring her cheeks.
"The last time we spoke," she repeated, trying to elaborate. "You... were so cool."
Sunny blinked. Once. Twice. He was entirely incapable of processing what his ears had just heard. He watched in utter bewilderment as Nephis immediately averted her eyes, nervously clasping her hands in front of her and twiddling her thumbs like a bashful child.
"Neph?" he called out, his voice laced with pure hesitation. "Did I hear you right?"
She didn't answer. Instead, she seemed to discover an intense, sudden fascination with a pile of rubble a few feet away. The blush slowly crept upward, entirely consuming her delicate, sublime features.
Sunny dragged a hand down his face, letting out a long, suffering groan. "Let me get this straight. We were literally having a heated discussion, and you... got wet?"
Nephis was blushing so furiously she looked like she might literally start smoking. "You were so cool," she mumbled under her breath, still refusing to look at him, as if that were a perfectly logical excuse.
In that precise moment, the proud, fearless Changing Star wanted nothing more than for the very earth under her feet to open up and swallow her whole.
Another stretch of silence fell over them, though this one was far less suffocating and tense.
"You hurt me," Sunny said softly, finally steering the conversation back on track.
Nephis finally looked back into his eyes. "You hurt me too."
"You more," he stubbornly insisted.
Changing Star and Everlasting Gloom locked gazes, their eyes reflecting the exact same lingering emotions. The air between them crackled with a magnetic pull.
Finally, Sunny let out a long, slow sigh. "So. I hurt you, you hurt me. When are we going to stop doing this to each other, I wonder?"
"I'm sorry," Nephis whispered, dropping her gaze in genuine contrition.
"Don't be," he cut in, shaking his head slightly. "It was just as much my fault anyway."
"But I agonized over it for months," she added.
At those words, brutally shattering the melancholic atmosphere, Sunny let out a light scoff and looked away. "Nah, don't worry about it! I took a very philosophical approach to the whole thing," he declared, flashing the most mischievous, shameless grin imaginable.
"Honestly, after sleeping around with a handful of beautiful young ladies, I practically forgot we even had a quarrel to begin with."
She snapped her head back toward him, her lips parting and closing a few times in sheer, unadulterated disbelief. Nephis's brows furrowed deeply, and the silver flames within her eyes flared up with a sudden, dangerous intensity. Her silence spoke volumes.
'Oops.' Seeing her murderous reaction, Sunny quickly brought a fist to his mouth, coughing awkwardly. "Ahem... cough, cough... obviously, I was joking," he backpedaled, rubbing the back of his neck in embarrassment.
"That wasn't funny," Nephis stated flatly. She formed a slight pout that Sunny actually found adorable, even as the ambient temperature around her seemed to noticeably drop.
Smiling, Sunny pushed his back off the wall and opened his arms toward her, silently offering a sincere, deeply affectionate embrace. "Anyway. What do you say? Truce?"
Nephis looked at him for a long moment before finally nodding, a soft smile returning to her lips. "Yeah. Truce."
With that, Changing Star stepped forward, closing the distance without hesitation and melting into his arms. As she rested her chin on his left shoulder, sweetly nuzzling her soft cheek against his, Sunny wrapped his arms tightly around her. It was a fierce, protective hold that seemed to wash away everything else around them.
"I missed you," Nephis whispered into his ear. Her hands found a desperately needed anchor on his back, her breathing finally evening out as she let his comforting, familiar warmth envelop her.
"I missed you too," Sunny murmured in return, their elongated shadows merging into a single silhouette on the stone wall beside them.
The two simply stayed like that for a long while, alone together as accomplices in the shadows.
Eventually, they pulled back just enough to look at each other, though remaining securely in one another's arms. Nephis offered him a bright smile and asked, "So. Do you have any wonderful new stories you'd like to tell me?"
Sunny's lips curled into a wicked, bold grin as he brazenly raised an eyebrow. "Do I have new stories to tell? Oh, my! Well then... where should I even begin?"
He rubbed his chin in an exaggeratedly theatrical manner. Nephis, completely unimpressed by his sudden bravado, deadpanned, flattening her eyebrows at his sheer arrogance—though, secretly, a part of her always found this insufferable, cocky side of him incredibly endearing.
"Well, for starters, I suppose I should begin at..."
***
Six months earlier...
[Welcome to the Dream Realm, Sunless!]
The voice of the Nightmare Spell—metallic and apathetic as always—echoed through his mind within a dark, undefined void.
Sunny would have loved to hurl an endless stream of profanities at it, but his current predicament demanded he postpone that particular urge for later.
'Shit!'
Suddenly, the pitch-black void was replaced by a dizzying, upside-down landscape. A starless black sky stretched endlessly, gazing up at a boundless, abyssal dark sea. Sunny was plummeting.
'Here we go.'
Despite the burning anger and lingering doubts raging within his soul, he gritted his teeth and immediately summoned the [Puppeteer's Shroud]. In a swirling tide of white sparks, his naked body was instantly clad in a dark gray tunic paired with light black boots.
Sunny had already mentally prepared himself for this exact scenario. As he inevitably hurtled through the air, his body spinning wildly before adjusting to his terrifying new vantage point, he pulled his knees tight to his chest and wrapped his arms securely around his legs. Filling his lungs with a massive gulp of air, he pinched his nostrils shut with two fingers and clamped his mouth tightly closed.
'Three,
Two,
One...'
He plummeted toward the dark water, bracing himself physically and mentally for the violent impact, ready for his body to shatter the mirror-like surface and plunge into the freezing depths.
Instead...
THUD.
"Gaaakh!"
A muffled, breathless cry of pure agony ripped through the silence of that dark, boundless ocean.
Sunny had officially arrived in the Forgotten Shore for the very first time.
And he had just landed face-first on a jagged, unforgiving expanse of solid rock—a miserable little reef that happened to be the only speck of solid ground visible to the naked eye for hundreds of nautical miles in every direction.