Sunny was moving through fate itself.
He had no body, no heartbeat in his chest, no arms to reach for the golden strings around him, and no eyes to see them.
All he had left was a faint sense of who he was. Anyone else would have already been lost among the endless stories unfolding before him.
But Sunny was formless by nature. He was a shadow, a divine one at that. He had always lived as someone lost, lost in memories, lost in the fog of nothing, Lost From Light…
"They even called me Lost from Height once, how dare they??!"
Sunny smiled as he remembered his friends. They were gone now. That was why he was here. He would fix it, or die trying. If he failed, only doom waited for him.
There, among countless others, he sensed it, a string unlike any other, one that spoke only to him. It shone bright gold, felt personal and flexible, torn in the middle, and joined again much further along, many other strings tangled with it, forming a vast web.
Sunny focused on it, willing it to change, to shape itself as he wanted, to bend the rules that held all realms together. Only thanks to "spirit weave" and his last memory was this possible.
It had taken him a long time to come up with the idea, and even longer to weave it while fighting the corruption in his body and mind.
Working with the fabric that separates the void from existence apparently was harder than it looked.
He managed to pry open the fragile cord and let himself sink into it. Around him, reality unraveled, time broke apart, and space beyond this point ceased to exist. Everything moved in reverse. It was different from the start of a nightmare seed, but still felt much the same.
His mind, broken and exhausted, couldn't take any more. He finally passed out, hoping that if he ever woke up, he could walk alongside them again.
______________
Sunny lay on the outskirts. His head burned, probably from losing "Mind Weave". Weaver... that wretched being had changed so much of his life, using him like a puppet for his own goals. And the goal? If the future were part of it, then he would never accept it. Only hate kept Sunny away from fainting again.
He looked around and felt his frail, mundane, starved body. The shadows' embrace was gone. He could no longer see in their comfort, and they no longer saw him as their leader. He tried to enter his soul sea as he once did when he was fateless, but nothing happened. Now, he was just an ordinary child.
He laughed, cried, and screamed. So many emotions rushed through him, but one stood out: hope. Hope was an insidious thing, a curse if you did not treat it with caution.
He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the toxic air. It had been a long time since he'd breathed this in. It almost felt nostalgic. Back then, life was simple: trust no one but yourself, find food, find shelter, sleep, and repeat.
If everything went as planned, today was the winter solstice, his birthday. He had stopped counting his age long ago. After going into the Tomb of Ariel twice, keeping track didn't matter anymore.
Exactly one year before his awakening. He wanted to go further, to save his parents, to save Broken Sword, to kill the dreamspawn before it could walk. But if he pushed fate too hard, he'd lose his greatest advantage, and he wasn't strong enough to risk that. Not yet.
"So it begins."
He chose to go back a year to train. That was the sweet spot, not too early to be seen by fate, but also with higher chances to get stronger before the first nightmare and before reaching the forgotten shore. One month wouldn't have been enough. Not with what he had in mind.
He wanted to unlock his aspect legacy before he even gained his aspect. He could almost hear himself shouting at him.
'Crazy, are you crazy??'
Of course, he would receive nothing, not until he made contact with the spell, but preparing the body for the elusive shadow dance would help him greatly. This time, he would be stronger, and so would everyone else. The whole world would be ready as much as possible.
He stood up, sighed at his situation, and started walking toward the Government compound. He could lie again, and he wasn't going to waste this chance.
It was rare for a kid from the outskirts to enter the city without being turned away, but he knew how the government worked, how to move without being seen, and what to say to get where he needed to go.
He walked through the streets of NQSC. The last time he was here, the city was empty of life, of uncorrupted life. It had become part of the dream realm, with corrupted beasts roaming the roads instead of the crowds he saw now. Sunny thought it would have been wonderful to open a branch of his Brilliant Emporium here, if only the spell hadn't reached the War Realm.
He went to Rain's house and watched from the same bush as before. He saw how happy she looked, how much love filled that family. They were having breakfast, and there was HONEY! on the table, outrageous, how could one eat such a thing, was inconceivable to him. He also noticed her mother never seemed to touch the ground, just like Queen Bee, an awakened he had battled a long time ago.
Rain's face showed none of the burdens that would come. She was innocent and fragile.
A tear of joy ran down his face. His plan had worked. This was Rain, his sister, not the vessel of Mordret he had once used against him as psychological terror, whom he had to kill and bury.
Grim determination filled him. He would change fate, no matter what.
Sunny kept walking, passing his future home, the road where he fought as "Mongrel" after awakening, and the cursed cinema where he watched "A Song of Light and Darkness." He saw families making breakfast together in crowded buildings. On the radio, songs from a band called "Night & Gale" were playing.
To everyone else, it looked like a beautiful painting, but Sunny knew the truth. Knowledge was a heavy burden, one he would keep carrying. He knew that in the Dream Realm, two Sovereigns wanted to kill each other, ready to sacrifice millions. He knew a madman on the moon wanted to become a god by consuming every living soul, and that hundreds of scared sleepers were barely surviving in a forgotten city.
Lost in these thoughts, he finally reached the compound. There was no time to waste.
Sunny walked around until he saw a crow. He turned, looked directly in its eyes, and said:
"I come from the Shadow clan. The Dreamspawn has killed all of us. I'm looking for shelter in exchange for an alliance."
______________
Wake of Ruin sat in his office, where he had protected the waking world since the First Generation.
He wasn't in the same league as legends like Immortal Flame and Nightwalker. He had only been a child when the Spell first appeared.
Still, he had watched and helped build the current world order. It was fragile, but better than what many others desired.
He had seen much while living this life; there weren't many things that could still shock him, that was, until a starving kid looked up and spoke to one of his crows about a Shadow Clan and the Third one.
His gaze grew serious; he wanted to ignore it. Life was hard for those on the outskirts—he knew that from Jet—and he wished he could have done more. Who knew what kids might do to escape such a place?
But then he looked at the boy's eyes. If he hadn't been a Transcendent, he might have shivered. Those were the eyes of a killer, maybe even greater than himself. How could a kid have eyes like that? How did he even know about the crows?
Those eyes weren't the only thing that caught Saint Cor's attention. It was the words used; the mention of the Dreamspawn. That wasn't public knowledge. Even most legacies didn't know about it.
The kid couldn't have been more than sixteen, and he never looked away. He wasn't speaking carelessly. Not at all.
'He knows I'm listening.'
Cor's shoulders slumped. That realization alone felt like it aged him a few years. And he still knew nothing.
'Another problem to add to my infinite list, it's always this damn Clans'
He told his staff to let the probably dangerous kid in. He said to send him upstairs and pretended he was an old friend of Master Jet so that no one would get suspicious.
While he waited, he thought about what the boy had said. It was hard to believe a Shadow Clan really existed.
Shadow God was also the god of mysteries. The fact that its lineage was the only one still missing actually made the story more believable. To have stayed hidden for so long showed how strong it was. Things that stayed unseen and unheard were often the most dangerous.
Knowing that such a force had existed—a force that could have helped fight the spell—and that it had been wiped out by something that was supposed to be trapped, scared him.
The day had barely begun, and he already wished he hadn't gotten out of bed.