Time, usually a raging river that knew no pause, seemed to have slowed to a crawl that winter evening beneath the outer walls of the Academy. Sunny and Jet remained standing with their backs against her PTV, lost in conversation, trying to bridge the gap of the two weeks they had spent apart. They were both acutely aware of the silent, ticking clock: for her, the upcoming Winter Solstice might be their final meeting; for him, it meant the beginning of a year-long separation before they could embrace again.
Nevertheless, both of them carried on as if they would simply see each other again the next day, and the day after that.
"So, how exactly did you bait three girls like that?" Jet asked, leaning her left shoulder against the vehicle and crossing her arms. Her gaze wasn't just suspicious—it was filled with genuine, playful mockery.
Sunny cast a fleeting glance toward Nephis, Cassie, and Yuki, who were sitting on the circular bench beneath the tree just a few paces away. He turned back to Jet and sighed. "For the sake of accuracy, I didn't 'bait' anyone. Nephis asked me to be her sparring partner, Yuki literally had no other friends, and as for Cassie, well..." He scratched the back of his head, eyes fixed on a crack in the pavement in sudden, uncharacteristic shame. "She's the only one you could actually argue I 'baited,' considering I was the one who approached her first."
At his admission, Jet pressed her fists against her hips and raised an eyebrow, her delicate, pale face glowing with amusement. She was convinced she finally held the upper hand, but Sunny wasn't about to let her win that easily.
Meeting her piercing blue eyes with a surge of newfound confidence, he widened his lips into a mischievous grin. "Why? Are you jealous of Sunny's marvelous Harem? I let you know that you're currently his second mistress."
If Myriad Shade hadn't already returned to the dark recesses of his Soul Sea, she would have celebrated by now with a mighty up and down of her fist.
The Soul Reaper snorted. "Yeah, yeah, sure! Keep telling yourself that." She chuckled lightly and looked away, but then she blinked, the realization sinking in, and her laughter came to a screeching halt. "Wait a minute... what do you mean, 'second mistress'?" It was hard to tell what fueled her sudden irritation more as she locked her gaze onto him.
"Oh! So it is true—you are jealous," Sunny teased, his voice dropping into a smug, mock-baritone with a goofy, lovestruck smile plastered on his face.
Jet pouted. Like a hidden blade suddenly drawn, she snapped her fingers forward and flicked him sharply on the forehead.
THWACK.
The impact left a vivid red mark that wasn't going to fade before the Solstice. "Ouch!" Sunny immediately rubbed the spot, pressing both of his warm palms against his skin. The biting night air served as a natural ice pack.
Her fingers had produced a dull, hollow sound against his brow, as if she had struck a hollowed-out pumpkin.
'I actually missed this,' Sunny admitted to himself, a nostalgic, gentle smile tugging at his lips beneath his hands as he nursed the sting.
The mental projection of his Flaw, the Jiminy Cricket, stood on his shoulder—unusually mild and silent. It looked at its boy with a pityfull gaze, having witnessed the entire scene and silently praying for his soul, sadly aware that there were no medical prescriptions capable of curing his specific brand of ailment.
Jet glanced down at the boy's feet, where Sunny's living shadow lay. Gloomy—as he had dubbed it—greeted her by winking and waving a finger, a gesture that made her shiver, however slightly. "So... no issues with your shadow, then?"
Sunny turned his gaze to his shadow for a second before meeting Jet's eyes again. "No," he shook his head. "It's all good. I understand why it gives off that unsettling vibe, but you can rest easy, Jet. At the end of the day, it's still my shadow—it's just... more independent now."
Jet continued to stare at the dark silhouette. Having noticed her attention, the shadow seemed to freeze. It wasn't looking at Jet anymore; it was fixated on something—or rather, someone—currently concealed within the depths of her own shadow.
Jet shifted her gaze back to the girls on the bench. "Anyway," she said, deciding to change the subject. "I see you've found yourself some good companions, little devil. Do your best to cherish them."
Sunny listened to her words. There was no trace of humor in her voice, nor any hidden double meaning. He turned to look at the trio sitting off to the side, waiting patiently for their private moment to end.
He saw Nephis, the Changing Star of the Immortal Flame Clan—the woman who would one day be the Ruler of the Human Domain, now just a naive princess with poor communication skills and a burden so heavy it threatened to crack the stoic mask she wore.
He saw Cassie, the sweet girl whose heart-melting smiles were matched only by the tragedy of her Fate, shattered like a porcelain doll and rebuilt by time into the cold, calculating manipulator known as Song of the Fallen.
And then, there was Yuki.
Yuki was... well, Sunny honestly couldn't find the words. She was an anomaly, a character who hadn't existed in the story he had read in his previous life. If someone asked him to describe her, he'd say she was a tomboy trapped in the body of a delicate, pretty ice princess. She had a ravenous appetite, a penchant for solving problems with brute force, and for some inexplicable reason, she had found a daily routine in teasing him mercilessly these past few days.
Yet, Yuki wasn't cruel. If the irreversible current of time proved generous, perhaps she would be spared the drastic, tragic mutations that awaited the other two.
In those two brief seconds, as Sunny gazed at them with a heart heavy as lead, he saw it all.
"Yeah," he said, not just to Jet, but to his own very heart. "I will take care of them. I promise."
The biting chill of the winter night seemed to recede, as if the darkness itself were yielding to the fragile warmth of a dawn that dared to hope.
With that, Sunny and Jet spoke for a little while longer before saying their goodbyes. He initiated a long, lingering hug, masquerading it as a simple, innocent handshake. His unexpected display of affection was met with another sharp flick to his forehead.
Before they left, Yuki stepped forward to speak with Master Jet to thank her for the tutoring she had provided when she awoke from her First Nightmare—the very same day Sunny had completed his. For a fleeting second, Sunny was tempted to send his shadow to eavesdrop on the conversation, a bad habit he had acquired recently, but knowing she could sense the entity and possessed a very literal penchant for physical retaliation, he wisely let it slide.
Once she returned, the quartet headed toward Sunny's room. It was finally time to hear what Nephis had to say.
***
Jet navigated the streets of NQSC, having bid the boy farewell only moments ago. Her grip on the steering wheel was firm, yet the man sitting in the backseat—the one who, until a second ago, had been hiding within her own shadow—was far more tense.
Kurt sat with his arms resting on his knees, his gaze locked downward, staring at his trembling fingers as if to confirm that all ten were still attached. His expression was a volatile mixture of atavistic terror and an existential crisis; his eyes were wide, pupils dilated, and his skin was unnaturally pale, slicked with a cold sweat. He looked as though he had just deeply offended the very fabric of his own existence.
"So," Jet said, attempting to draw his attention. "What can you tell me? Is Sunny safe?" She glanced at him, her expression laced with worry, seizing the moment while the roads were relatively clear.
Kurt slowly raised his head, just enough for his eyes to meet hers, before dropping his gaze back to his hands. "Yes, the boy is in no immediate danger... the same phenomenon that occurred five years ago will not repeat." His voice was tight, mechanical—the tone of a man praying he would never have to experience such a thing again.
Jet, ignoring the road for a fleeting moment, tilted her head. "Then why..."
"Because he made me break into a cold sweat even in my shadow form, Soul Reaper, that's why!" Kurt snapped, his voice rising sharply. He let out a harsh huff and turned his head toward the side window, seeking comfort in the familiarity of the passing asphalt. "I, a Master, shaking like a leaf over the shadow of a mere Sleeper."
Kurt shook his head in resignation, feeling like a hypocrite even associating the word 'mere' with what he had just witnessed. "I swear to the dead Gods, Jet, you should have seen it. It was a shadow so vast, so deep, that I felt if I had fallen into it, I would never have emerged. It seemed harmless at first, and I made the mistake of reaching out to inspect it closer. That was the moment it looked at me. I felt like an ant staring up at a dark sun; it felt as if, had it wished, it could have severed my very connection to the shadows and executed me on the spot."
Following this confession, Shadow Blade Kurt fell into an eerie silence, staring out at the shadows beyond the window as if he no longer recognized his own home. Jet, Soul Reaper, returned her gaze to the road, focusing on her driving. She felt a slight sense of relief that Sunny wasn't in danger, yet it was heavy with the weight of the terrifying mystery that his shadow had become.
Both were blissfully, tragically unaware that they had just gazed into the shadow of a Daemon.
***
'But why?! WHY MY ROOM, FOR SPELL'S SAKE?!' Sunny cursed internally.
He, Nephis, Cassie, and Yuki were currently standing in his room—the room number 67.
He wasn't actually angry at the situation itself, but rather at the fact that in his haste to hear whatever revelations Changing Star was about to drop, they hadn't stopped to think or discuss it. He had simply walked ahead, leading the group straight to his own quarters. As they arrived, a pair of curious eyes had watched him parade three beauties into his room, painfully fueling the rumors of him being the "Demon King of the Bedroom"—a title Sunny desperately wanted to shake off.
'What a headache!' he added, putting a mental period on that thought.
As soon as they entered, Sunny locked the door and sent Gloomy out to patrol the perimeter, ensuring no one was eavesdropping.
Nephis stood in the center of the room, every eye and ear in the space locked onto her, breathless with anticipation. Sunny sat backward on his desk chair, arms crossed over the backrest, while Yuki and Cassie perched at the foot of his bed.
Nephis scanned them one by one, feeling the weight of their curiosity and the burning pressure of their collective attention. Without realizing it, her fingers curled into tight fists at her sides, filling the room with a tension that seemed to mount with every passing second of that unbearable silence.
"So," Sunny said, deciding to shatter the heavy quiet. "What did you want to talk to us about? Because you should know, if this is about what happened with Caster earlier, it isn't your fault."
His voice held no trace of resentment; he wasn't accusing her. He was handling the situation as if he were speaking to a girl weighed down by misplaced guilt—not to mock her innocence or to tell her that she wasn't the center of the universe, but simply to remind her that, at the end of the day, they were all just kids.
Nephis closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. Then, she exhaled.
Opening her eyes, Changing Star looked at the three Sleepers before her; the anxiety in her gaze shifted into ironclad determination. "What I wanted to talk to you about—something I needed to tell you, Sunny, but Yuki and Cassie as well..."
She paused for a moment, as if glancing at a speech she had scripted in her mind, only to realize that her prepared words no longer fit the moment. "What I have to talk to you about," Nephis began again, unafraid of repeating herself, "is of extreme importance. This isn't just a simple secret, or something that Sleepers like us should even know. Therefore, if any of you aren't comfortable with this, you are free to leave. I do not want to force you to listen if you do not wish to."
Hearing her words, spoken with such gravity, Yuki and Cassie neither moved nor spoke. They remained seated at the foot of the bed, hanging on her every word. Their silence was a tacit vow, a presence worth more than a thousand spoken promises.
"Leave?" Sunny raised an eyebrow. "We're in my room—where exactly am I supposed to go? Just go on." He gestured with his hand for her to proceed, treating the consequences of her secrets as if they were nothing more than thin air.
Nephis felt an inexplicable surge of happiness at his words, a strange, unfamiliar warmth blooming in her chest. It was the relief of someone who was finally about to lighten a burden she had carried alone for far too long.
And so, the Nephilim began to speak.
"The real reason Han Li Caster targeted you is because he believed you were trying to court me," she explained, meeting Sunny's skeptical gaze. "This is because currently, my clan—Immortal Flame—and the Han Li clan, under the banner of Valor, have arranged an engagement between us."
The brief silence that followed was quickly filled by the excited, beaming smiles of Yuki and Cassie. They were listening to Nephis with renewed interest, feeling like spectators watching a vintage romantic comedy unfold.
Sunny, on the other hand, listened in utter perplexity. To him, it was pretty obvious that Caster wasn't the real mastermind behind what had happened earlier; the pale-blonde worm was. The green-eyed Legacy couldn't have cared less about his engagement to Nephis; if anything, he would have preferred to break it off if given the chance. But Changing Star was evidently interpreting his hostility as a reaction to her own rejection of him.
Truth be told, another question was currently flashing through Sunny's mind. If Nephis had an older brother, why was she the one being sacrificed and married off to the scion of another clan?
Then, as if the author of the plot itself had heard the question nagging at his brain, Nephis inadvertently answered his unspoken query.
"The real reason behind this marriage is a political union between the Immortal Flame clan and Clan Valor. Initially, the idea was to marry my older brother, William, to Morgan, the daughter of Anvil of Valor. But then, well... there were some... 'issues.' Because of that, the engagement was annulled, and the responsibility fell to me."
'So, William is gay,' Sunny concluded mentally.
<
'Oh, please!' Sunny rolled his eyes. 'My conclusion isn't some vague intuition; it's a result based on hard data. Nephis just said the marriage was nipped in the bud because of some 'issues,' and when she met him last time, she literally asked him: "Since when do you care about girls?" Don't even try to deny it, you were there when we eavesdropped on that conversation.'
Ignoring the shadow boy who was currently glaring at his own right shoulder as if having a heated debate with an invisible being, Nephis concluded: "...that's why, in the end, I had no choice but to run away and hide in Clan Song's domain to escape the engagement."
At that point, Cassie tentatively raised a hand. "But Neph, I don't understand. Why would Immortal Flame give up its autonomy to join Clan Valor?"
Nephis looked at the sweet, blind girl for a moment before satisfying her very valid question. "To answer that," she paused, her fists clenching tightly at her sides as if unearthing old wounds, "I need to explain a few things, and this falls into the realm of knowledge that is kept hidden or heavily censored from the public. How much do you know about the Gods and the Great Clans?"
The three Sleepers facing her tilted their heads. Cassie and Yuki looked on in wonder, while Sunny was simply curious to see exactly how much she knew at this point in the story.
"According to the written texts and documents recovered in the Dream Realm, in the beginning, there were six Gods: War, Beast, Heart, Storm, Sun... and Shadow," Nephis began.
'So even in this timeline, she doesn't know about the existence of the seventh, Dream,' Sunny noted mentally.
"These are things you already know, information released to the masses to provide some sense or reason behind the mystery of the Nightmare Spell. 'Were', because they perished following a great war. What you don't know, however, is that each of them left behind a drop of Ichor containing their lineage. Clan Valor inherited the lineage of the War God, Song possesses the lineage of the Beast God, the House of Night has Storm, and my clan has Sun. Finally, the lineage of the Heart God is in the hands of a single man. He possesses neither a territory nor a clan; his name is Asterion."
Hearing the Dreamspawn's name, a long, icy shiver ran down Sunny's spine, remembering that the old ghoul was capable of sensing people simply by having his name spoken aloud.
'Does she not know that?' Sunny couldn't help but wonder in a panic.
In his mind, an absurd image quickly formed: a tall, pot-bellied man in a spacesuit sitting on the moon in a ratty old armchair, bringing a cheap can of beer to his lips with one hand while pointing a TV remote at the Earth with the other, as if he were casually changing the channel on a bulky cathode-ray tube television.
Sunny broke into a cold sweat, terrified by the phantom of someone who wasn't even in the room.
"And Shadow?" Yuki asked, interrupting the explanation.
"It was never found," Nephis replied almost immediately, looking her in the eyes. "The government, the Great Clans, even my father—they've spent thousands of resources and passed years searching for the last lineage belonging to the God of Death and Mysteries. But, true to its name, it has never been found."
"Pfffft..." Upon hearing this, Sunny immediately clapped a hand over his mouth and leaned forward in his chair, acutely aware that he had just drawn the gazes of the three girls. He simply couldn't help himself.
The reason no one had ever obtained the Shadow Ichor was that, quite simply, it hadn't been hidden by the Spell in the most mysterious, unexplored reaches of the Dream Realm, nor did it require overcoming some grand trial. The truth was that the drop of pure ink was already resting within Sunny's own Legacy aspect, waiting to be unlocked the moment he mastered the second step of his battle art: the Shadow Dance.
To think of Broken Sword, the great and powerful Clans, and the government spending time, money, and patience wandering through a dangerous and unpredictable place like the Dream Realm, risking their sanity for a drop of a dead God—only to realize that he, Sunny, would have just needed to do a few leaps and somersaults with a wooden stump to get it... well, it was the pinnacle of comedy.
Sunny looked around, noticing the confused stares of the girls. He immediately composed himself and cleared his throat, not saying a word, passing the outburst off as a sudden, violent coughing fit.
Shaking her head slightly, Nephis continued, "And it is precisely because of that accursed drop of Ichor that everything began."
Nephis briefly recounted the events in America years ago—the opening of the Category Five gate that led to the loss of the continent, leaving behind only a few scattered pockets of human resistance. It was the event that caused the death of her grandfather, Immortal Flame, and her mother, Smile of Heaven. She explained that her father had never believed in her mother's death and had begun searching for her. Since Smile of Heaven's ability allowed her spirit to leave her body and wander freely through the material world, Broken Sword had concluded that she had entered the Category Five gate to face the Fifth Nightmare.
Following the fall of the founding father and his daughter, the reins of the clan had fallen to Broken Sword, supported by the widow of the previous clan leader—Nephis's grandmother. However, the elders never accepted him as the new leader of the Immortal Flame, given his origins in the Outskirts. Taking advantage of his humble beginnings, they acted behind his back and, driven by greed, carved up the clan's properties right under his nose.
At the time, Broken Sword was obsessed with finding the Shadow lineage to become strong, and Nephis's grandmother had been left alone to raise her and her brother. When he returned after clearing the Third Nightmare, he discovered the power play the elders had orchestrated. He decimated them, but when the ashes finally settled, the Immortal Flame was already in ruins.
Embittered and wounded by his failure to sustain the clan, Broken gathered his cohort a year later to face the Fourth Nightmare.
Unexpectedly, the group returned victorious. Unfortunately, even though he had become a Sovereign, the clan's situation was beyond repair; he saw the recovery of the Shadow Lineage as the only solution.
Since every clan had built its foundation on the discovery of divine lineages, Broken decided to stake everything on finding that drop of Ichor—both to rebuild the clan from the ashes and to find his wife.
Nephis continued her tale, speaking of her sad and solitary childhood. Of how her grandmother and her brother had been her entire world. She touched upon her grandmother's tragic death and the immense emotional rift that grew between her and her brother after he faced his First Nightmare. Changing Star didn't go into much detail on the latter, mentioning only that it had something to do with his Flaw—something that prevented him from being independent.
She explained the complex, strictly patriarchal, and conservative relationships between the various clans. They had arranged her engagement to Caster because her own clan was becoming no stronger than a third-rate faction, even if its fame remained intact. This part actually interested Sunny immensely, as it introduced him to the world of the Awakened that existed behind the veil of propaganda.
To someone like him, who wasn't a scion of a Legacy Clan or a survivor of the Outskirts, the government's propaganda painted the Great Clans and their leaders—the Sovereigns and Saints—as legends. Heroes who bled so that poor, defenseless citizens could see the sun rise the next day. A world made of wax crayons and wallpaper. Being able to see past that synthetic rainbow was an incredibly instructive experience.
When Nephis's interminable and occasionally emotional story finally came to an end, silence fell over the room. No one spoke for a fraction of a second, perhaps even minutes. They stared at one another as if the first to open their mouth would be condemned.
Nephis's speech had been long, awkward, and rather nerve-wracking—a sign of her immaturity when speaking to an audience. In the minutes that followed, Sunny forgot at least six-sevenths of her monologue. Then, deciding to cut to the core of the matter—which hadn't even been mentioned yet—he raised his hand.
"Nephis," he said, not waiting for her to acknowledge him. "I'm very sorry about your childhood, truly. There's just one thing I'm wondering. You've gathered us here in my bedroom at eleven... well, actually, no! It's past midnight. You've told us about your childhood, about state secrets, and how the Clans are conspiring to monopolize all the Nightmare Seeds, castrating any attempt by others to challenge the Fourth Nightmare and thus limiting the growth of humanity's forces—all in anticipation of a potential war that may or may not even happen, while the government just keeps the rest of the population happy and ignorant."
Sunny paused, letting his words hang heavy in the air. "Okay, I get it! Logically speaking, it holds up. But there is still one small detail, a point you haven't enlightened us on in this prologue to your odyssey: What exactly do you want to do?"
Nephis didn't answer immediately. She studied Sunny intently, her face a mask of inscrutable stone. Yuki and Cassie turned toward her, waiting for the verdict of the Changing Star.
Nephis's silver-white eyes suddenly ignited; white flames danced as if awakening, burning with passion. Her fingers clenched with renewed fervor, and that clay mask she called a face cracked into a faint, defiant smirk.
"I want to destroy the Nightmare Spell. Now tell me, would you like to help me in my endeavor?" Changing Star posed the question to the three Sleepers before her, and the temperature in the room seemed to rise sharply. Yet, it felt as though she had proposed it to Sunny alone, as if he were the fulcrum that would reshuffle the cards of destiny in her favor.
Their gazes—silver flames and living shadows—locked, as the Nephilim waited for the fateful response of the Shadowspawn, having shown him her scars.
Sunny stared at Nephis. There was no doubt in his heart, no second thoughts. He had expected such an answer from her; he almost wanted to slap himself for having dared to think, even for a moment, that this stubborn girl would change her objective just because the tapestry of Fate had been rewritten.
Crossing his arms and curving his lips into a faint, spiteful smile, he moved his lips to form the following words:
"No..."