More…
Hope pressed deeper into the fractures of his soul.
More…
She had restored desire to the broken before — to those consumed by grief, by despair, by the slow grinding erosion of loss. She had cupped dying flames between her palms and breathed them back into life time and time again.
However, she had never attempted this with a god.
More…
The memories arrived in fragments. Scattered, disordered, some barely recognizable as memories at all — compressed into impressions, into sensations, into the ghost of an emotion attached to nothing she could name. The Sleeper had been submerged inside his role for so long that the boundary between the two had become nearly imperceptible. She searched for the original thread — the one belonging to the true participant, the outsider — and found it wound so tightly around everything else that separating it required the patience of someone who had spent a thousand years in chains.
Hope searched.
More…
She had been searching for some time before she found it.
A scene assembled itself around her.
The Forgotten Shore materialized — and then stopped. The labyrinth, the grey sky, the stone platform, the smell of rain — all of it rendered in perfect, hollow black. A sketch of a place rather than the place itself. The color of the world drained and replaced with void, selectively, each surface emptied of everything except its outline.
Except for three things.
Three flames…
They walked through the hollow black landscape with the ease, unaware that they were being observed by an outsider.
A blind girl sitting with her knees drawn up, her face tilted toward a sky she could not see. A young man on his back, staring upward with an expression caught somewhere between exhaustion and something he had not yet named. A third figure apart from them — composed, her flame burning with such steadiness it seemed architectural rather than truly living.
Hope watched them closely.
She had catalogued desire in its ten thousand variations across her existence — the ferocious and the delicate, the selfish and the sacrificial, the kinds that destroyed their bearers and the kinds that carried them forward across impossible distances. She had seen what people wanted at their most fundamental level, stripped of pretense and justification and the comfortable stories they constructed around themselves.
She had never peered into the soul of the other Sunless. That thought surfaced briefly, and she set it aside.
The full constellation of his attachments spread through his soul around her — small flickers scattered throughout his interior, dozens of them, each one representing someone or something that had mattered across the span of his life. Present. Real. Distant in the manner of things that existed at the periphery of a person's heart rather than at its center.
These three were… different.
A girl with no sight. A young woman who carried the weight of an impossible goal. A sister he had walked away from on a street outside a house he had no right to enter, because the kindest thing he had ever done was leave before she noticed him.
These three did not flicker like the others.
They were ablaze.
Hope exhaled slowly.
She had found him. Underneath the Sacred-Titan, beneath the lesser god, deep within the eighteen hundred regressions and an apotheosis he had never noticed occurring — the Sleeper. His longing was here. His wish, imprecise and inarticulate, carrying the specific form of someone who had never had the chance to want much. Oh… he was so young.
He had accumulated glory and power in quantities that would have killed lesser beings and spent every fragment of both without hesitation the moment something he cared about required it. He wanted them safe. He wanted to be the reason they remained safe. He wanted, in the particular and wordless manner of someone who had never been permitted to want anything, to stay.
Hope walked through the hollow black landscape toward the three burning flames.
She spoke quietly — to no one, to him, to the version of him dreaming this without knowing he was dreaming.
"That is not a wish, Sunless. It is your hope. And with me, it shall be your desire."
She reached out and took the three flames by hand.
Hope held them — cupped them, drew them close, pressed the warmth of them against the hollow interior of a soul that had run dry across a span of time she would rather not measure. She felt it beginning inside him. Something was… resuming. Something that had been suspended mid-breath across eighteen hundred cycles completing the inhale it had started long ago.
His desire rekindled.
It arrived with fragility at first — a single thread of warmth drifting through the fractures mapping his existence, spreading through every crack and fissure, filling the hollow places with a newfound light. Hope held the three flames and waited, and the warmth spread further, and Sunless — somewhere beneath the god — began to remember.
Then the fragility ended.
The warmth surged upward. It tore through his soul with the accumulated force of a thousand lives of compression suddenly finding room to expand, and Hope tightened her grip on the three flames and held on as the blaze she had ignited became something she could feel from the outside — radiating through the body in her arms, the fractured skin, the golden cracks and the black ones, pouring upward through his chest and into his throat and—
Sunny's eyes opened wide.
He lurched forward with a force that would have sent him sprawling across the grass if Hope had not been holding him. His body moved well ahead of his mind — hands finding the ground, a single enormous exhale tearing free from somewhere deep, his entire body shaking with the force of senses flooding back all at once after the long deprivation of consciousness.
Hope held him. He did not fall.
The shaking rippled through him in large waves. His hands trembled against the grass. His breathing arrived in spurts, then stuttered toward something resembling a steady rhythm. One breath after another, the shaking began to slow. His shoulders dropped. Then finally a third breath.
He had recalled how to breath once more.
Sunless stopped moving.
He took in the world around him.
…The Kingdom of Hope.
Grasslands, many colored flowers,open sky and distant islands suspended above an abyss on chains of iron, tethered in place by what had once been instruments of imprisonment and had become, across sufficient time of a dream, simply the architecture of a home. People walked about on the distant islands, carrying on their lives, unaware that anything of consequence had transpired on this particular one.
And the Daemon of Desire holding him.
He looked up at her.
Every passion, every desire, every emotion rekindled inside him surged forward and ignited simultaneously, and what he saw did nothing to settle any of it. She had no edges he could locate. Radiance and darkness occupied the same space, a silhouette almost human and inexplicably, profoundly not — her face carrying the wrongness of something shaped correctly and assembled into something it was never meant to become. Divine and unholy and unknowable all at once, her radiant eyes peering into the parts of his soul that had no business being visible.
Beautiful beyond what the word could hold. Terrifying beyond what the word could hold.
A Daemon.
Hope tilted her head.
She spoke in a voice that carried the rustle of countless leaves, a myriad of prayers, the wind moving between stars.
["Are you feeling alright, Sunless?"]
He did not speak immediately. His Flaw surfaced through the haze of his recalibrating senses and answered before the rest of him had decided anything else.
"Wha — what…?"
He blinked once, then twice. His mind caught up with an almost audible jolt, and Sunless launched himself backward away from Hope with a speed he had not known he still possessed — landing on his feet two steps away, one hand raised instinctively, every reflex he's built coming online at once.
He stood there.
Breathing.
Then he blinked again.
'Oh.'
He was—he was —
Sunless lowered his hand slowly and looked upon it. He looked at the grass beneath his feet and the white flowers all around. He open sky and then back at Hope, who had not moved and was regarding him with the patient expression.
He muttered, barely audible.
"I'm in a Nightmare…"
Hope tilted her head once more.
She spoke calmly. ["Yes. You are."]
Sunless said nothing.
Hope spoke again. ["You should sit. There is much to discuss."]
—
It took a while, but eventually, having sat down beside Hope, he watched the distant lands and slowly became accustomed to his current body, his gaze lingering on the drifting islands and the figures moving across them as though nothing had changed.
Or rather, the role he was playing, because even now there was a faint sense that what he inhabited and what he was did not fully align.
It felt like having his brain thrown into a blender, then taking whatever mush came out and forcing it back into the shape of a mind again, each piece pressed into place until something terrible emerged. In reality, such a task should have been impossible, every cell displaced, every structure altered beyond recognition, leaving behind something entirely different from what it had once been.
And yet… that was exactly what Hope had done. She had reached into him, found the remnants of his core desires that had nearly faded away, and rekindled them until they could sustain him again
After all, her domain was built upon dreams, emotions, and passion, and because of that, there was no existence more suited to pulling him back from that brink.
The answer came easily.
No one else could have done it.
He could remember everything now, and the clarity was nearly overwhelming without any distortion or loss. He knew when he had entered this Nightmare and why he had chosen to challenge it, and if he wished, he could trace every regression in full detail, following each decision and every consequence that came from it.
The crushing defeats remained vivid in his mind, the painful goodbyes carried the same sharp edge of a tempered blade, and the echoes of screams and cries still lingered without fading.
All of it existed together, woven into a single, unbroken whole, and because of that, he was whole as well.
That did not mean the restoration came without its own complications, and the deeper he settled into himself, the more apparent that became.
After all… he was a Sacred-Titan now, and although the desires that had been rekindled belonged to something human, his existence no longer that at all.
The dissonance ran through him constantly, flooding through his thoughts and reactions, forcing him to reconcile something that refused to settle.
And so it took hours before he could truly steady himself, his mind and body gradually aligning enough for him to function without strain. This could not be compared to the Second Nightmare when he took on the role of a Shadowspawn, because that experience followed something he could understand, while this forced everything back at once with no sense of order.
It was exhilarating and crushing at the same time, each emotion rising with full intensity and refusing to separate from the rest, forming something unified that he had to endure until it became familiar again.
And within those hours, only after that adjustment began to settle, he found himself able to truly perceive the form of Hope, his vision finally aligning enough to grasp what stood before him. It was only because he had become a lesser god that such perception was even possible.
She was beautiful, and at the same time deeply unsettling.
Putting her into words felt pointless, because although he could see her clearly and understand what stood before him, the moment he tried to describe it, the meaning slipped away. If someone asked him what she looked like, he would struggle to give an answer that held any accuracy.
He had experienced this before with Surya and Izanami, and the same limitation applied here, leaving him with understanding that could not be translated into human language.
He set that thought aside for later, because something else had taken root in his mind during those hours, something drawn from both Hope's presence and the vast accumulation of knowledge resting within him.
He had come to understand the essence of Divine Miracles.
Divine Miracles were a manifestation of a deity's will, existing far beyond any form of sorcery he had known, and even if he were to create something entirely new, it would still be rooted in concepts that already existed within the world.
This sorcery stood completely apart from all the others.
A Divine Miracle could take any form, because even if it used the world as material, it did not belong to it in the same sense.
It was like a divine will that manifested one's innate domain without requiring a closed boundary, and although Supremes and Sacreds could extend their domains over vast areas, those domains still encompassed something that could be defined.
One could say they painted on a canvas.
And yet, a Divine Miracle felt closer to painting on open air, shaping something without relying on a surface to contain it, as long as one had the means to sustain it.
For Sunny, that was the closest he could come to understanding it, and in time, he intended to create something of his own based on that principle.
Or… perhaps reshape something that already existed, since he remained a Sacred rather than a true Divine.
During those hours, he and Hope had spoken at length, and although speaking to a Daemon should have felt distant or unnatural, it came easier than expected after everything he had experienced. He had spoken with gods, fought beside them, and witnessed things that had already broken the limits of what should have been possible.
Because of that, this felt manageable.
And with the knowledge he carried of the void, the conversation flowed more easily than it otherwise might have, especially considering what he had become during his last regression.
He drew in a breath, his gaze shifting back to her.
"I… I still can't truly fathom it. How you are here, in front of me. It's… It's preposterous! I remember, and yet I cannot accept the fact that I summoned not one, but two gods!"
Hope tilted her head slightly.
She spoke calmly.
["In all the honesty I can convey, Sunless, you might be a madman. A true one. Though… Weaver does not attract sane people, and I cannot call myself or any of my siblings sane either."]
Sunny let out a quiet chuckle.
"…That's the nicest thing anyone's said to me in about two thousand years."
Hope tilted her head.
["You find comfort in that?"]
"I am unable to find comfort in much else. A madman who defeated Entropy? It just seems nice to at least feel… acknowledged."
Hope regarded him for a moment.
["You seem confused about where you are. About what this place is."]
Sunny glanced at the distant islands, and the people walking calmly across them.
"No, I know where I am. This is the Kingdom of Hope in it's golden era. But, I am less certain about what any of this means for you. You're dead, technically. And I'm..." He paused. "Adjacent."
["Adjacent?"]
"I've been killed over and over again, and at some point, I lost my desire to live. I cannot call myself alive."
Hope studied him for a moment before speaking again.
["Then let me ask something else. I have died. And you are something between living and dead. And yet here we are, speaking as though neither of those things occurred."
She paused a moment, then continued.
["What is the nature of this place? What governs it? I know it is not real. However I do not understand why your presence here has the coherence it does. Most souls that pass through death become pure essence."]
Sunny raised an eyebrow.
'She does not know where we are? Did the Original not tell her a damn thing?!'
He considered that for a moment. The Daemon of Desire — oblivious, imprisoned for millennia, daughter of the Forgotten God — had no framework for what a Nightmare was. Of course she did not. The Nightmare Spell had not existed during her time. From her perspective, she had simply died, and then found herself here, observing the battle between a Lesser God and a Profaned One.
"You really do not know what this place is?"
["I do not know what it is."]
"…This place is called a Nightmare. In my world, there is something called the Nightmare Spell — a disease, essentially. It infects people, and when they sleep, it pulls them into a trial set in the past. In doing so they take on a role of one who existed in that era, fight through whatever conflict the Nightmare was built around, and come out stronger if they survive. The purpose, though, is to change fate."
["And this is one such trial?"]
"Yes… and no. This one in particular can't be compared to the others, because the Nightmare Spell couldn't have made it. This one is… it was built with a specific purpose in mind." Sunny paused. "The 'Daemon of Possibility'. I believe you have met him, no?"
Hope was quiet for a moment. She seemed to contemplate — maybe even run through her own memories. Then she answered calmly.
["...Yes. Although I do not fully understand my meeting with him either. It occurred somewhere outside this place, and I retain only fragments of it. His words…. The conversation… I cannot remember it completely."]
"What do you remember?"
["Only a promise. And enough to know I should honor it. That is the only reason I aided you despite Surya standing at your side. Understand what you were asking of me."]
Sunny held her gaze.
"I know. I'm sorry."
["Do not be. I made a promise and I honored it. That is all."]
A brief silence followed.
"This Nightmare was most likely created from one of the Original's failed cycles," he continued. "A past where Entropy killed everyone and led the world to the same conclusion. The Daemon of Possibility took that failure, gave it structure, embedded it inside the Nightmare Spell's architecture, and sent me in instead."
["To what end?"]
"Two things. Under normal circumstances, a Nightmare exists to bring humans closer to godhood. However, this Nightmare exists to bring me closer to my original self." He glanced at his hands briefly, fingers curling once before relaxing. "And… it also exists to change fate. To alter whatever catastrophe occurred in that time. The changes themselves do not reach the actual world, although they do affect the appraisal one receives from the Spell."
He paused for a moment, then added,
"Which means he also wanted me to find another path to the end of this Nightmare. One that doesn't lead to the same conclusion he reached."
Sunny looked toward Hope.
"Tell me, can you recall anything? Anything at all about what he said or did while he was with you? He must have known what would happen to me if he came to you for help."
His thoughts shifted, turning inward for a brief moment.
'Maybe even… he was losing himself, and Hope was the only one who could restore him.'
Then a new thought appeared.
"Did he lose himself to godhood?"
Hope regarded him quietly for a moment before answering.
["No, he did not. That much I can remember. That man retained most of himself, although that is not to say he remained unchanged."]
She paused briefly, as though sorting through fragments.
["He spoke of failure in his pursuit. In the end, he chose to leave it to another. I cannot recall the name he used, but I assumed it was you the moment I saw you confront that god."]
Sunny gave a small, uncertain smile.
'The more she talks, the more the term 'madman' fits me…'
'I do wonder, what will all the other Daemons call me—'
Then his expression shifted.
'Wait.'
"…Damnation."
Hope studied him, noticing how quickly his composure slipped.
["What is the matter?"]
Sunny shook his head, exhaling through his nose.
"Well… I just recalled everything I know about your siblings. And one of them concerns me."
["Rime. Daemon of Repose."]
Sunny blinked, then nodded.
"Yes. Repose. Her relationship with both Weaver and the Shadow God wasn't exactly pleasant, and now I'm the heir to both. I wouldn't be surprised if she left something waiting for me."
Hope seemed to consider that, her gaze drifting for a moment before returning to him.
["I cannot speak much on Rime. However… that is something she would do if given the opportunity. Although I was unaware of your arrival, I can tell you my other siblings likely are as well."]
Sunny let out a small breath, some of the tension easing from his shoulders. Repose remained a problem, although at least the others wouldn't be preparing for him in advance.
He lingered for a moment, then asked:
"Would you tell me about the Age of Gods?"
Hope tilted her head slightly.
["…I could. But why? Should you not be pursuing the end of this Nightmare with urgency?"]
Sunny glanced down at himself, then shook his head.
"I would, but I can't right now. My battle against Entropy took more out of me than I expected, especially near the end."
Hope's gaze remained steady, prompting him to continue.
"Before Entropy could devour and fully assimilate me using Abaddon's ability, the Spirit Origins tied to [Regressor] poured out. I had considered the possibility before, although… I don't remember exactly how I reached that conclusion."
Hope's expression shifted slightly.
["You possess more than one Spirit Origin? Are you more than one person, Sunless?"]
Sunny winced.
"…Please call me Sunny. And no, I'm still one person. However, I've been killed over a thousand times during this Nightmare, and based on my attribute, I suspected those previous cycles were being preserved somewhere."
He placed a hand against his chest.
"I was right. The moment Entropy tried to consume that part of me, everything came out at once. That thing couldn't handle it. Thousands of cycles, countless Spirit Origins, all forced into a single being… even an Unholy-Titan couldn't withstand that."
He let out a short breath, recalling the moment clearly.
"I didn't expect some of its Soul Cores to rupture, although it worked in my favor. It gave me the opening I needed to finish it."
Then he paused, blinking once.
"…Did you just laugh?"
["It would appear so."]
She continued softly, a trace of amusement in her voice.
["I am simply pleased to know that you were the one who truly ended that existence, and not Surya. In the end, it was your countless deaths that brought about its fall."]
Sunny understood.
Surya hadn't been able to end Entropy alone. And while Sunny couldn't claim full credit either, the final decision had been his.
Letting himself be consumed… and turning that against it.
That was what decided the battle.
And considering Hope's feelings toward Surya… her reaction made sense.
After a moment, Hope finally spoke.
["So I presume you'll be staying in this Dream of mine a little longer?"]
Sunny looked at her, a tired sort of amusement in his expression.
"A little? Hope, I might need a few months to recover. I could probably sleep for a year and still wake up wanting more. I haven't slept in two thousand years."
He meant every word of it.
A second later, he felt her hand come to rest against his head.
["Very well then. I will tell you about the Age of Gods. You may want to lay down. It will be a long story."]
Sunny let out a small breath, already leaning back into the grass.
"Good. I have more time than I know what to do with."
—
Just like that, the days flew by. With nothing left to do but rest, Sunny wandered through the true Kingdom of Hope and listened to her stories, his pace unhurried as he moved from one island to another, letting time pass.
He learned much about her—things that could never be found anywhere else. And in turn, she learned everything he knew about the Nightmare Spell, the fate of the world after its creation, and everything he could recall from his Supreme-self's memory. At times, she would peer into those memories herself, experiencing them directly, and that proved far more effective than any explanation he could offer.
And the Kingdom…
It truly was something worth seeing.
An entire civilization devoted to a single Daemon, shaped by reverence and sustained by the nature of her Dream. There was no fear woven into its foundation, no lingering sense of collapse waiting at all. As long as it remained her Dream, she could decide what entered it and what did not, and because of that, no threat could reach him here.
Still, the thought lingered.
The other Daemons may not offer the same hospitality.
From what he understood, the most likely place to find Ariel's Dream would be the Tomb of Ariel, or whatever remained of Ravenheart. Nether, based on the modifier 'Prince of the Underworld,' would have his Dream somewhere beneath the Hollow Mountains, deep within the Underworld itself.
Oblivion… even recalling her name took effort, and without Hope nearby, he doubted he would have managed it at all.
Mirage had faded even further. Those memories were so worn down that even Hope struggled to uncover anything of use.
Repose would likely be found in the Eternal City or within Nightgarden, although that would require confirmation.
And Weaver…
Weaver could be anywhere.
So in the end, the Keeper of Truths remained the most certain path forward, just as Abaddon had implied.
'Now that I think about it…'
Why hadn't Abaddon simply told him where to go, or how to get there? He clearly knew far more than Hope did. The bastard…
Shaking his head, Sunny continued through the streets of one of the floating islands, his steps slow as he passed by people who paid him no mind. It was unfortunate, but he never found Noctis. Either he did not exist within this Dream, or his existence belonged to a point in time that had not yet been reached.
Even so, he had gained more than enough.
Months passed within Hope's Dream, and with that time, he allowed himself to recover both mentally and spiritually. He experimented when he could, testing what he understood and refining it through repetition.
It was a marvel in more ways than one. With access to the origins of Runic Sorcery and the presence of the [Marvel] attribute, his comprehension advanced rapidly, each attempt building cleanly on the last. Divine Miracles still eluded him though, and even Hope could offer little guidance there, although the concept itself had already taken root in his mind.
By the end of it, he was no master, although he understood the foundation well enough to build upon it. Having the Daemon herself beside him made that possible, and his mind still operated on the level of a god.
Runic Sorcery might have been common among mortals, although very few grasped what it truly was. Now, he did.
But…
The time to leave had come.
Today marked seven months and eighteen days since he had entered this dream. Days spent in conversation, in learning, in long recovery that he had not realized he needed until it was given to him.
There were not many memories he could weave to aid in what came next. This time, the gods would not be there to help him.
Then again… he was one.
He had spent over two thousand years using Will, invoking it through constant use until it became second nature. By now, his control had long surpassed Azarax, and there was little doubt it stood on par with all of the Nine.
So there was no reason to hesitate.
It was time to go.
—
Sunny remained seated in the grass for a while longer, his hand resting idly against his knee as his gaze stretched across the distant islands. The world moved at its own pace, unbothered by his presence, and for once he allowed himself to sit within it without searching for danger in every corner. The mantle over his shoulders shifted faintly with the wind, catching light in brief, quiet flashes that faded as quickly as they came.
His fingers moved again, tracing along the faint inscriptions carved into his arm. He could feel them clearly, etched deeper than mere godly flesh, settled into something far more fundamental. Hope had taken her time with them, refining each line across days until they became something stable, as to ensure they would not falter once he left this place behind.
His gaze lowered slightly, settling on himself.
There was still that lingering sense of misalignment, small enough to ignore, persistent enough that it never fully left. He adjusted his posture, shifting his weight forward and then back, testing the way his body responded. The motion came smoothly, though the familiarity he expected did not follow as naturally as it once had.
5'6. Or. 167.64cm.
That had been him for as long as he could remember. But now…
Now he was 5'8. or 176.72cm.
The difference was minor by any reasonable standard, though his body disagreed. His point of balance had shifted just enough to require his attention, his reach extended just enough to disrupt his instincts. Over time, the friction had lessened, worn down by repetition, until it became something he could work around without thinking about it every second.
He exhaled slowly.
Behind him, footsteps approached, familiar enough that he did not turn immediately. The presence dropped down beside him without resistance, as though the world itself had made space for her without needing to be told.
Hope stood there, her gaze following his toward the horizon, and for a short stretch of time neither of them spoke.
Then finally, she broke the silence.
["It was… pleasant."]
Her voice carried softly, layered with something that dwelled beneath the words themselves.
["To speak with you. To remember, even if only in fragments. I did not expect that to be possible here."]
Sunny glanced at her, a faint expression settling on his face before easing away.
"Yeah… I get that," he said. "I wasn't exactly expecting any of this either."
Hope turned her head slightly, her gaze resting on him now.
["Even in death, I treasured our time together."]
There was a brief pause before she continued, her voice gentler than before.
["Thank you, Sunny."]
He held her gaze for a moment, then let out a soft breath, the corner of his mouth lifting just slightly.
"You too, Hope."
The words came easily, though what followed did not. His eyes drifted back toward the islands, watching figures move across them in quiet, distant motions, and for a moment he allowed himself to stay there, delaying what came next.
From here on out, everything would become uncertain again. The Nightmare would not offer him another stretch like this, and the things waiting beyond this Inner-dream would not hesitate. He already knew what remained within this place, and none of it would give him the luxury he had been allowed here.
Still, that did not change anything.
He had come this far, endured far worse, and there was no part of him left that would turn back now.
Slowly, he shifted forward and began to rise, his body responding without hesitation this time.
Then a hand settled on his shoulder.
He paused, the motion halting midway as he turned his head slightly, a flicker of confusion crossing his expression. Before he could say anything, Hope stepped closer, and his eyes widened just a fraction as her forehead came to rest against his.
The contact was light, though something far greater moved with it.
She spoke calmly.
["Truly, you have dwelled far too long in this Nightmare. The path ahead will test you, and each of my siblings will meet you in their own manner."]
Something began to move through him rapidly.
She continued.
["I cannot guide you to them, and I cannot tell you what you must do to gain their aid. That will be left to Ariel. However…"]
A pulse formed within his mind, steady and clear.
And then—
[You have received the Demon of Hope's Blessing!]
["…the most I can do now is ensure that you do not lose yourself."]
The change settled into him quickly.
His emotions… his desires… his thoughts… all aligned with something far more solid than before. It did not alter who he was, and it did not force anything foreign into place. Instead, it reinforced what had already been there, securing it so it could no longer slip away.
From the Shadow God, he had gained purification.
From the Sun God, he had gained destruction.
And now, from Hope—
Desire.
Within this Nightmare, he would not forget why he was here. His goal, his reason, everything that pushed him forward would remain clear no matter what stood in his way.
Hope withdrew, the contact breaking as she stepped back slightly. Her gaze lingered on him, and a faint smile formed, final.
["Live on, Sunny. Reach the end of this Nightmare."]
Sunny met her eyes, his expression steady, the hesitation from before gone.
He spoke in his True Voice.
"I will."
The answer came without pause, grounded in something that would not waver.
For a brief moment, neither of them moved.
Then—
Sunny deactivated [Dreamwalker].
The world faded to black.
—
Opening his eyes slowly, Sunny found himself standing within the vast hall where the Seven Chains had once been.
The empty space was before him, the absence more pronounced than the presence had ever been. Those chains had once bound Hope in place, anchoring a being that should never have been contained, and now there was nothing left of them. Only the memory of their purpose was here, etched into the structure of the hall itself.
His gaze drifted across the stone, tracing where they had once descended.
For a brief moment, the thought surfaced. He could return. He could step back into the Dream, sink into that stretch of peace, and remain there for as long as he wished.
The temptation passed just as quickly as it came. There was nothing left for him there.
He turned away.
The motion alone was a decision, more than any decision he had made in recent memory, and without lingering any further, Sunny raised a hand and summoned a Dream Gate. The tear in reality formed before him, creating an abyssal rip in space.
It did not lead to the Waking World. After all, that place barely existed anymore.
Instead, the gate opened toward the Nightmare Desert. The same place where he had fought, endured, and finally brought an end to Entropy.
Sunny stepped through and allowed the gate to collapse behind him.
—
The world reshaped itself in an instant.
He emerged onto familiar ground, though even that familiarity felt off upon closer inspection. This should have been the sands of the Shadow Realm if one considered that Izanami had never reclaimed his dominion.
And yet, something had changed.
Flowers could seen everywhere he looked.
They spread in clusters and fields, woven into the terrain as though they had always belonged there, their presence clashing against everything he knew of this place. His gaze settled on them, and recognition followed almost immediately, quite unwelcome at that.
The remaining Garden of Entropy.
He had died to those flowers more times than he could count. Each death had come quietly, gently, without struggle, which only made it worse. They had ended him again and again, denying him even the chance to resist, until the cycles blurred into something indistinct.
Back then, he had not even been able to perceive what stood at the center of that garden.
That changed later.
After enough deaths, after enough cycles forced upon him, he had crossed a threshold he never intended to reach. Apotheosis had come without ceremony, embedding itself into his existence until he ascended to that of a god.
From there, he finally managed to deal damage to the Garden.
Thereafter, he had called upon the gods.
And finally, he saw the truth.
Sunny's expression darkened slightly as the memories rekindled. He had confronted the true form of that existence, entered its domain, and brought it down from within.
He had killed it.
And in doing so, he had taken its essence into himself, reshaping what he was into something that no longer followed the natural order of ascension.
'Speaking of which.'
Sunny exhaled softly and opened his Runes.
They responded, but they were not the same.
For you see, these weren't Sunny's first runes.
They were his second.
Aspect: [???]
Aspect Rank: [???]
Aspect Description: [You are…]
Innate Ability: [???]
Innate Ability Description: [???]
Aspect Abilities: [Soul Flame] [???] [???] [???] [???]
A small sound left him, something between a breath and a dry laugh.
It made sense, really.
The Nightmare Spell had not played a role in this. Under ordinary circumstances, it would unseal what already existed. This, however, had not been waiting to be revealed.
It had been created.
Artificial, quite unstable, yet entirely his own.
[Soul Flame] remained, its presence steady within the chaos of his runes. A remnant of Light Bringer that had endured the destruction of itself. Beyond that, the structure of this second Aspect broke apart into something far less defined. True Darkness dwelled within him, intertwined with the hollow pull of Nothingness, both existing without clear boundaries.
He could feel them.
But, he simply could not use them.
His expression hardened slightly as he lowered his gaze. He had tried, more times than he could count, during his stay in Hope's Dream. Each attempt had led nowhere, the power remaining just out of reach, present yet unresponsive.
It irritated him without end.
Still, it did not matter as much as it could have.
[Soul Flame] alone was enough.
Augmented by his shadows, reinforced by everything he had become, it provided more than sufficient strength for what lay ahead. The rest could wait until something forced him to confront it again.
Sunny closed the Runes.
His attention shifted forward, past the endless spread of flowers, toward a structure that loomed in the distance.
The Black Pyramid.
A familiar weight settled into his thoughts as he stared at it.
"Why can't anything be simple?" he muttered under his breath. "By the Spell…"
The complaint carried little force behind it. He already knew the answer.
Nothing had ever been simple.
Without wasting any more time, Sunny stepped forward and slipped into the shadows, his form dissolving as he crossed the distance in an instant. The Shadow Realm still obeyed him, its pathways open and unrestricted, allowing him to traverse it quite easily. After all, he was a God now. And—
The Deathless were gone.
Erased.
When Entropy had descended, everything bound to this place had fallen under its influence, stripped away until nothing remained. There would be no resistance here, no remnants left to challenge him before he reached his destination.
Moments later, he emerged.
The Tomb of Ariel stood before him in all it's glory.
Sunny slowed, his steps coming to a halt as he took in the sight. The structure loomed in silence, unchanged by the passage of time.
His expression shifted, something of unease settling upon it.
There was no comfort left anymore. Only the path ahead remained.
His thoughts turned briefly, thinking of the possibilities that lay within. The outer reaches of the Dream Realm had been sparse, their threats elevated beyond reason, every entity a god in its own right. That would not apply here.
Inside, the rules would change.
Nightmare Creatures would remain. Some would be outright squashed by him. Others though, could be Fallen Gods. Perhaps even in numerous numbers.
A small exhale left him.
'You really left me quite the path, Original.'
Truly, he was quite irritated. But there was no point dwelling on it.
Sunny straightened slightly, the hesitation fading from his posture as his focus sharpened. Whatever waited inside, whatever form this Nightmare chose to take next, he would face it.
He had come too far to stop now.
Without another thought, he stepped forward—
And entered the Tomb of Ariel.