The world did not welcome him with drums or gods.
There were no angels. No grand gates. No salvation.
Only… stillness.
And yet, something shifted.
A fracture in the sky.
A pulse in the soil.
And then —
footsteps.
One by one.
He walked like a man who had forgotten how to dream.
Like someone who remembered too much.
Sunny — or whatever remained of him — had arrived.
This world… wasn't alive.
It pretended to be. The skies smiled with golden light, the rivers hummed with sweet whispers, and people spoke in tongues meant to sound divine.
But he could hear it — the scream beneath the silence.
> "You do not belong here," a soft voice whispered behind him.
"No one from there ever has."
Sunny turned.
A child stood in the middle of the white garden. Her eyes were hollow, yet shimmering. She held a flower — not made of petals, but memories.
> "Are you God?" he asked.
The child smiled.
> "No. But He is watching. Always watching. Through us."
---
Flashback Echo: (Inserted midway)
> He remembered the Venerable.
The man who once tried to defy Amon.
The one who broke reality but paid the price in silence.
Sunny had seen his memories. His love. His fall. His curse.
> The Venerable had whispered to him once: "The Divine Realm is no heaven. It is a beautiful prison."
---
Present – Return:
Sunny knelt and touched the white grass. It shimmered. It tried to show him illusions — his lost love, his old village, his brother Berzilus smiling.
He smiled back —
then crushed the illusion under his heel.
> "I have not.
And just like that —
The child was gone.
No sound.
No trace.
As if the earth itself had swallowed her existence whole.
Sunny stood alone again.
But this time… the silence wasn't empty. It was heavy.
He looked around — the white garden had shifted. The skies flickered, faintly distorted like a reflection on broken water.
> "The one who sent me here..."
"...never told me why."
"Not where. Not for what purpose."
His voice trembled for the first time — not out of fear, but from the weight of not knowing.
He had lived through too much.
He had walked through illusions, prisons, memories that weren't his.
He had seen the broken mind of the Venerable.
He had heard truths that should never be spoken.
And yet —
This world refused to tell him anything.
> "Why am I here if even the silence has no answers?"
He clenched his fists.
But then…
The sky bent.
And from that fracture — two colossal hands slowly emerged.
Bigger than elephants. Covered in celestial cracks, glowing from within like molten gold sealed in divine skin.
In their palms — a necklace.
Old.
Ancient.
Pulsating.
Sunny took a step back instinctively, but his eyes were drawn to the object — not because of its power…
…but because it remembered him.
Suddenly —
FLASH.
A surge of memory slammed into his mind.
Fire.
Screams.
A man — covered in blood, holding the same necklace, looking toward the heavens with hatred in his eyes.
The name echoed.
> "Zayren."
The man's voice, in the memory, burned like iron:
> "If you ever find this, boy… know that I didn't fail. I chose to die."
Sunny's breath stopped.
Zayren.
Who was he?
Why did he speak to him — across time, across death?
And then — one last whisper reached him:
> "You were never supposed to come here, Sunny."
"But now that you have… the gods can no longer ignore you."
He appeared like a crack in reality.
A man holding something —
A strange orb, floating between his hands like a dying planet.
It was bleeding light.
Cracks ran across its surface, but wherever it broke, golden veins tried to hold it together… like someone had tried to stitch time itself.
Sunny froze.
His breath caught the moment his eyes met the orb.
And then —
He saw the man.
His hat… wide and pointed, the kind worn by ancient witches.
His robe… blacker than night, devoid of even stars — like the universe itself had given up on him.
> "Tu... TU?!"
Sunny stumbled back.
> "How... how are you here?!"
"This… this place… no one should be able to—"
He was panicking.
His voice cracked like a child trying to escape death.
But the man just smiled.
> "Nice to meet you," he said.
Calm.
Chilling.
Timeless.
And then he lifted his head, revealing his face.
Sunny's heart dropped.
He had seen horrors.
He had seen Venerables and monsters, illusions and gods.
But this face…
This presence…
It made everything else feel small.
It was him.
Gehrman Spearow.
The name itself echoed like thunder in Sunny's soul.
He couldn't move.
Couldn't scream.
Gehrman walked forward slowly — each step sounding like time cracking beneath boots.
He stood before Sunny… then raised two fingers.
Before Sunny could react, those fingers pressed against his forehead.
A flash.
A silence deeper than silence itself.
> "What lies here…"
"…I will not tell you."
> "But remember, Sunny — I've carved something into your mind. Not a memory. Not a dream.
A truth."
> "And one day, when you need it most… it will burn its way out."
He stepped back.
The orb in his hands vanished.
So did the sky.
And with that, Gehrman was gone.
Sunny collapsed to his knees, his breath ragged.
Whatever that truth was…
It was already inside him now.
And it was waiting to awaken.