"Or would you rather be called… Lost from Light?"
Deep within his soul, something moved and rose from slumber, triumphant. Unbreakable, eternal, irresistible. Complete, perfect, and sweet.
The lighthouse disappeared, replaced by a crumbling spire with red walls covered in coral. The woman in front of him was different, too. Instead of shadows that reflected his own, she was radiant, perfect. Her likeness evoked a yearning so deep it felt like his heart would tear itself apart, and a bitterness that burned so bright it threatened to reduce him to ashes.
"Haa… Hahahahaha!"
The remembrance shattered. The ominous red walls faded, replaced by stone painted in orange hues by the fire in the brazier. And the woman in front of him was once more a living shadow.
"Your face… hahahahaha!" she laughed once more, completely unconcerned by his deadly stare.
The Lady wiped at her eyes with the heel of her hand, getting rid of the tears that had formed along the edges while she laughed.
"I'm sorry, I just couldn't resist." Small tremors still shook her shoulders, and she looked seconds away from resuming her laughter.
Sunny's knuckles popped from how hard he was clenching his fists.
A small smile tugged at her lips, completely at odds with the stormy expression on his face.
"Don't call me like that ever again," he hissed through gritted teeth.
She smiled, as if already awaiting that answer, yet amused by it nonetheless. "You are cute when you are angry."
"How. Did. You. Know?" He pronounced the words slowly, agonizingly so, as if going any faster would unravel what little remained of his restraint.
She tilted her head, the same smile still tugging at her lips, dark eyes reflecting the blaze of the brazier in the most sinister of ways.
"As I told you before, everyone who falls asleep within my domain is automatically under my grasp." She shrugged nonchalantly. "I would be a poor weaver of dreams if I couldn't take a peek at that marvelous mind of yours."
His teeth clenched painfully. "But that's not all, is it?"
She smiled; it was all teeth. "Sharp. I always liked that about you." She took a step forward, closing the distance between them.
Her hand rose, gently grasping his chin, forcing it up so he had to stare directly into her abyssal eyes.
"It's my dormant ability," she revealed easily. "I can read souls. That's how I can tell your aspect, your flaw, the abilities you will unlock in the future, and of course…" She paused, lips arching upward. "…your true name. Lost from Light…" She pronounced the name slowly, as if tasting the words. "Quite poetic, if you will allow me the remark. Fitting for someone with a soul like yours."
She stopped briefly, staring deep into his eyes. "And what a marvelous soul you have, my dear shadow. It sang to me, sang, dear Sunless. It spoke to me about your dreams, your desires, the fears that haunt you deep in the night, all the little dreams that have been crushed under the heel of this cruel, uncaring world we inhabit." Her other hand rose, gently caressing his cheek. On her face was an expression of affection so painfully honest that it hurt to watch. "It told me such tragic tales, boasted about outlandish feats that I could scarcely believe if I hadn't seen them for myself. And that chaotic mix deep inside it? That endless battle between hope and despair still going on even now?" She sighed deeply, myriad emotions running through her dark eyes. "I have seen many, many souls. Some radiant and perfect, others so rotten it made me feel dirty just by staring at them. But yours…" She chuckled softly. "It's beautiful, Sunny. Oh, so beautiful."
The Lady lowered her head, her lips stopping just beside the shell of his ear. "And yet… it's filled with so much pain, with so much sorrow. It stole my heart and broke it all at once."
Tremors shook his body as he fought to keep himself in check. Red crept at the edges of his vision, a guttural roar fighting to crawl out of his throat. He wanted to scream, to rage, to tear her and the very world apart. She was mocking him. She had been playing with him, forcing emotions into him, making him love her, as if he were some puppet she could make dance at will.
Shadows crawled at his feet violently, just as angry and resentful as he was. They shared his rage. They shared his hate. They shared his thirst for revenge.
And yet, despite how much he wanted to unleash his rage, to let the red take over his vision, to prove once more how pitifully unaware Wrath had been when he tried to lecture him about rage… he did no such thing.
Violence was not the answer. It had never been.
Auro had already proven how vast the gulf was between a Saint and a Supreme. The idea of killing, let alone harming, a Sacred was so absurd it wasn't even worth considering. So he swallowed his emotions, buried them deep inside, composed his face into a neutral expression, and forced himself to think. Think hard and fast.
Triggered by the thought, he shifted his sight. He needed to know, needed to have an idea of just how deeply outclassed he was.
Sunny's blood froze all at once when seven radiant cores revealed themselves, resting deep in her chest. They were… wrong. Repulsive. Almost painful to look at. Covering half of them was a sickly rot that resembled that of the cores of Nightmare Creatures, making them look like seven half-eclipsed suns.
A soft laugh made him focus back on her. The Lady's eyes shone with mirth, her expression one of amusement.
"Come now, Sunny." Long fingers caressed his face softly, lovingly. "You didn't believe yourself and that accursed nephilim to be the first with a divine aspect, did you?"
"I didn't." It did not change just how much more desperate the situation had become.
He laughed bitterly at the thought. She could be a divine titan and there would be no difference. He was so hopelessly outmatched it was not even funny.
"So you realize your situation." The idle commentary was met with a glare.
"Stop reading my mind."
She chuckled, fingers still tracing slow lines across his face. "While I'm flattered, that is not one of my many talents."
He looked at her, at her soft yet mocking expression, at the hands holding his face with a care he could scarcely believe was directed toward him.
"Why?" he spat, barely contained anger coating the word.
The Lady smirked. "Why what?"
He gritted his teeth. "Why pretend? Why play with me? Why all of this?"
She laughed, and damn her for forcing these emotions on him, but that laugh made his heart flutter.
"I think it's quite evident. But fine, I'll play along. But first…" She snapped her fingers, and the world itself shook.
One moment they were still in the lighthouse, right before the brazier, and the next they were back inside the tower, more specifically, in her room. They were seated in plush armchairs, face to face, a table with an assortment of beverages and snacks between them. For a moment, he was brought back to the countless afternoons they had spent just like this, chatting the time away, enjoying each other's company.
His teeth ground harder at the fondness the memory evoked.
If she was aware of his reaction, she didn't show it. "Much more comfortable, aren't we?"
"Yes."
She tilted her head, peering at him curiously. "It must be rather annoying to be forced to answer every idle question."
He glared.
"On the other hand, I have received some rather amusing answers thanks to your flaw, so I'm not complaining."
He glared harder.
She threw back her head and laughed, pure mirth shining through her relaxed posture. "Ah, Sunless, I must truly thank you. I haven't laughed so much in ages."
"Stop stalling," he muttered angrily.
A dainty hand moved to lift one of the cups on the table, filled with aromatic green tea. Leisurely, she brought it to her mouth and sipped slowly, eyes closing to savor the taste.
"You are enjoying this," Sunny stated in a deadpan tone.
"But of course I do!" she admitted easily and took another slow sip. "You have no idea how long it has been since I had the chance to truly enjoy myself."
His blood pressure was increasing in real time.
Finally, she seemed satisfied and set the cup back on the table. She smiled once more upon seeing his frustrated expression and leaned back in her chair, the vivid image of relaxation.
"Let's begin from the beginning, shall we?" Her lips arched upward, perfectly aware of what she had just done.
"Go on." If he clenched his teeth any harder, they would break.
"Very well then. Let's see. You arrived in my beautiful city almost two weeks ago. I must admit that you gave me quite the scare, too." She raised a finger and wagged it in a chiding manner. "I thought my barrier had sealed off the city perfectly, and then you showed up out of nowhere."
It was good to know that one of his suspicions had been proven true. The barrier that enveloped the city -including the underground; he had checked- had been puzzling him for a while. It had mostly been a wild guess, since the barrier was silver, and the flashes that kept denying his attempts to break free from the hex were silver too.
"Why seal off the city?" he asked, curious despite himself.
"Do you believe me that heartless, dear Sunless?" she glowered at him playfully. "All of its inhabitants, along with myself, were defiled." Despite her words, her tone was mild, uncaring. "There was no better option to minimize the fallout than to seal them inside and then put them to sleep."
"You have trapped me in a mind hex and forced me to fall in love with you," he answered in the same careful, deadpan tone.
She smiled wryly. "Despite what you might think, I cannot force you to feel anything. How you react to and feel about these delightful little dreams is completely on you."
"Am I supposed to believe that?"
She shrugged and continued as if he had said nothing. "I must thank you for killing that damnable man Valderak. It warms my heart to know that he died pitifully after what he had done."
He tilted his head and, unable to hold back his curiosity, asked the question that had been on his mind for a long time. "How did he corrupt you? And how did that spread to the rest of the city?"
The Lady picked up her cup and sipped once more. Sunny did not miss the way her jaw clenched.
"That foolish Seer thought himself smarter than he was and gazed into what he shouldn't have." Her tone darkened, undercurrents of rage bleeding through. "Not content with that, the fool revealed what he had found to me right before leaving on a diplomatic travel with our dear Vorthal."
"What kind of knowledge is enough to corrupt a Sacred?"
"I can tell you, if you are that interested." She chuckled darkly. "I don't recommend it, though."
He shook his head. "I'll pass, thanks."
Her smile faltered. "All was good for a few days, until I found out about that seed of darkness inside me. Sadly, being aware of it only seemed to make it worse. By the time I managed to retake some degree of control over myself, I had already transmitted that very same dangerous knowledge through my domain." She shook her head sadly. "Every single person inside this city was corrupted immediately. Everyone else within the realm was fortunate enough to be far enough from me not to receive the same immediate doom." She stopped briefly, a hint of sadness shining through the calm mask. "And yet, even that did not save them in the end, given your memories."
He felt goosebumps.
Just like that, a piece of knowledge that a mere Master could obtain was enough to bring down a Sacred and her domain. Though… wasn't that what had happened with Auro and the Twin Gods too?
It was terrifying.
"It is, dear Sunless. There is a reason why our dear Father and his siblings deal with corruption in such a heavy-handed manner."
He gritted his teeth. "Stop reading my mind. And I'm not a brother of yours."
She smiled. "We are both divine shadows, are we not? It doesn't matter who you were born from. Shadow is our father."
"I only have one father, and it certainly isn't the Shadow God." His tone made it clear that he wasn't about to budge on the matter.
A soft chuckle was his only answer.
"Where was I?" Her eyes shone with mischievous glee.
"I scared you when I arrived," he answered through gritted teeth.
"Correct. If I'm honest, I originally thought you were one of dear Father's shadows. Only the divines know just how much he loves to spy on his children." Her tone grew angry. "And yet, he did not listen to my pleas even once."
Had he still been under the mind hex, he would have taken her hand at that very moment in a quiet show of support. And damn the thing, but he still had the urge to do it. Something she did not miss, given her sad smile.
"So I worked slowly, eased you into a slumber from which I never expected you to rise." She chuckled. "So imagine my surprise when this cute little shadow turns out to be a time traveler of all things." She shook her head in amusement, an emotion he could not grasp shining in her eyes. "To think that I'm dead, that I'm nothing but a facsimile created by that fascinating Spell of yours. That everyone here is… I didn't handle it too well, dear Sunless."
Her hand snaked out to catch his, too fast for him to retract in time. Her grip was like velvet, soft yet unyielding.
"I'm a very greedy person, dear Sunless. I have always been and will always be." Her grip grew more forceful. "So imagine how it felt to know that my dreams were doomed, that they had been for a long, long time. That the very world we are living and breathing in right now is nothing but a play orchestrated by a higher power."
She leaned forward, her expression morphing into something that chilled his veins. "Do you understand me, Sunny? The despair I felt? The horror? The anger? The sheer hopelessness?"
He did not flinch. He did not retract in an attempt to gain distance. Instead, he leaned forward too. Their faces were so close that it would only take the slightest movement to kiss.
"I do. I understand all of those things. I would probably take it far worse than you did," he admitted easily. Then his lips arched in a jagged smile. "And I don't care."
She laughed softly, the iron-like grip on his hand growing gentler. "I expected no less from you."
"Stop acting like you know me."
She shrugged nonchalantly and leaned back, resting once more against the backrest of her chair. "But I do. As of now, no one in the world knows you better than I do." A smirk grew on her face. "Two worlds, even."
He leaned back too and did not dignify that comment with an answer, which seemed to amuse her.
"My existential crisis aside, I took you under my domain and offered you exactly what you wanted. A peaceful, quiet life. Good friends. The freedom to make your own choices." She shook her head mournfully. "I even offered you my heart, or, well, that of my avatar within the dream. For someone who's so desperate to be loved, you sure have a serious problem when it comes to accepting it."
Sunny did not say anything. There was nothing he could say that wouldn't unravel what little restraint he had managed to recover.
"And what an annoying guest you are, dear Sunless. For a Dormant, your mind feels more like that of a Sacred or even a Divine." She smiled ruefully. "Made it quite hard to keep you asleep. I guess I have to thank Weaver for that."
He had already suspected that [Mind Weave] was a vital part in allowing him to resist her, but it was good to get confirmation.
"Then you woke up." The Lady pouted playfully. "A lesser woman might have had her confidence shattered by such a cruel rejection."
"A lesser man would have already struck you down for what you did," he retorted bitterly.
"That lesser man would have died trying," was her flat answer.
With her free hand, she once more took the cup of tea and drank slowly, savoring the taste without any hurry.
"I decided to leave you alone for a little while, see what you were going to do." Her voice took on an exasperated quality. "And then you went on and prodded a Great Beast. Honestly, do you have a death wish?"
"Probably," he replied evenly.
Her hand squeezed his softly, trying -and failing- to bring him comfort. Or at least, that was what he wished to think.
"So I put you to sleep, and dear Erelia too. That time, I decided to do something different."
"That second dream... we were reliving your memories, weren't we?"
He was a little ashamed to recognize that he deeply treasured the flabbergasted expression she made. "How did you know?"
Sunny sighed, running a hand through his hair. "It was too real," he said. "Even now, I'm still having trouble distinguishing what's a memory of my own and what's one of yours. And then the events that happened… they make no sense if you were trying to keep me trapped inside that dream. Both the first dream and this one were too… safe. Everything is good. There is no grand tragedy, no great danger to face. Not even someone I mildly dislike shows up. And the way it made me feel… the lingering nostalgia toward things that never happened, for people I never met…"
She laughed, bright and joyful. "It's good to know that the dream was special for both of us."
It was not, he wanted to say.
Sadly, it would be a lie. So instead, he kept silent.
Her hand squeezed his once more. Something tender flickered in her eyes. "It was a self-indulgence of mine," she admitted quietly, her gaze drifting away from his. "I wondered what would have been different if you had been there with me. What it would be like to have someone by my side during the worst days of my life instead of facing them all alone." She sighed deeply, seemingly aging decades in a matter of seconds. "And what a beautiful world it would have been if you truly had been there."
She looked back at him, and something deep inside him broke upon seeing her expression, the yearning for something that never was, the silent mourning for what could have been.
Sunny squeezed back without even realizing.
"You were a mere curiosity before then," she admitted easily. "A fascinating herald of my own demise. But in that dream… in those two weeks we spent together… I truly fell for you, dear Sunless."
For a moment, the world trembled and silver tendrils unfurled around them. She made an annoyed huff, and with a simple snap of her fingers, the trembling stopped and the tendrils mended themselves.
"Stop doing that," she chided. "Your brain would already be mush if not for that incredibly resilient mind of yours."
"Free me from this dream, and I will," he retorted.
"Admit it, Sunny. We were -you were- happy."
"It was a lie," he said, his voice dangerously close to cracking.
He did not want to admit just how happy he had been inside that dream, too. How he had felt that as long as she was by his side, he would never be lost and broken. Like he had been for the last year and eight months. That upon waking up, he had almost fallen to the temptation of going back to sleep in the hope of returning to it.
"It was," she agreed with a sad smile. "And yet, it's one I would have gladly lived."
Sunny took a deep breath, trying to steady himself, to bring the chaotic mix of emotions wrestling in his stomach under control. It was all a lie. The memories weren't his. The emotions weren't his. She had forced them into him. Just like the damnable nostalgia he felt for a city he had never known and the mourning for the deaths of those he had never met.
It was all a lie.
He kept repeating that to himself.
It didn't sound convincing even in his own mind.
"What happened in the real version?" he asked, if only to distract himself from the mire he was sinking into.
The expression on her face told him that she knew what he was doing. She acquiesced nonetheless.
"Much of it was the same until Auro corrupted Liriel and I challenged him." She spat the man's name as if it were something disgusting. He agreed. "Without you there to help me… I lost. The coward defeated me and then fled, never once looking back at the city he had just condemned to die." Her grip on his hand tightened. "Then we had to fight for survival. The Great Tyrant was just as much of a menace as in the dream. I eventually became Supreme by defying its will, but by the time it was dead, the casualties among our own were staggering."
She sighed, her hands starting to tremble violently. "And then… the Weeping happened. Without your convenient aid, by the time I put Vaelkar to sleep, almost the whole city was gone." She paused and looked him in the eye. The grief he saw there at that moment… he would never forget it. "If you think the situation within the dream was bad, you should have seen the real thing. That's when I decided to craft a world without suffering. One in which nothing like what I had just lived through could ever happen again."
He squeezed her hand almost by reflex, comforting words trying to crawl out of his mouth, but he reined them in just in time. She was not his friend. He needed to remember that.
"After that, you already know. I became the Lady of Sorrows. A savior, a symbol, a goddess." She spat the last word bitterly. "And meanwhile, the real ones ignored us. I asked, I pleaded, I bartered and threatened." Her voice grew darker and colder. "I begged, Sunny. I begged. My father, the Storm Goddess, all of them. And what do you think they did?"
"Nothing." The answer came easily. The bile that rose to his throat did, too.
Something dangerous shone in her eyes. "Correct." She exhaled slowly, the anger bleeding away from her face, though the tension in her shoulders remained. "I was alive to see this tower be built," she revealed. "I was nothing but a child. Seven years old, if I remember correctly. Back then, the gods hadn't grown distant yet. I can remember Uncle Sun's laugh, Aunt War's petty arguments with Father, the way Aunt Storm would look at the Demon of Choice when he made the finishing touches on what would become the home of her descendants. I remember that, and much more. And then they abandoned us. Grew cold and distant. Ignored our existence, our pleas. Treated us like dirt under their boots."
"In the end, the only one you can rely on is yourself," he said in a somber tone.
She once more took the cup and drank from it. She failed to hide the way her hand was trembling.
"I wanted the same thing as you," she admitted quietly. "A quiet, peaceful life. Let glory, honor, and power go to my siblings. and may they choke on it." She chuckled bitterly. "A quiet, peaceful life," she reiterated. "To grow lazy and old in a nice, cozy house. Maybe find love somewhere along the way and build a family." She smiled jaggedly. "Fate must be laughing at me right now. I cannot help wondering just how many things would have been different had you been there with me. If you had been born earlier. If the lie we lived in that dream had been the truth."
He shook his head softly and squeezed her hand. "I have no idea," he answered honestly. "Maybe everything would be different. Maybe nothing would. But we will never know."
She laughed ruefully. "You are right. But we can still fix that. I can weave that dream back into being, continue right where we left it, without that damnable Nephilim interrupting us this time. We can be happy there. Rule this city together, or abandon it altogether."
"And all it would take is for me to fall under your hex once more." He smiled ruefully. "One from which I suspect I would never wake up again."
"There would be no point in it if you were to accept willingly." Her voice sounded honest. Too honest.
He grimaced, if only to hide just how tempted he was to accept the offer. He stared at her slowly, studying her as if she were a complicated puzzle.
"You are lying."
"I have in many things," she admitted. "But I have never lied to you about what I want."
Her free hand rose once more to caress his cheek gently. The tender touch, warm and comforting, almost broke past his defenses.
"You think I trapped you because I wanted a puppet," she said. "You think I wove dreams to mock you. To indulge in cruelty. That I'm only trying to fool you, to lead you on like that outskirts girl and the disgusting Nephilim did. That I will betray you the moment I get what I want."
"Won't you?" he asked in a hoarse voice.
"No." Her answer was immediate, her voice seemingly clear of any misdirection or deceit.
He looked at her for a long time, searching for the faintest sign of treachery, fighting with himself to find an answer.
"What do you want? Truly want?" he asked in the end, if only to gain time.
She pouted, slightly pinching his cheek. "You have not been paying attention, dear Sunless." She shook her head in mock sadness. "A world without suffering, of course. To become divine, so that I may tear the gods from their lofty thrones. To stop being alone. To be loved."
She paused and leaned in, her lips separated from his by mere millimeters. "I cannot create a world without suffering, not when my world doesn't even exist anymore. I cannot become divine while trapped inside this Nightmare. The gods are long dead. However, I can stop being alone. I can be loved. But do you know what I want the most?"
His breath hitched. They were so close he could feel her breath on his lips. "I think I do," he admitted.
"I want you."
She closed the distance, and their lips met.
It was soft, careful, almost shy. A plea for love rather than a demand.
When she pulled back, he found himself breathless. The way she smiled when she noticed… it made her truly beautiful.
"I can offer you a peaceful life. I can offer you your friends back, and as many as you want. Riches beyond this world. Power. Care. Love." She listed them carefully, her eyes never leaving his. "As long as you stop resisting, I can even stop the march of time. We can live entire lifetimes together. We can be paupers or kings and queens. We can be gods or mundane. Everything you want, everything you have ever desired, I can grant."
Sunny did not know what to answer. Did not even know what to feel.
He did not even know why he was resisting anymore.
He had been happy in this very dream, in this very lie he had been living.
He had his family. He had Effie and Kai. He had power, all the money he ever needed, someone whom -forced emotions or not- he could admit to loving.
So why?
Why was he doing this?
Why was he still fighting?
Why was he still resisting when he had everything he had ever wanted?
What more could he want?
More...
What… more?
Sunny threw his head back and laughed uproariously.
He was such a fool!
The answer had been right before him all this time, and he had failed to see it.
It was so simple. So damn painfully simple.
All this time, it had been staring at him, and he had been too blind to notice.
"Have I ever told you about a man named Hairy Ron?"
She tilted her head, surprised by the sudden shift. "You haven't."
He smiled. "I won't bore you with the details. I will simply say that I hated him, hated him with the passion of a thousand suns. He was a thief, a coward, a pathetic husk of a man. But you know what I hated most?" He paused, his voice soft enough to be a whisper. "He was already dead. He had been for a long time. And yet, he insisted on surviving."
"You see yourself in him," she noted.
Sunny chuckled. "I do. Or at least, I did." He shook his head in amusement. "Back in the first dream, you asked me what I wanted."
She blinked at the non sequitur, but followed along nonetheless. "I did. You weren't able to tell me back then. Can you now?"
He laughed, a sound of pure joy. "I can." He leaned forward. This time, he was the one close enough to initiate a kiss. "All of it."
"All of it?" she echoed.
"Yes," he agreed easily. "You said that you are greedy? Well, I am too. I want friends. I want to be rich. I want to be powerful. I want to feel safe. I want to be able to decide my own fate. I want to be loved." He enumerated each desire with the same casual tone. "But you know what I want even more?" He smiled, and it was more than a little crazy. "I want to live. I reached this conclusion all the way back during my First Nightmare. Back then, I thought it was merely spite, a wish to take revenge on the world by living against its wishes."
His hand squeezed hers.
"What I failed to realize is that surviving is not enough. That nothing in this world is. My friends forgot me? I will make new ones. I am weak? I will become strong. I am poor? I will become the richest man in the world. Is Neph unworthy of my love, or does she not even want it? I will find someone who does. I want that. I want that, and so, so much more."
She leaned forward, nothing but a hair's breadth separating their lips. "I can give you all of that," she said.
Sunny laughed happily and rested his forehead against hers. "Oh, you have no idea how tempting your offer is. But you forgot one small, vital detail."
"Which is?"
Sunny smiled haughtily. "I'm Lost from Light, the most honest man in the world. Two worlds, even. And I refuse to live a lie."
As soon as the words left his mouth, the world broke apart into countless silver tendrils. A canvas was revealed behind it, so damaged it looked as though a soft breeze would unravel it.
Sunny stared at it for but a second, considering one final time whether to give in.
He considered, and crushed the idea.
He would make those dreams real with his own two hands, without anyone handing them to him. But more importantly, without becoming the willing slave of someone whose intentions he did not trust.
The canvas held itself together for a second longer.
Then it unraveled completely before his eyes.
Sunny opened his eyes in the real world and smiled at Serpent, who was dutifully guarding his prone body.
"Hey, buddy. I'm sorry for making you wait." He patted its head affectionately. "Let's end this."