The temporal shockwave ripped outward from the Throne of Twilight.
It was a silent explosion, an invisible force that cascaded through the grand obsidian columns, swept across the ruined plaza, and rushed over the barren outer edges of the city.
Time, which had held its breath for centuries under the absolute authority of King Daeron’s crown, finally exhaled.
The transition was violent and immediate.
Out in the city, the great battle between the Corrupted abominations and the silver-armored soldiers of the Night Temple resumed for exactly a fraction of a second.
Swords swung.
Jaws snapped shut.
Blood that had been suspended in mid-air finally splashed against the cold stone.
And then, a catastrophic silence fell over the horde.
Clatter.
Thud.
Crash.
Thousands of bodies suddenly collapsed.
They fell not as warriors struck down in combat, but as lifeless marionettes whose strings had been abruptly severed.
Silver knights tumbled down the sweeping staircases like discarded dolls.
Great Beasts slumped forward, their massive heads cracking against the pavement.
Soul Stealer was dead.
And because he was dead, the thousands of vessels he had hollowed out and possessed were instantly rendered empty.
There were no souls inside those bodies—soul stealer had devoured them long ago to fuel his own terrible existence.
Without his vile will animating them, the entire army of the City of Twilight simply ceased to be, turning into a massive, sprawling graveyard of empty meat and steel in the blink of an eye.
Inside the cavernous throne room, Nightingale stood perfectly still.
To Kai, absolutely no time had passed.
One moment, he had just breached the grand doors of the Twilight King’s sanctum, his bow drawn taut, his golden eyes scanning the gloom for the horrors of the Great River.
His heart was hammering with the adrenaline of a Nightmare just beginning.
His mind was sharp, ready to fight alongside his cohort, ready to protect his friends.
He blinked.
It was a natural human reflex.
The eyelid fluttered down to moisten the eye, taking less than a tenth of a second.
But a tenth of a second was a lifetime to a Transcendent Titan.
Before Kai’s eyelids could even open again, the Mad Prince melted into the shadows of the throne.
He bypassed the physical space between the dais and the archer entirely, reappearing directly in front of his former friend.
SHCK.
Kai opened his eyes, and a sudden, paralyzing cold erupted in the center of his chest.
He stumbled backward, the majestic bow slipping from his numb fingers.
It clattered uselessly against the obsidian floor.
A massive, horrifying volume of hot blood surged up his throat, spilling past his lips and cascading down his shining armor.
He gasped, his lungs refusing to draw air.
His golden eyes, wide with sheer, unadulterated confusion, slowly tracked downward.
Protruding from the center of his chest, right through his heart, was a blade forged of pure, lightless darkness.
The Sin of Solace.
It hummed with a quiet, vicious delight, its dark essence immediately ravaging his internal organs.
Trembling, Kai forced his gaze upward, following the dark hilt to the pale, soot-stained hand that held it.
And then, he saw the face of his killer.
It was a face he knew better than his own.
The messy raven hair, the sharp, porcelain features, the familiar onyx eyes.
But the skin was deathly pale, cracked and corrupted, and the eyes were fathomless abysses of absolute, terrifying madness.
“Sun…ny…?” Kai choked out.
More blood bubbled past his lips, staining his chin.
His mind was completely blank.
He couldn’t process the reality before him.
Where was the enemy?
Why was Sunny here, wearing this strange, terrifying coat?
Why were his eyes so dead?
“Why…?” Kai whispered, his voice cracking with a heartbreaking, innocent sorrow.
The Mad Prince stared back at him.
His expression did not change.
It was a mask of cold, unfeeling stone.
Inside his shattered mind, however, the Mad Prince felt a strange, distant twinge.
Kai.
The beautiful, righteous archer.
The man who could see a lie, who always saw the best in people, who had fought by his side through the darkest hells of the waking world.
He had genuinely, truly loved this man as a brother.
But what did it matter?
‘I don’t care if he was my friend,’ the Mad Prince thought coldly, his internal monologue functioning with chilling detachment.
By killing him now, in this state of pure ignorance, the Mad Prince was sparing him the agony of the Defilement.
It was the only mercy the Tomb of Ariel had left to offer.
With a slow, deliberate motion, the Mad Prince twisted the hilt of the Sin of Solace.
CRACK.
The dark blade rotated inside Kai’s chest, destroying his heart entirely.
Kai convulsed, a fresh wave of blood pouring from his mouth.
His golden eyes began to dim, the light of his brilliant soul violently snuffed out by the Supreme weapon.
He couldn’t even formulate a final thought.
The betrayal was too absolute, the shock too profound.
He was dying without ever knowing what the Nightmare truly was.
The Mad Prince leaned forward, his pale, cracked lips brushing against Kai’s ear.
“Your nightmare is over, my dear friend,” he whispered, his dead rasp surprisingly soft.
“Sleep now.”
He ripped the blade free.
Kai’s legs gave out, and the flawless archer crumpled to the cold obsidian floor, dead before his body even settled into the pooling blood.
The Mad Prince looked down at the corpse for a long moment.
He felt nothing.
The spark of humanity that would have wept for his friend had been burned away centuries ago.
He merely shook the blood from his blade and turned his gaze toward the ceiling, where the colossal, frozen dragon still hung in the air outside.
Kai woke up.
It was not a gradual awakening.
One moment, there was the agonizing tear of cold steel in his chest and the terrifying face of his best friend, and the next, there was…
nothing.
It was as if everything around him was made of pure, heavy darkness.
He was standing, though he couldn’t feel the ground beneath his feet.
The air was thick, suffocating, and perfectly still.
Panic, sudden and overwhelming, flared in his chest.
‘Sunny!
Where is Sunny?
The monster…
what happened?’
He tried to gasp for air, to shout his friend’s name, but no sound came out.
Kai realized, with a rising spike of horror, that he couldn’t feel his lungs.
He had no mouth.
He had no face.
He looked down at himself.
His brilliant, shining armor was gone.
His fair skin was gone.
His body was entirely pitch-black, a two-dimensional silhouette carved out of pure shadow.
He was made of ink, floating in an ocean of midnight.
He slowly lifted his head, peering into the gloom.
Standing a few paces in front of him was a figure.
It was a young man with pale skin and dark hair, standing perfectly still upon the unseen floor.
The figure’s onyx eyes were open, but they were entirely empty—devoid of light, devoid of thought, devoid of life.
Kai stared into those dead eyes.
He knew this person.
He knew this was the man who had just stabbed him.
He knew…
And then, it vanished.
A cold, heavy sensation washed over Kai’s mind.
Like water washing away writing in the sand, the name ‘Sunny’ dissolved from his consciousness.
Then, the memories of the Forgotten Shore faded.
The memories of the Chained Isles.
The battles, the laughter, the loyalty.
He stared at the pale youth standing in front of him, and he could not comprehend who it was.
The face was completely alien to him.
The betrayal he had felt only a subjective minute ago evaporated into a dull, formless void.
Confused, terrified, Kai tried to turn his head.
As his vision adjusted to the darkness, the true scale of his purgatory revealed itself.
He was not alone.
Stretching out into the infinite gloom around him were thousands…
millions…
of abominations.
Towering shadows of horrific beasts, twisted demons, and fallen humans, all standing perfectly still, silently staring into the void.
A primal instinct screamed at him to run, to take flight, to escape this hellish assembly.
Kai tried to take a step back.
His leg did not move.
He willed his shadowy arm to raise, to form a bow, to do anything.
Nothing happened.
His limbs outright refused to obey his commands.
He was tethered, bound by an absolute, unbreakable law of the domain he now inhabited.
A shadow cannot move unless its master commands it.
And the master had given no command.
He was stuck.
Frozen in a single posture, trapped in the infinite, silent depths of the Mad Prince’s soul sea.
Kai stared forward, his sight locked endlessly onto the empty eyes of the pale, unnamed youth standing before him.
He could not speak.
He could not move.
He could no longer even remember why he was sad.
He waited for a minute.
Then an hour.
Then a day……
In the suffocating silence of the abyss, time ceased to exist.
And slowly, quietly, the small, desperate fire of consciousness inside the shadow known as Nightingale flickered, starved of fuel, and permanently went out.