Drowning in darkness was not a new experience for Sunny.
In fact, if he were to list all the unpleasant ways he had almost died over the past few years, suffocation by a lightless abyss wouldn’t even make the top five.
Still, that didn’t make the experience any more enjoyable.
His eyes snapped open.
He was still on the raft.
The oppressive wave of ink had dissipated as quickly as it had arrived, leaving behind only the damp wood, the endless expanse of murky freshwater, and the silent, clinging mist.
The dark copy was gone.
Only Sunny remained, sitting in the damp cold, gasping for air that tasted faintly of ancient dust and stagnant water.
‘Damn it…’
He clutched his chest, feeling the ragged beat of his heart slowly settle back into a steady rhythm.
His lungs burned, but his mind burned hotter.
Sunny closed his eyes and turned his awareness inward, sinking his consciousness down into his soul sea.
There, standing upon the silent black water, were his shadow cores—tranquil spheres of dark, liquid fire.
Resting beneath them was the Sin of Solace.
The cursed jian remained wrapped in its lingering shroud of madness, motionless and firmly locked inside his soul.
He withdrew from his soul sea and opened his eyes, staring at the empty air where his copy had stood just moments prior.
‘It wasn’t real.
Or…
it was, but not in a physical sense.’
Sunny grimaced, running a wet hand through his raven hair.
‘A projection?
A manifestation born from the Great River’s surreal laws?
Or has the Sin of Solace finally eroded enough of my mind that I’m hallucinating full-blown existential crises now?’
None of those answers made him feel any better.
If the apparition was merely a delusion born of his own fractured psyche, how could it know his True Name?
The Spell recognized True Names as absolute truths anchored to the foundation of reality.
A mere delusion shouldn’t be able to bypass the mental boundary imposed by his Flaw—unless the delusion was woven directly from his own subconscious memories.
Which brought him back to the copy’s final words.
I am you…
and you are me.
‘How cliché,’ Sunny thought bitterly, though there was no humor in the sentiment.
‘An evil reflection line.
Fantastic.
Just what I needed to complete the Nightmare experience.’
He forced himself to stand up.
His legs were shaky, but his posture straightened out of habit.
The raft was still drifting.
The current was unrelenting, carrying the splintered vessel through the fog toward an unknown destination.
Below him, the vast depth of the water remained maddeningly clear and empty.
No Nightmare Creatures.
No floating debris.
Just endless, silent current.
Sunny reached into his shadow sense, expanding it outward as far as his strained mind would allow.
The mist muffled the range, dulling his perception like wet wool, but he managed to cast his awareness out a few hundred meters.
Nothing.
Just water.
‘Thirteen million challengers…’ he mused, leaning his hands on his knees as he peered into the gloom.
‘If the Spell truly hurled thirteen million souls into this Nightmare, where the hell is everyone?’
Unless…
they weren’t in the same time.
The realization settled into his gut like a lump of lead.
The Tomb of Ariel was built by the Daemon of Dread to hide a secret.
A tomb built outside of ordinary space, where time flowed backward, forward, and sideways in a twisted weave.
The Great River didn’t just flow through space—it flowed through time itself.
Sunny stared into the swirling fog, his cold black eyes narrowing.
‘Great.
So I’m lost on a fog-bound river of time, haunted by a ghost wearing my face, and running low on rations.’
He sat back down on the damp wood, pulling his legs to his chest, and looked out over the infinite grey.
‘Well…
at least I have a boat.’