The words of the Nightmare Spell did not merely echo inside Sunny’s mind.
They shattered it.
‘…What?’
The world lost all form, all texture, all sound.
The howling wind that had been whipping through his hair, the distant, muffled churn of the Great River below, the blinding radiance of the seven suns—everything dissolved into a flat, gray void.
‘Your master is dead.’
The sentence repeated itself in his head, over and over, each repetition heavier and colder than the last.
It was a mechanical, indifferent statement delivered by the voice of the Spell—an arbiter of absolute reality that could not lie, could not misinterpret, and could not be deceived.
‘No…
wait.
Hold on.
That’s…
that’s impossible.’
Sunny’s mind stalled, dropping into a frantic, chaotic loop of calculations that refused to yield a logical result.
His master was Nephis.
Changing Star of the Immortal Flame Clan.
The girl who had survived the horrors of the Forgotten Shore by sheer, terrifying force of will.
The girl who had walked into the First Nightmare as a fragile legacy, clawed her way through the terrifying depths of the Dream Realm alone for years, and returned as a conqueror.
She was a monster in human skin, an unyielding pillar of incandescent fire that burned away every obstacle in her path.
She had survived the horrors of the Spire.
She had survived the bloody schemes of the Great Clans.
She had survived the civil war in Antarctica.
How could she be dead?
Here?
In a forgotten corner of time, lying on the back of a scorched sea monster floating down an ancient river?
‘It doesn’t make sense!’ Sunny screamed internally, his soul core vibrating in violent denial.
‘She was right there!
I just saw her!
The white fire was burning!’
And yet, deep within his soul, an invisible, ethereal tether that had bound him since the day he stepped off the Spire…
snapped.
The sensation was so subtle that he hadn’t even noticed it at first.
For years, the Shadow Bond had been a constant, suffocating weight anchored to his soul sea—an invisible leash tied to Nephis’s very existence.
He had hated it.
He had feared it.
He had spent every waking breath calculating ways to break it, to reclaim his freedom, to ensure that no one held the power to command his body and mind with a single word.
Now, the weight was gone.
The tether had vanished into nothingness, leaving behind a cold, hollow vacuum.
He was free.
The realization did not bring relief.
It brought a sickening, paralyzing wave of nausea.
‘I’m free?
She’s…
dead?’
Sunny’s eyes stared blankly into the distance, unseeing.
A terrible, bitter iron taste filled his mouth.
He had wanted his freedom more than anything in the world.
He had dreamed of the day he would stand beneath the sky without the threat of absolute servitude hanging over his neck like a executioner’s axe.
But not like this.
Gods, not like this.
A sudden, sharp pain flared in his chest, as if a hand had reached into his ribcage and squeezed his heart until it bled.
‘Neph…’
Before the wave of grief could fully drown his thoughts, a sound broke through the suffocating silence of the sky.
It was a laugh.
The sound was low, resonant, and devoid of any human warmth.
It echoed through the open air, carried by the wind, vibrating directly against Sunny’s ears with an insidious, dark amusement.
Sunny’s paralyzed mind snapped back to the present.
The shadow-entity wrapped in living smoke stared at Sunny, its dark obsidian eyes twinkling with a terrifying, ancient malice.
The copy tilted its head, its pale lips twisting into a wide, ghastly grin that showed sharp white teeth.
“How poetic,” the shadow whispered, its voice sounding like dry leaves scraping over a marble tombstone.
“The Changing Star has finally burned out. The leash is broken. The slave is freed.”
Sunny tried to speak, tried to demand an answer, tried to channel his essence to strike the mocking creature down, but his throat felt as though it had been filled with molten lead.
His vocal cords refused to obey.
The dark copy leaned forward slightly, its gaze locking onto Sunny’s cold, wide eyes.
“And yet… a stray dog always needs a collar, doesn’t it?”
The creature’s smile broadened, turning into a nightmare of pure, lightless cruelty.
It opened its mouth, and two words spilled forth into the quiet air:
“Lost from Light.”
The moment those three syllables left the shadow’s lips, the universe came to an abrupt, violent halt.
Sunny’s soul convulsed.
An agonizing, soul-crushing shockwave erupted from the depths of his spiritual core.
It was a sensation he knew all too well—a horrific, familiar pressure that seized his soul, his mind, and his physical flesh simultaneously.
An invisible, unbreakable chain manifested out of thin air, wrapping around his soul cores with brutal, absolute finality.
The Shadow Bond.
‘NO!’ Sunny screamed in the silent cavern of his own mind, his thoughts spiraling into pure, unadulterated terror.
‘NO!
NOT AGAIN!’
He tried to resist.
He mobilized every ounce of shadow essence in his body, strained his soul, and fought against the invisible force clamping down on his frame.
But it was entirely useless.
The Aspect granted to him by the Nightmare Spell was absolute.
The law of the Shadow Slave was absolute.
When a master spoke his True Name, the command was absolute.
His body went completely rigid.
Every muscle locked into iron stillness.
His fingers, his legs, his lungs—none of them belonged to him anymore.
The dark copy raised a single, pale hand, pointing casually down toward the scorched, soot-stained carapace of the Great Monster floating in the river below.
“Come down with me,” the shadow commanded softly.
The order was simple.
It carried no obvious malice, no explicit malice, just a quiet, offhand directive.
And yet, Sunny’s body moved.
Without his consent, without his input, his fingers moved on their own.
His right hand reached up, grabbed the black needle of the Heavenly Burden driven into his forearm, and ripped it free with a single, brutal jerk.
Blood spurted from the wound, but his face remained completely blank, devoid of any expression.
His translucent wings tilted.
His shadows shifted, dissolving away from the flight Memory.
Sunny began to fall.
He plunged through the open sky like a stone, the wind howling furiously in his ears as the atmosphere rushed past him.
Beside him, the dark copy descended at the exact same speed, floating casually through the air with its hands clasped neatly behind its back, looking down at the approaching island-beast with mild interest.
Sunny’s mind was screaming.
‘Move!
Move!
Stop falling!
Say something!’
He tried to open his mouth to curse, to scream, to spit in the face of the creature falling beside him.
But his jaw was sealed tight.
His vocal cords were locked.
He was a prisoner in his own flesh, a helpless spectator trapped inside a meat suit that was executing an absolute command.
He was a slave once more.
The grief, the shock of Nephis’s death, the horror of his situation—all of it merged into a chaotic, suffocating storm of dread that threatened to tear his sanity apart.
He was falling toward a scorched Great Monster, chased by a Great Beast lurking in the waters, bound to a dark entity wearing his face.
And then, as if the universe decided that his mind hadn’t been pushed far enough past the brink of madness, a soundless chime resonated deep within his soul sea once again.
The Nightmare Spell spoke.
Its mechanical, formal voice echoed inside his mind, clear and indifferent:
[Congratulations. You have bound yourself to a master.]
[Lost from Light, slave of Lost from Light.]
His mind went entirely, terrifyingly blank.
‘…What?’
The wind continued to roar around him, tearing at his raven hair as he fell closer and closer to the dark, soot-covered slopes of the turtle’s carapace.
But Sunny barely noticed the approaching ground.
‘What…
what did the Spell just say?’
He replayed the words in his head, analyzing every single syllable with a desperate, manic intensity.
‘Lost from Light…
slave of Lost from Light?’
‘SLAVE OF LOST FROM LIGHT?!’
Sunny’s thoughts spiraled into absolute absurdity.
The mechanics of True Names were one of the most fundamental, absolute laws of the Nightmare Spell.
A True Name was not just a title; it was an anchor of reality, a reflection of a soul’s absolute fate, essence, and identity granted by the Spell itself.
No two beings in the history of the world had ever shared a True Name.
It was literally impossible.
A True Name was unique to the individual, a singular identifier bound to one specific soul.
His True Name was Lost from Light.
So how could his master be Lost from Light?
‘Is this creature…
me?’ Sunny thought frantically, his mind racing through dozens of terrifying theories at a hundred miles an hour.
‘Is it a past version of me?
A future version of me?
A shadow of my soul cast backward through the Great River of time?
Or…
or did the Spell glitch?
Is it recognizing this entity as me because it’s made of my own shadows?!’
If the creature standing beside him was literally Lost from Light, then Sunny had just bound himself to…
himself.
He was his own master.
But he was also his own slave.
The sheer, mind-bending absurdity of the logic was enough to make him want to burst into hysterical laughter, if only his jaws weren’t locked shut by the absolute force of the Shadow Bond.
‘Can two humans have the same True Name?
No, that’s impossible!
The Spell doesn’t work like that!
A True Name defines the soul!
If two entities have the same True Name, it means…
it means they are the exact same soul!’
Which meant the dark copy falling beside him, holding the Sin of Solace and radiating an aura of pure, lightless corruption…
was Sunless.
Or rather, a version of Sunless that had succumbed to something unimaginable.
Before he could process the horror of that conclusion, the ground rushed up to meet them.
Sunny’s body reacted automatically to survive the impact.
Without a single thought from his conscious mind, his legs bent, his five shadows wrapped tightly around his limbs to reinforce his Marble Shell, and he slammed into the scorched, soot-stained rock of the carapace with a deafening CRACK.
The impact sent a cloud of black ash and calcified dust exploding into the air.
The dark stone cracked beneath his boots, but his reinforced body absorbed the kinetic force smoothly, leaving him standing in a shallow crater.
Beside him, the dark copy landed without making a single sound.
Its dainty silk shoes touched the hot, soot-covered stone as softly as a falling leaf.
It adjusted its grip on the dark jian resting against its shoulder, its obsidian eyes scanning the desolate landscape of the shell.
Sunny remained frozen in his landing posture for a second before his body forcibly straightened up.
He stood rigidly on the hot stone, his arms at his sides, his eyes staring straight ahead.
He could not move.
He could not speak.
He could only stand there, waiting for his master’s next command.
A few dozen meters away, hidden behind a jagged spire of melted, glassified bone, the faint, white fire of Nephis flared weakly one last time, before dying down into a bed of glowing embers.
The smell of burnt flesh, ozone, and ancient decay hung heavy in the warm air.
The dark copy turned away from the dying fire and looked at Sunny, its cruel, sharp smile returning.
“Well then, Lost from Light,” the shadow whispered softly, stepping out of the crater.
“Let us see what remains of our precious memories.”