Bastion. The Brilliant Emporium.
The bell above the door chimed softly, but the sound was lost in the crash of porcelain shattering against the floor.
"Boss!"
Aiko, a petite young woman with sharp eyes and a sharper business sense, rushed out from the back room. She stopped behind the counter, her eyes widening as she saw the broken fragments of the cup scattered near Sunny's feet.
"Are you alright? You never drop anything."
Sunny stared at the shards, his face impassive. To Aiko, it looked like a moment of rare clumsiness. To him, it looked like the ruins of his carefully constructed anonymity.
"I'm fine," Sunny said, his voice steady but lacking its usual customer-service warmth. He bent down, the shadows under the counter stretching unnaturally to sweep the shards into his hand before he even touched them. "Just... a sudden headache. The weather, perhaps."
He stood up and turned to the window, ignoring the mess.
Outside, the sun was shining over the white stone of Bastion. The lake was calm, the city was bustling, and the magnificent castle of Clan Valor stood tall and proud in the distance. It was a picture of peace.
But Sunny could feel the lie.
He closed his eyes, extending his senses. The crushing pressure of the King of Swords, which usually permeated the air of Bastion like the hum of high-tension wires, was gone. The presence of the Sovereigns had vanished from the world.
The world was too quiet.
'They are stuck,' Sunny thought, his jaw tightening. 'The Spell has trapped them in the Loom.'
It was a disaster.
His plan had been simple: stay hidden, get strong, and slowly uncover the secrets of the Daemons. He knew that Nether's map pointed to six strongholds, and Bastion — the seat of the Demon of Imagination — was one of them. He needed to explore that castle. He needed to find whatever the Demon had left behind.
But he couldn't just walk into the headquarters of a Great Clan. He needed time. He needed anonymity.
Now?
If the Loom showed his memories to Anvil of Valor... if the King of Swords realized that the "Divine Shadow" was hiding in his own city, running a café...
Anvil would turn Bastion upside down. He would lock down the castle. He would purge every shadow in the city.
"They are going to ruin everything," Sunny whispered, staring at the distant castle. "My peace. My business. My exploration."
He felt a pang of bitter irony. The Loom of Fate wasn't just playing a movie. It was a repair mechanism. Sunny was a hole in the tapestry — a Fateless anomaly. The Loom was trying to patch that hole by forcibly reinserting his existence into the minds of the people who mattered most. It was treating his freedom as a glitch to be fixed.
"Boss? You're scaring the customers," Aiko whispered, nudging his arm.
Sunny blinked, the ancient darkness in his eyes receding instantly, replaced by the polite mask of a humble merchant.
"My apologies, Aiko. I was just... contemplating the difficult future of our business."
It wasn't a lie. The future was indeed difficult.
Before Aiko could ask what he meant, the Silver Bell chimed again.
Sunny looked up and paused.
A small giant of a boy burst into the shop, clutching a toy sword. Though only a toddler, he was twice the size of any normal child his age, with wild hair and boundless energy. Behind him walked a man who seemed remarkably average — so average, in fact, that if you looked away for a second, you would struggle to remember he was there at all.
It was Ling — Effie's son — and her husband.
"Uncle Sunny!" the boy shouted, his voice booming for someone so young. He ran up to the counter, his head already clearing the top of it. "Do you have any new cakes? Mom said she'd buy me one, but she didn't come home!"
Sunny felt a pang of sympathy. He leaned over the counter, resting his chin on his hand.
"Sorry to bother you, Master Sunless," the man said. "Have you... heard from Effie? She went to the Castle for a meeting after the Gate crisis in the Eastern Quadrant, and I haven't been able to reach her since. The connection is dead."
Sunny looked at the man — the Nameless husband. His Flaw made the world forget him. In a way, he and Sunny were kindred spirits. Two men erased by the nature of their existence.
"I haven't seen her," Sunny said.
It was the truth. He hadn't seen her here. He had only seen her avatar, frozen in the Loom.
"Is Mom okay?" Ling asked, trying to look brave but failing.
Sunny reached out and ruffled the boy's hair. He couldn't lie to the kid, but he found a way to comfort him without breaking his Flaw.
"She is strong, little warrior," Sunny said softly. "You know your mom. She is likely... occupied with saving the world. Again. She will return when the job is done."
The husband sighed, looking relieved. "Right. Of course. She's strong. Thanks, Master Sunless."
They ordered a juice for Ling and left, the Silver Bell chiming cheerfully behind them.
Sunny watched them go, his smile fading instantly.
A strange mixture of relief and melancholy washed over him.
'At least I didn't have to see her,' he thought, a bitter taste in his mouth.
Meeting Effie these days was... painful.
He remembered the last time she had visited the Emporium. She had smiled at him, but it was a polite, reserved smile. She had called him "Master Sunless" instead of "Sunny" or "Doofus." She had treated him with decorum.
It stung.
Even the absence of her relentless teasing caused a dull ache in his heart. Seeing her healthy made him happy, but being around her felt like looking through a glass wall. To her, he was just a dull, unassuming merchant. A passing acquaintance not worthy of a second thought.
'It is better this way,' Sunny told himself, though he didn't quite believe it. 'If I saw them now, they would just look at me with blank eyes. It is better that they are trapped in there... remembering.'
But then, the realization hit him.
He looked back at the empty space where the projection of the Loom existed in his mind's eye.
Effie, Cassie, Kai and... Nephis were in there.
If the Loom was playing his records chronologically... the First Nightmare was over. That meant the next record would be about the Forgotten Shore.
Sunny froze.
"Oh, no."
The Forgotten Shore wasn't just his story. It was their story. It was the story of how the Cohort was formed. It was the story of Nephis's rise, Cassie's betrayal, Kai's harrowing flights and Effie's desperate survival in the Dark City.
If the Loom played that record, it wouldn't just reveal Sunny's secrets. It would strip the entire Cohort naked before the world. It would force Effie to watch her own desperate starvation. It would force Cassie to relive the crushing weight of her own helplessness. It would force Kai to witness the shattering of his own naivety. It would force Nephis to relive the moment she enslaved him.
"This," Sunny whispered, rubbing his temples, "is going to be a disaster."
He turned to Aiko.
"I am closing the shop early."
Aiko blinked. "Again? But it's barely noon! Boss, we'll lose profit!"
"I have urgent matters to attend to," Sunny said, his voice brokering no argument. "Matters that require absolute privacy. Go home, Aiko. And... lock your doors tonight."
As Aiko grumbled and began flipping the sign to 'Closed', Sunny leaned back against the counter, closing his eyes.
He didn't need to reach out. The connection between him and his shadows was absolute. Distance meant nothing to them. He simply shifted his awareness, letting the sunny interior of the shop fade away as he focused on the shadow he had left behind in the Loom.
'Let's see what damage the damned Spell has done now.'
****
Inside the Loom of Fate.
The projection of the snowy mountain dissolved into mist, leaving the audience suspended once again in the dark, starry void of the Loom.
But the silence that followed was not peaceful. It was heavy, suffocating, and sharp enough to cut skin.
The revelation of the First Nightmare had shattered the fragile truce in the room.
"Divine..."
The word hung in the air, spoken by no one, yet echoing in everyone's mind.
King of Swords, Anvil of Valor, stood like a statue of steel, his grey eyes cold and calculating. He did not look at the memory anymore. He looked across the void at his rival.
"A third," Anvil stated, his voice vibrating with the sound of a blade being drawn. "There is a third Divine Aspect holder. And we have been blind to him."
Across from him stood the Queen of Worms, Ki Song, a breathtaking figure in regal red. Her skin was pale as a corpse, her raven hair a lustrous waterfall, and her presence radiated a sickly, overwhelming pressure. There was something eerie and vaguely appalling about her enchanting beauty.
"Blind?" she mocked, her voice sounding like dead leaves skittering on pavement. "Speak for yourself, Anvil. Perhaps your eyes are failing you." She gestured a withered hand toward Nephis. "You leashed one Divine seed, thinking you controlled the board. You drove the other away..." Her dead eyes slid toward Mordret. "And we know how well you managed that mistake."
Anvil's expression didn't change, but the air around him grew heavy, cracking the illusory floor beneath his boots.
"Careful, Song. We are not in your domain."
"We are not in yours, either," the Queen of Worms countered, her smile widening to reveal teeth that looked too sharp for a human. "We are inside the Spell. And the Spell, it seems, has a sense of irony. A slave... longing for a master. It would be a shame if such a precious tool fell into the hands of a brute who only knows how to hammer things into shape."
"He is a wildcard," Morgan of Valor interjected, her voice sharp and imperious. She stepped forward, her red eyes burning with a mix of shock and aggressive ambition. "If he is out there, he is a threat to the stability of the Great Clans. He must be found and brought to heel."
"Brought to heel?" A soft, mocking laugh cut through the tension.
Mordret leaned back, looking entirely too comfortable for a man surrounded by his family.
"Oh, dear sister," the Prince of Nothing purred, his mirror-like eyes dancing with amusement. "You always were so simple-minded. You think you can just collar a monster like that? We are talking about a Divine Aspect. He isn't a stray dog you can kick into submission."
Morgan whipped her head toward him, her hand instinctively drifting to the hilt of her sword. "Shut your mouth, traitor. You have no right to speak on matters of the Clan. You are nothing but a mistake father failed to correct."
"And yet, here I am," Mordret smiled, though the expression didn't reach his eyes. "And there you are. Still trying to prove you're not just a spare part."
"Enough," Anvil commanded, his voice silencing the bickering instantly. He looked at Ki Song. "This 'Shadow Slave' tips the scales. If he joins a side, the balance breaks. We must know who he is."
"And yet," Ki Song hissed, her eyes gleaming with greed. "We do not know his name. We do not know his face. The Spell hides him well."
The tension in the room ratcheted up. The Sovereigns weren't allies. They were predators circling the same carcass. The existence of the Blur wasn't a curiosity to them — it was an arms race. Whoever found the Slave first would control the future.
And they were trapped.
"Our connection," Anvil grunted, looking at his hands. "It is... muffled."
"The Spell has isolated us," Ki Song noted. "My children... I cannot hear them. The Domain is distant."
"We are vulnerable," Anvil admitted, the admission tasting like ash in his mouth. "If we do not return soon..."
"Then stop posturing."
The deep, resonant voice crashed down like a tidal wave, drowning the political maneuvering in an instant.
Daeron of the Twilight Sea stepped between the two Sovereigns. He was a towering figure, his presence as vast and deep as the ocean itself. His vertical pupils narrowed, shifting from Anvil to Song with a look of ancient, weary authority.
"Your wars mean nothing here," Daeron rumbled, his voice deep enough to vibrate in the bones of everyone present. "Look around you. The connection to your Domains is stifled. Your authority is stripped. We are not kings and queens here. We are prisoners in the belly of a dead god."
He gestured to the endless, starry void.
"If you wish to tear each other apart, do so when we are free. But for now, use your eyes for something other than glaring. The Spell is showing us this anomaly for a reason."
The tension broke, replaced by a heavy, sullen silence. Daeron was right. They were trapped.
"He is right," Cassie's voice cut through the quiet.
The blind girl stood apart from the titans of power, her face resolute. She pointed her finger outward into the infinite, vibrating expanse surrounding them.
"Look."
The Sovereigns, the Saints, and the Cohort followed her gaze.
When they had first arrived, the Tapestry of Fate had been a scene of slaughter. The golden strings were severed and tangled, bleeding a thick, pale substance that looked like liquid time into the abyss. The silver lattice of the Spell had been buzzing furiously, trying to stitch the wounds but failing without a pattern to follow.
But now... it was changing.
"The bleeding stopped," Nephis whispered, her eyes widening.
Where the record of the First Nightmare had played, the golden threads were no longer leaking spectral fluid into the nothingness. The silver strings of the Spell were no longer thrashing aimlessly. They had found a pattern.
With geometric precision, the silver cables were weaving the severed ends of the golden threads back together. The wound in the world was being cauterized.
"The more we watch," Cassie whispered, "the more the Tapestry heals. The Loom is using our memories — our observation of him — to anchor the timeline. The threads of the present are stabilizing."
"If we stop now, the tear remains," Nephis realized, watching the spectral fluid recede. "But if we watch..."
"We might fix the future," Cassie finished.
"Or ensure it," Nephis said quietly. She was staring at the mending threads, her mind racing.
Shadow Slave.
The words burned in her mind.
"It is a miracle," Ananke whispered, her voice trembling with religious awe. The elderly priestess pressed her hands to her chest, tears glistening in her eyes as she watched the silver light stitch the world back together. "The Spell... it is not just a trial. It is a salvation. It is shepherding Fate itself."
Beside her, Noctis was not crying. He was staring at the lattice with wide, unblinking eyes, his usually playful demeanor completely gone. He gripped the edge of his seat — or the illusion of it — his knuckles white.
"That is not just power," the Sorcerer of the East murmured, his voice hushed. "That structure... those knots... I have seen Nether's work. I have seen Hope's runes. But this..." He watched a silver cable expertly splice two severed golden threads, binding them with a complexity that defied logic. "This is Weaving. Pure, unadulterated Weaving. The Spell isn't just magic... it is the handiwork of the Demon of Fate himself."
Before the others could digest the implications of the ancient sorcerer's words, the Spell's voice thundered through the void, vibrating against the healing lattice of the Tapestry.
[INITIATING NEXT SEQUENCE...]
The golden light of the Loom flared, and new words formed in the darkness.
[RECORD: 02 - THE FORGOTTEN SHORE]
A collective jolt went through the younger generation.
Effie, who had been relatively quiet, paled visibly. She crossed her arms, rubbing her shoulders as if a sudden chill had struck her. "The Shore? No... damn it. Not that hellhole."
Kai looked down, his expression troubled. "We... we were all there. But I don't remember him. How could I not remember him?"
Cassie stiffened, her knuckles turning white as she clenched her fists. She did not speak. She simply lowered her head, hiding her blind eyes. To the others, the Forgotten Shore was a nightmare of survival. To her, it was a puzzle with missing pieces.
She remembered the Dark City. She remembered the fear.
But... she did not remember him.
Her mind had filled the gaps of that time with logical assumptions — miraculous escapes attributed to luck, impossible victories attributed to Nephis. But now, staring at the healing tapestry, a terrifying doubt whispered in her mind.
Were those assumptions truth... or were they scars covering a wound in reality?
She felt a phantom presence in her memories, a shadow she couldn't bring into focus.
The dissonance made her tremble.
"Because he didn't want to be remembered," Seishan spoke up from behind Ki Song. The grey-skinned beauty narrowed her eyes. "There were thousands of Sleepers in the Dark City. Most died. Those who survived... we thought we knew the face of every single one."
"He was there," Nephis whispered. She remembered the feeling she had earlier — the intuition that he was always beside her. "He was with us the whole time."
Anvil of Valor leaned forward, his eyes locked on the desperate struggle. He no longer looked at the boy with contempt. There was a cold, sharp assessment in his gaze — the look of a general measuring an enemy commander.
"He did not just survive," Anvil said, his voice low and heavy. "He was forged in it. Let us see what kind of monster the darkness created."
The void dissolved.
The stars vanished.
The sensation of the healing Tapestry was replaced by a sudden, crushing pressure.
In the vast echoing darkness, he heard:
[Welcome to the Dream Realm, ■■■■■■■]
The scene shifted instantly.
There was no snow this time. No mountain. No ancient temple.
There was only darkness.
In the projection, a splash echoed as a body hit the water .
The Blur gasped for air as he broke the surface. He flailed, spitting out salty water, his eyes darting around in panic.
But he was different now.
The silhouette was no longer that of the scrawny, malnourished slave from the First Nightmare. This was his real body — slightly taller, wiry but athletic, moving with a desperate, innate coordination that the previous avatar had lacked.
Yet, he was still obscured. The static clung to him like a second skin, blurring his features, turning him into a phantom in the night.
"He changed," Morgan observed sharply. "That isn't the body of the temple slave. That is his true form."
In the memory, the Blur kicked his legs, desperate and disoriented. He couldn't see. He couldn't breathe.
The sky was black. The sea was black. The world was a void of absolute, suffocating darkness .
"The Dark Sea," Effie whispered, horror dawning on her face. "He spawned in the sea? Alone?"
"Impossible," Seishan murmured. "No Sleeper could survive the open sea at night. The creatures there..."
But the Blur didn't have time to ponder the impossibility.
A remote sound drew his attention. He spun in the water, his eyes widening as he saw it .
A triangular dorsal fin, cutting through the black waves.
It was hundreds of meters away, yet he could see it clearly in the pitch blackness . It was at least five meters tall, and it was moving fast. Too fast .
"A shark?" Kai whispered, his voice rising in panic. "A shark that big?"
The Blur realized it, too. Panic seized him. He spun again, desperately searching for salvation, and spotted a black mass protruding from the water a short distance away .
He swam. He swam with every ounce of strength he possessed, his arms churning the black water.
But the fin was faster. The giant shadow of the unknown creature was closing the distance with terrifying speed.
The audience watched in breathless silence as the gap closed. Ten meters. Five meters.
The monster was right on top of him.