Sunny finished the last strip of meat and wiped his fingers on the grass beside him. Or rather… on the grass that looked like grass. His hand passed through several blades without resistance, as though they were painted onto thin air.
He stared at them for a moment.
'Weird.'
He poked the patch again. Same result. Some blades bent naturally under his touch, others flickered like uncertain holograms, then stabilized, then flickered again. Sunny shifted his gaze across the field. Most of it seemed normal. Only certain clusters — thin, scattered, inconsistent — behaved like this.
Sunny rose to his feet, brushed off his knees, and walked back to the marked spot where the Supreme Devil had stood. The ground still held a faint, circular indentation where its weight had pressed down. Hard to believe something covered in building-sized crystals had been able to hide beneath the dirt, but that wasn't something he should be too concerned with.
Above him, the constellation shifted once more.
The stars trembled. The pattern dissolved. A new one formed — the woman again, but now leaning backward, one arm stretched above her head, the other bent at the elbow. It looked almost like she was swimming.
Sunny crossed his arms.
'She looks stupid.'
He waited. The sky shimmered. The constellation scattered like a handful of thrown dust. When it reassembled, the woman had turned sideways, now pointing toward a distant ridge. Not at him, not at the Devil's spot, not at anything he could immediately identify.
Sunny sighed.
He stayed put. He had a suspicion — if the constellation behaved like a clock, then sooner or later it would cycle through the same positions. All he had to do was stand where the Supreme Devil had been and wait for the moment when the woman in the sky pointed down again.
Simple enough.
Time passed. The fire died down to glowing coals. The shadows maintaining it sank into the earth, leaving only faint silhouettes at his feet. Sunny took a slow breath and exhaled into the cool air.
Keeping shadows tangible for a long period of time required manual effort on his part, as he had to constantly imagine what he wanted them to look like. The only reason he kept them up for so long was to ensure that the Shadow Essence cost for keeping them up was flat, and not exponential. Shadows didn't grow exhausted, it seemed.
Nothing happened for a while. A breeze rolled over the field. It stirred the normal grass, but the illusory patches reacted sluggishly, then too quickly, then not at all.
Sunny squatted, poking at one of the glitching blades again. His finger phased through.
'Definitely not normal.'
He stood, stepped aside, and his boot went straight through a small stone like it wasn't there.
He blinked.
Then he inspected it more closely. Half the stone was real. The other half wasn't. The two interlocked seamlessly, as if reality had been stitched together by someone blindfolded and drunk.
Sunny scratched his cheek.
'How wonderful. The world's decomposing.'
He wandered back to the center of the Devil's indentation and looked up again. The stars swirled into a new figure — the same woman, but curled as though sitting, knees hugged to her chest, head bent low.
Sunny made a face.
'Who designed this crap? What designed this crap? Is it even designed?'
He waited through another shift. Then another. The constellation danced its slow, silent dance, each new pose stranger than the last. At one point she appeared to be skipping. At another, she was crouched, arms stretched forward like she was scavenging for something on the ground. At another… pointing directly upward at nothing at all.
Sunny remained still throughout, though his patience wore thin.
Eventually he sighed, shook his head, and tapped the Covetous Coffer to make sure it was shut. Not that anyone would steal anything here, but with the universe glitching, who knew what could crawl out or in.
He lifted his hands and summoned a nameless Memory.
It materialized as a plain wooden chair — the kind found in cheap taverns, where the seat creaked if someone heavier than average sat down. Just a chair.
Sunny ran his hand along the backrest.
'Remember when I sat on you, and Mordret got beamed to bits? Good times.'
Dark, elusive strings of Shadow Essence flowed from his fingertips as he stuck his hand into the Covetous Coffer. A few moments later, a golden needle was pulled out.
***
Memory Name: [Shadow Chair].
Memory Rank: Awakened.
Memory Tier: I.
Memory Description: [This Memory was turned into a chair by Lost From Light for… reasons unknown.]
***
Having now named his glorious throne, Sunny wore a self-satisfied expression. He sat on the chair, bounced up and down once or twice, then relaxed.
The sky flickered again, but he didn't look up immediately. He simply rested his elbows on the armrests.
He finally tilted his head up.
The constellation had reformed. The woman stood tall — legs apart, posture straight, arms extended toward the ground… toward him.
Sunny's eyes narrowed.
'There it is.'
The stars pulsed.
Then every shadow around him shuddered as a purple pillar of light crashed down from the sky, swallowing him whole.