The war had begun, soldiers were dying like flies on the gigantic skeleton of the dead god.
Song struck first,citadel after citadel falling under the domain of the Queen of Worms. Her Saints moved with frightening precision, overwhelming garrisons before alarms could even be raised. Even with the might of Valor's most renowned champions...Saint Tyris, Saint Roan, the Summer Knight, Morgan, and the Jester..holding the line, the sheer momentum of the enemy was crushing. Without the Changing Star on the front lines, Valor's borders buckled.
But if Song expected Valor to crumble in fear, they were mistaken. They did not find a demoralized army. They found a swarm of hornets whose nest had been kicked.
The soldiers of Valor fought with a frenzy that bordered on madness. They didn't fight for territory. They didn't even fight for the King.
"They hurt her," a veteran Ascended spat, wiping black blood from his visor as he drove his blade into an abomination of Song. "The bastards dared to touch the Changing Star!"
The rumor had spread faster than the plague. Lady Nephis had been injured. The enemy used underhanded tricks to take her out. The hope of humanity was bleeding because of these treacherous snakes.
"Make them pay!"
The roar tore through the battlefield. It was a lie
or at least, a twisted version of the truth—but it was a potent one. The soldiers of Valor fought with everything they had. They threw themselves into the meat grinder, willing to die if it meant taking a single enemy with them.
For their Star. For their Hero.
They bled and died screaming her name, unaware that the very man they served was the one who had driven the nails into her hands.
***
Far away, in the command tent of the invading army, Seishan watched the projection of the battlefield with cold, calculating eyes.
She should have been pleased.
The map was painting itself in Song's colors. The great Clan Valor was retreating, bleeding territory by the hour. The strategy was flawless. The execution was perfect.
And yet, a knot of unease tightened in her stomach.
It's too easy.
She turned away from the map, her fingers drumming rhythmically against the edge of the table. The memory of a conversation she'd had days ago surfaced, unbidden and chilling.
It was with Cassia.
The blind Seer had stood before her, frail and unassuming, yet her presence had felt heavier than a mountain.
"You can win this war," Cassie had said.
Seishan frowned at the memory. A Seer of the enemy telling them they could win?
That distinction terrified her. Her unease only grew as she watched the carnage below. If victory was this accessible, the price for it was likely something they couldn't afford to pay.
***
High atop the iron balconies of Bastion, Morgan looked down at a world on fire.
Through the eyes of her Echoes and the tactical projections, she saw the reality that the soldiers on the ground could not.
It was a slaughter.
The forces of Song were using their authority to the fullest. The dead did not stay dead. Fallen soldiers of Valor rose with broken limbs and hollow eyes, turning on their shield-brothers, tearing throats out with teeth that no longer breathed. It didn't matter which domain they belonged to... death made them all puppets of the Queen.
Morgan watched the carnage, her stomach churning. Valor was losing. The numbers didn't lie. The sheer weight of the bodies piling up was enough to drown a kingdom.
She turned her head slowly, looking toward the center of the balcony.
Her father, Anvil of Valor, stood there.
He was watching the same destruction. He was watching his kingdom burn, his soldiers die, and his borders collapse.
Morgan expected to see cold disdain, maybe a hint of fury or the calculating silence he always wore in battle. Yet what she saw made blood ran cold.
The wind howled, carrying the metallic scent of blood from the distant fields, and Anvil of Valor… was smiling.
Morgan took a reflexive step back, her breath hitching in her throat,Anvil turned his gaze to the horizon, his smile widening by a fraction.
"It is time."
****
A magnificent white castle stood amidst a calm lake, surrounded by a harrowing, lush forest. Above, the sky was littered with the shattered remains of a broken moon, its pale fragments casting fractured light across the still water.
Somewhere inside that castle, far from the serenity outside, a dark chamber lay. Crimson runes were carved into the black stone, bathing the chamber in a faint scarlet glow. Hundreds of swords hovered in the air, creating an intricate pattern.
At the far end of the chamber, a lone figure hung on the wall... crucified by cold, merciless steel.
Her once-lustrous silver hair was matted with blood, hanging loosely to cover her face. Tears and blood cut uneven paths across her ivory skin. Her grey eyes, usually so sharp, so unwavering, were dull… lifeless. Her lips were split open, blood dripping from them, creating a pool below and shattering the suffocating silence in the chamber.
A pale smile split her face as she muttered, her voice cracked, "S—Sunny... are you still mad at me?"
Her smile grew a little strained. "Why are you not responding?"
There was no response, however...only the faint sound of her life pooling below.
She let out a weak, breathless laugh. "…Is it because of that joke I made about your height?"
Her head sagged forward as another drop of blood rolled down her chin. "You know I love your height," she whispered, voice shaking. "I only tease you a little… just to see you glare at me…"
No answer.
Her throat tightened. The trembling in her fingers grew worse.
"Sunny…?"
Her voice cracked.
"Sunny… I'm in pain."
A quiet sob escaped her.
"You don't like it when I'm in pain… do you? You always stop me when I try to heal you. You always argue with me…"
Her breath hitched, a hollow sound in the empty chamber. "I'm in so much pain now, Sunny…"
Her voice fell into a desperate whisper. "Please… talk to me…"
The silence stretched. Outside, a gentle breeze blew as if the world itself was weeping.
She let out a low groan as she turned her head towards where her shadow was supposed to be, but there was no shadow to be seen. Perhaps the crimson light was too diffuse, swallowing the darkness rather than defining it. Or perhaps, without him, she simply cast no shadow at all.
"I see…" Her voice cracked, barely more than breath. "You're gone."
Tears slid down her lifeless eyes, until her body ran out of tears altogether. Still, she kept crying, her shoulders shaking with dry, hollow sobs.
"You left me alone in this hell… Sunny…"
Her voice broke completely, splintering into a sound that wasn't meant for another human ear.
"You left me…"
Her chin fell to her chest. For a moment, she looked like a statue carved from grief and blood.
But inside her mind, the silence was deafening.
Her world was full of agony. Her soul was shattered, her flesh was cut, her bones were broken, and her spirit was sealed. However, all of this was easily ignored. She was used to pain; she had been forged in it.
But the pain radiating from her mutilated soul… that was different. It was a jagged, gaping wound that refused to numb. Yet, she could have ignored even that, if only it didn't remind her of him.
The blessing he gave her was now haunting her as a curse.
Every time her soul hurt, memories flickered in the darkness behind her eyelids. Not of grand battles or terrors, but of small, quiet things. The weight of his gaze. The comfortable silence of his shadow wrapping around her. The safety she felt just knowing he was there, watching her back.
Every memory hurt her more than any blade could ever. Every moment of warmth she recalled now felt like ice against her skin.
That bond, that connection that had once made her invincible... it was severed. And the raw, bleeding end of it throbbed with every beat of her slowing heart.
The faint presence she always felt was gone.
In the cold silence that followed, another painful truth clawed at her mind... Cassie knew.
Nephis remembered the look in Cassie's blind eyes when she asked her to go. That quiet, unshakable resolve. That terrible calm of someone who had already seen the end and still stepped forward.
The memory burned.
Cassie knew. Cassie had known something like this would happen. Yet, Cassie had still sent her in. She had sent Sunny in, as well, in her own way.
Why?
If this is the result, what did you see that made you move anyway?
Nephis bit down on the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood. Her heart ached. She trusted Cassie. More than she trusted most people. That was why the hurt went so deep.
Did you really choose a world where he had to die, Cassie?
Nephis understood that Cassie had her own burdens to carry, perhaps heavier than anyone else's. Yet that made it no less painful. She did not feel wrath... only sorrow. Only the hollow pain of realization.
Now she was truly and utterly alone. Cassie had betrayed them. Sunny was gone.
She had always known what to do. Move forward. Fight. Survive. Complete the mission. Change the world. Every wound, every loss, every failure had been something to carry on her back as she kept walking.
Now, for the first time, she did not know where to walk.
Her mission still existed. The Spell still hung over humanity. The future was still doomed.
But the path that led there had lost its shape.
'Why does it matter?'a thought whispered, quiet and treacherous. 'If he is gone.'
The idea horrified her.
She, who had clawed her way through horrors that would have obliterated armies. She, who had stood alone against impossible odds more times than she could count. She, whose will to live had been compared to a burning star.
Now she looked at the runes that held her and, for a brief moment, she wished they would simply finish what they started.
If she let go, if she stopped resisting, the runes would slowly drink the last of her essence. Her heart would stop. Her soul would dim. The pain would fade. There would be no more struggling, no more choices, no more consequences that dragged others into death.
Only peace.
She let out a bitter laugh, the sound scraping against the silence. "Fate is funny..." she muttered, her head lolling back against the cold stone.
Through the haze of pain, the memory of that day in the Ivory Tower surfaced—vivid and cruel. A wave of self-loathing crashed over her, drowning out the physical agony of the swords.
'I told him...I would burn worlds to keep you alive.'
The thought clawed her mind. She had spoken those words with such conviction, such unshakeable resolve. Yet, in the end, she couldn't even kill a few strangers to save him. She had hesitated, or perhaps she had simply been too weak. And because of that, the world remained, but he was gone.
She didn't deserve him. She never had.
She had always felt it—that profound, bottomless longing he held for her. It was a weight she carried without understanding, a vast ocean of devotion that confused her as much as it comforted her. Why did he love her so much? What did he see in a creature made only of ruin and ambition?
Now, the answer didn't matter.
She forced air into her ruined lungs, the act of breathing feeling like a betrayal. She remembered the arrogance of her own voice, lecturing his younger self. 'One day, you'll understand why living for someone can be harder than dying for them.'
"I understand now," she thought, the realization crushing her spirit completely, only now did she understand how much hard it was , to live in a world where she cannot see his smile, what was the point in living.
For what is the brilliance of the light, if there are no shadows to give it depth? Without him, she wasn't a guiding star. She was just a blinding, scorching nothingness.
The memory sharpened. She saw the younger Sunny, his eyes burning with spite and confusion, asking the question that now echoed like a judgment.
"Nephis," he said quietly, "tell me something… would you die for him? Like he would die for you?"
She took a deep breath.
Her lips parted, dry and cracked, trembling as she finally whispered the answer to the empty air.
"I think... I think I should follow."
A strange sense of calm washed over her. It wasn't the calm of safety, but the calm of finality.
"I'm tired, Sunny," she murmured, her eyelids growing heavy, fluttering as the darkness encroached on her vision. "I'm so tired ....I can't walk alone."
She closed her eyes, then she was somewhere else,
A pristine sea stretched to the horizon, its waters calm and still. Above, a graceful white pagoda hovered, its spires reaching for the sky where seven scorching suns stood.
Only now, three of them were shattered.
Huge, jagged cracks marred their fiery surfaces, leaking brilliance like bleeding wounds. The damage to her soul was reflected here, etched into the very source of her power.
She raised her head and glanced at the blazing suns with cold indifference.
****
Author's Note:Despite being a sadist 🥲, this one was genuinely hard to write. But I still did it… and honestly, I think it's the best chapter so far.
Also, fun fact: Eurys once told Nephis her shadow was deeper after Sunny ascended. Knowing G3, that might be some heavy foreshadowing. What do you think?
And I'm no sadist really..