The path up the Hollow Mountains was paved with teeth.
Not metaphorically. Actual teeth—human, Nightmare Creature, Saint, Titan, god—torn from roots, set into black stone like cobblestones. They shifted under his weight, grinding together, trying to bite. Every step drew blood that was not his own. The mountain drank it with the same greedy patience it had shown for four forgotten epochs.
Sunny walked anyway.
The air grew colder with every thousand meters, until his breath came out as black frost, crystallizing into tiny mirrors that shattered before hitting the ground. The mirrors showed him things he had already seen: Nephis burning, Effie laughing as her spine snapped, Kai smiling while Sunny drove the dagger in.
He did not slow.
The cliffs pressed closer. Faces carved into the rock—not with tools, but fingernails. Millions of them, overlapping, mouths open in silent howling. Some he recognized. Most he had killed personally. Their eyes followed him.
Halfway up the first ridge, the wind began to speak.
At first, only fragments: names, half-remembered.
"Sunny…"
"Sunless…"
"Liar…"
Then sentences:
"You left us in the dark."
"You promised."
"You were supposed to be the weak one."
He kept walking.
The teeth underfoot began to sing in harmony with the wind—a low, wet chorus vibrating in his bones.
Eventually, the path widened into a plateau ringed by seven colossal statues.
He knew them instantly. The Seven Saints. Not echoes. Not corpses. Originals, petrified into mountains of calcified divinity.
Saint Changing Star stood tallest, wings of white flame frozen mid-spread, face turned skyward as if still searching for a dawn that would never come.
Master Jet was a pillar of frozen wind, one hand forever raised in farewell—or accusation.
Saint Song of Broken Swords knelt, seven blades driven into the ground around her like grave markers.
Saint Kai Nightshade caught mid-flight, starlight bleeding from wounds in his back.
Saint Mordret smiled from inside a sphere of shattered mirrors, each fragment reflecting a different lie.
Saint Effie—Hungry had been turned to black iron, mouth wide enough to swallow moons.
And the seventh… missing. A perfect circle of scorched stone and a single set of footprints leading inward.
Sunny stared at the empty plinth. Then he stepped into the circle.
The plateau vanished.
He was somewhere else. A cathedral made of night.
The floor was liquid starlight.
Pillars were frozen screams given form.
The ceiling stretched so high gravity forgot its purpose, letting things drift.
At the far end, on a throne of broken halos, sat a child.
No. Not a child. Something wearing the shape of one. It looked exactly like fifteen-year-old Sunny: thin, sharp-shouldered, messy black hair over frightened silver eyes. Same cheap coat from the outskirts. Same cracked phone clutched in trembling fingers.
The child looked up. Smiled with Sunny's own mouth.
"Hi," it said in his own voice, before everything had gone hoarse. "You're late."
Sunny did not move.
The child stepped forward. Each footprint left a trace of clean white snow that melted into blood.
"I've been waiting," it continued. "Ever since you killed me in the Red Colosseum. Remember? You said it was the only way to absorb my Aspect fully. That if you didn't, the others would die."
The child stopped an arm's length away.
"You lied, of course. But that's okay. I always knew you would."
Sunny's shadow cloak bristled, forming a wall of black blades between them.
The child tilted its head.
"You're afraid of me," it said, delighted. "That's new."
"I'm not afraid," Sunny answered. His voice cracked on the second word.
"Liar."
The child touched the wall of blades. They parted like curtains.
"Tell me something, Sunny," it whispered, close enough he could smell the cheap soap from a life that no longer existed. "When you ate my heart, did you taste how much I hated you? Or only how much I loved you?"
Sunny's hand moved without permission, fingers curling as if to strangle.
The child watched with bright, curious eyes.
"Go ahead," it encouraged softly. "Do it again. You're good at it."
His fingers closed around the thin neck. The child's skin was warm. Human.
Sunny squeezed. Nothing happened.
The child smiled wider.
"You can't kill what you already murdered."
The cathedral dissolved.
He was back on the plateau. The seven statues had moved closer, forming a perfect circle around him. Stone eyes wept blood that hissed when touching the ground.
The child's voice came from everywhere and nowhere.
"Third trial, Sunless. Face the Saints you betrayed. Survive their judgment. Or join them."
The statues moved. Stone cracked. Divine essence bled like golden mist.
Changing Star opened her wings. Frozen flames ignited, white and merciless.
Sunny drew a breath that tasted of endings.
The mountain began to scream.
The fight was not a fight. It was an autopsy performed on the living.
Changing Star came first, wings carving arcs of absolute annihilation. Shadows died screaming where her light touched.
Sunny met her with the seventh arm—the one made of himself—and caught a wing in his bare hand. The light burned straight through his palm and kept going, taking his arm at the shoulder.
He laughed. The sound startled even him.
The arm regrew from the stump, blacker, larger, wearing Nephis's face now. It punched through her chest, tearing out what might have been her soul—or his guilt. The statue froze mid-swing, cracks racing across marble skin.
Jet came next—a storm given human shape. Her spear of frozen wind pierced Sunny through the heart before he realized she had moved.
He looked down at the wound, then up at her stone face.
"You taught me how to survive," he said conversationally, blood pouring black from his mouth. "You never taught me how to live with it."
He grabbed the spear, pulling himself nose-to-nose with her.
"Thank you," he whispered, headbutting her.
The statue shattered into a blizzard that tried to flay him alive. He walked through it.
Song of Broken Swords rose next—seven blades singing a dirge older than language, each carrying a death he had dealt her.
Sunny did not block. He let the blades in:
One through the throat.
One through the eyes.
One through the heart.
The seventh pierced his shadow core.
He smiled with bloody teeth.
"I kept your swords," he told her. "I use them to cut my own reflection every morning. So I never forget what I look like."
He kissed her stone forehead. The swords dissolved into rust.
Kai was gentler. He opened his arms. Sunny walked into them. The embrace crushed every bone to powder. Starlight poured into the ruins, trying to fill the hollow places.
"I forgave you," Kai whispered inside his skull. "Why can't you?"
Sunny pressed his broken face to Kai's shoulder.
"Because you were the only one who was ever kind without wanting something back," he said. "And I killed you for it."
He pushed away. The statue crumbled into stardust that swirled once, then scattered on a wind from nowhere.
Mordret laughed from mirror shards embedded in the ground. A thousand reflections of Sunny stepped out, each wearing a different face he had stolen. They attacked as one: knives of glass and lies.
Sunny let them carve him apart. Piece by piece, until only a floating mouth remained.
"Enough."
The reflections froze. The mouth smiled—and ate them all. One by one, mirror-Sunnys were dragged screaming into the darkness behind his teeth. When the last vanished, the plateau was silent.
Only Effie remained. Stone eyes full of tears that would never fall.
Sunny approached.
"You promised you'd come to my son's naming day," she said, voice like mountains breaking. "You never did."
Sunny closed his eyes.
"I was busy becoming a monster."
"I know."
She raised one massive iron hand and rested it on his head. Gentle as snowfall. Then crushing. His skull cracked. Spine snapped. Darkness rushed from the edges.
"Tell him his mother loved him," she whispered.
Then the world went black. And kept going.
He fell. Through stone and memory. Through roots of the Hollow Mountains where the first gods had been buried alive. Through the place where the Spell had been born screaming.
Until he landed on something soft.
Sunlight streamed through a window. Children laughed. A woman held his hand.
Cassie. Not stone. Not echo. Real.
"You're safe," she said. "The Nightmare is over. You did it. You broke the Spell."
He closed his eyes. No weight. No voices. No hunger. Only warmth. Only peace.
He slept.
When he woke, the room was empty. Stone walls. A window to darkness.
Cassie's body hung from the ceiling by her own golden hair, eyes burned out, mouth sewn shut. A single line carved into the wall above her, still dripping:
You will never be free.
Sunny sat up slowly. Whole again. Statues gone. Plateau gone.
He stood at the foot of a staircase carved from Saint ribcages. Spiral ascending into the mountain.
At the top, something waited. Something wearing his face, smiling with too many teeth. The child waved.
Sunny began to climb.
Behind him, the Hollow Mountains finally stopped screaming. They had run out of throats.