Nephis could not sleep.
She tossed and turned, searching for that comfortable spot in the bed that would finally bring her rest. Try as she might, she could not find it. The mattress that had felt like a cloud after a year trapped in the Forgotten Shores now felt as hard and rough as stone. The sheets, made of real, comfortable silk, felt like barbed wire against her skin.
That was not even the worst part.
Every time she closed her eyes, she could see it. An endless field of white lilies. A pale moon suspended in the sky. A man and a woman, laughing, bright and unrestrained. Pale skin marred with ever-widening cracks.
"Make him happy."
She opened her eyes tiredly and lay there for a long moment, staring listlessly at the ceiling, her mind too busy to allow sleep.
Nephis sat up slowly, the sheets tangling around her lower half. It was a normal occurrence, something she would have normally paid no mind to, but in the state she was in, the irritation it brought her was almost enough to call forth her flames.
She exhaled slowly and swung her legs out of bed, undoing the trap of her own making.
Without any hurry, she changed out of her nightgown into training gear and left her room. She could not sleep, so why not use the time for something useful?
She stepped quietly through the long hall, hearing the distant patter of rain outside.
The lights were on despite the late hour. A necessity, considering that there was always someone awake, be it the Firekeepers or her own cohort.
Nephis' gaze drifted along the walls. Most were bare, nothing but a faint mark remaining of what had once occupied them.
Once upon a time, back when her father was still alive, those same walls were covered with expensive works of art, relics of the ancient past, and even rare trophies brought back from the dream realm.
After he died, day by day, they started disappearing.
She stopped briefly before a particular spot.
The marks were larger than any other, the remnant vaguely square-shaped. In that very place, a painting of her parents' wedding had once hung. More than a decade later, she could still recall it with painful clarity. The way her mother's veil caught the light. The way her father's smile had been bright and unguarded, almost boyish. The faint sheen in her grandfather's stern eyes as he pretended dignity. Her grandmother standing tall and proud, chin lifted, as though presenting not merely a daughter but the future of the Immortal Flame.
It had been the last to be sold.
That day, a part of her grandmother died.
It had not happened all at once. The first pieces to disappear had been easy to ignore.
An ornate vase from the west. A cracked but ancient shield retrieved from the Dream Realm. A tapestry too faded to be fashionable. Each absence was explained away with cold practicality. Useless. Ugly. We need liquidity. Words spoken in measured tones during meetings Nephis had not been meant to overhear.
She had been small, but not deaf.
At first, she had wandered the halls expecting the objects to return. Perhaps they had been taken for cleaning. Restoration. Reframing.
They never came back, and day by day, the walls began to look wider. Colder.
Sound carried differently without the heavy fabrics and clutter to soften it. Her footsteps echoed more sharply. The manor felt less like a home and more like a mausoleum.
Each missing object felt like another piece of her life carved away, never to return.
Her grandmother had stood straight through all of it. Her posture was impeccable. Her hair perfectly arranged. Her voice calm and firm as she negotiated with collectors and emissaries who pretended sympathy while calculating just how much benefit they could drag out of her.
"It is only an object," she had said once, when Nephis lingered too long before an empty pedestal.
Nephis had nodded, not yet understanding what it was that made her heart ache so much.
She had seen how her grandmother's fingers lingered on certain frames before they were carried away. How her jaw tightened almost imperceptibly when the doors closed behind a departing buyer. How the retainers moved more quietly in the days following each sale.
The wedding portrait had remained long after everything else was gone.
It had hung alone on the vast stretch of wall, too large to ignore, too important to discard.
For years, it stood as a silent promise.
As if her grandmother had drawn a line in the sand and dared the world to cross it.
Nephis remembered standing beneath it as a child, tilting her head back to look up at her parents' painted faces. She had studied them the way other children studied fairy tales. Their smiles. Their joy.
She had no living memory of it.
The painting had been the only place where she could remember her father seeming genuinely happy. It had taken her grandmother pointing it out for her to realize it depicted him. The contrast between the smiling man in the painting and the living corpse that had been her father by the end of his life was so stark that she could not even believe it.
And her mother, not a hollow shell but a living being. Radiant, full of quiet confidence and love.
The painting had been proof that such a moment had once existed.
Proof that the Immortal Flame had once burned bright.
The day it was sold, the sky had been gray. Nephis remembered that detail with unsettling precision. She had stood in the hall as men carefully lifted the heavy frame from its hooks.
Her grandmother had watched in silence. There was no tremor in her hands. No crack in her voice as she finalized the agreement.
Only her eyes.
Nephis had never forgotten her eyes.
They had been empty.
As if something inside her had finally conceded defeat.
Nephis could remember feeling that same hollow ache, as if a part of her heart had been carved away and replaced by nothing but pure incandescent hatred for those who had caused such a thing to happen.
She closed her eyes in silent mourning, wondering what could have been different if that one painting had not been sold. If that last piece of resistance in her grandmother had not been destroyed by the cruel reality they lived in.
As usual, the question was met with nothing but cold contempt for the Ghouls. Losing that piece of the past had been the final nail in the coffin, but there had been many more before it.
A quiet sigh escaped her as she resumed walking, her steps echoing faintly across the mostly bare hall, muffled by the distant howl of the wind.
Nephis spared little more than a glance at the paintings she passed by. Ever since she Awakened, she had been slowly buying back many of the ancient relics, thinking that it might mollify her fury, that maybe recovering the lost pieces of a past long gone would bring her peace.
She was not too surprised to find that such a thing did not happen. It was not the objects she had cared about but the memories they carried, of her grandmother, of her father, of retainers long dead and others who had left her service for their own safety.
With them gone, they were nothing but useless trinkets.
-------------------------------------------
Nephis stopped abruptly when she realized where she was walking. Without meaning to, her feet had been leading her to the room in which he was sleeping.
She hesitated for a moment, wondering if she should enter or not, then realized that she was already gripping the door handle. She opened the door slowly, careful not to disturb the occupants inside.
A smile almost took shape on her face before a pang of fear replaced the warm emotion.
There, curled into a small ball, hair stuck to her face and murmuring faintly, was Rain.
Her watch was supposed to have ended earlier. However, the Firekeeper meant to relieve her had a family emergency and Rain volunteered to extend her own despite hers having already run long Nephis had tried to convince her otherwise, but the girl had been defiant and would not be persuaded.
She had inherited Sunny's stubbornness. Probably her own too.
It was a cute image, especially given the fact that her head was resting on a pillow made of shadows atop Sunny's lap. Idly, she wondered if it was comfortable. Her hands were gripping what little fabric there was on his armor, as if unwilling to let go of her brother even while asleep.
The origin of the fear was Sunny himself.
He was awake.
Three days after his return to the Waking World, he had finally woken up.
Deep bags still hung beneath his eyes. Exhaustion crept subtly through his expression, but at least he did not look like he would faint the moment he stopped moving anymore.
Sunny had been watching the rain through the window that faced the sofa he was resting on along with Rain. It seemed like he had moved after waking up. When she entered the room, his dark eyes had flicked toward her for a moment. In them, she had spotted too many emotions to interpret before they had moved away, back to the heavy rain falling against the glass.
"I am not in the mood," he whispered, mindful of the sleeping girl on his lap.
Nephis took it for what it was, a petition, more likely an order, to leave him alone.
She would have done exactly that had she not noticed it.
Just as he could tell when she wanted to be left alone and when she wanted company, so could she. And right now... it was the latter.
She could tell due to the downward tilt of the left side of his lips. The almost invisible arch of his brows. The way his jaw was clenched ever so faintly.
He did not want to be alone with his thoughts, even if that company was her.
Nephis steadied her breath and, despite the danger that he might lash out, stepped into the room, closing the door behind her. She crossed it in a few steps and took a seat on a chair beside the sofa, mindful to leave enough space between them that he would not feel threatened.
Sunny's eyes flicked toward her briefly, but he did not comment, returning to his silent watch of the downpour.
"Is she…" Nephis stopped briefly, thinking twice before resuming. "Do you mind telling me if she is all right?"
One of his shadows writhed, stretching thin and sharp, only to return to its original shape soon after.
"I do." He answered curtly. "She is. I woke up an hour ago and she was already asleep."
A heavy silence settled between them after his answer, one that she did not dare break.
If he wanted to speak, he would do so. If he did not, she would not force it.
Nephis started watching the rain too, her eyes chasing the droplets of water as they cascaded down the surface of the glass, followed by countless others in a relentless waterfall.
"How did it happen?"
The question was a whisper, so low she almost missed it, and the tone behind it was fragile, almost afraid. Nephis did not need to ask to know what he was asking.
She knew him, maybe just as well as he knew her.
"What if even my own sister would rather pick Nephis than me?"
Nephis took a deep breath before replying in a whisper just as low as his, careful not to wake the sleeping girl. "Once or twice a month, I visit hospitals to offer free healing. We met during one of my visits."
His eyes flicked to hers briefly, worry clear in them. "Is she all right?"
Involuntarily, her lips arched upward. "Yes. Her mother is a little overprotective and brought her despite her having only a minor cut."
Relief shone through his expression for a moment. "And then?"
"I recognized her immediately, and so did Sid," she admitted. "Sid asked me if you had a sister before her, and from there…"
All across the room, the shadows distorted. "You told her."
Nephis nodded, aware that despite not having his eyes on hers, he was still watching.
"What did you tell her?" There was an edge in his voice now, a dangerous one.
"Nothing. She has asked many times, but I never shared what you told me."
The shadows slowed in their distortion, but their chaotic dance did not stop.
"After that…"
She hesitated before telling him what came next, sure that his reaction would not be good. The hesitation did not last long. He deserved to know, and it would not take long for him to find out anyway.
"After that, she asked to call me Big Sister," Nephis revealed, bracing herself for danger.
For an impossibly long second, he was still, not a single twitch revealing his thoughts. He took a long, deep breath and started gently running his hands through Rain's hair, slowly disentangling the knots that had started forming.
"I used to do this all the time when we were little," his voice was wistful. "We were inseparable. I could hardly go anywhere without her tagging along. Even then, she would fall asleep just like this and wake up with her hair a mess. It took me ages before I could help her with it without being criticized for everything." He smirked briefly. "You think adults are cruel? Try a bratty four year old."
He exhaled and the shadows grew far darker. "Was my freedom not enough? Did you also have to steal my sister?"
In the silence that followed, she could clearly hear the rain hitting the window. The whistling of the wind. The way the trees outside danced with the fury of the elements.
A spike of fury rose within her soon after.
The way he had said it made it seem like that was the outcome she had been looking for. Like it had been her plan all along to take Rain under her umbrella. Like she had meant to use her as a weapon against him.
She could understand where he was coming from, but she refused to accept such an explanation, both for her sake and for Rain's. She was her own person, not a puppet Nephis could make dance to her tune.
"I did not ask for this," she hissed.
Sunny turned to look at her at last. There was a crooked smile on his face and his dark eyes shone with anger. "Funny. Neither did I ask to be made a slave, and yet here we are."
All of her fury fell flat against that answer.
What could she possibly say that would not sound like a hollow excuse?
She fell silent, and so did he. His gaze returned to the rain outside while his hands kept undoing the knots in his sister's hair.
"Is she happy?" he asked after a minute.
Nephis was startled by the question, not having expected him to speak again after his last sentence. She looked at him, but Sunny was not looking at her anymore.
She thought deeply about the question. Was she happy?
Yes. Yes, she was.
Rain loved to spend time with them, be it training with her, chatting about music with Kai, lounging with Effie, or even speaking about the books she liked to read with Cassie. She always seemed happy with them.
"Yes."
He nodded silently, though his eyes seemed downcast.
It was the answer he had been hoping for, but not the one he wanted.
It must have brought back memories better forgotten. Of a child from the outskirts who had spent his whole life looking for his sister, only to realize when he finally found her that she was better off without him. That she had been happy all along and he had merely been chasing a ghost.
It was the same story all over again, he likely thought.
Nephis refused to let him think it twice.
"Do you want to know what she enjoyed the most?" she asked.
His breath hitched and she could tell that he was warring with himself about what to say before he finally answered with a quiet, "Yes."
Nephis smiled, not the fake one she used for the cameras, nor the confident one she wore during battle and while giving speeches, but a genuine one, the kind she rarely ever used.
"She enjoys listening to stories about you." Her mind drifted through countless memories of the girl they were talking about, listening with rapt attention to Effie's outlandish and barely truthful stories and to Kai's more accurate but just as fantastical ones. "She has wanted to meet you since she found out."
His hands stilled. "You are lying."
Nephis did not fail to notice the quiver in his voice.
"You can ask her yourself when she wakes up, if you want."
Sunny did not answer.
Their gazes returned to the window. The rain was getting worse, battering the glass incessantly.
"I was there," she said evenly, then clarified further. "In your dream with Eirene."
She had considered staying silent about the topic. It was already bad enough that she had intruded on such a private moment, even if it had been involuntary, but she had also listened to things he probably did not want her to hear.
In the end, she could not do it.
It felt wrong, another violation of his trust. She did not want to hide this from him.
He replied instantly, hands still working through the knots. "I know."
Nephis blinked, genuinely surprised. "How... do you mind telling me how?"
Sunny snorted. "No. Eirene is a terrible liar. You probably could not tell, but she kept looking away as if she was watching someone's reaction."
Her opinion of the shadow dropped even lower. "I am sorry."
Sunny shook his head. "She brought you inside, didn't she?"
"Yes." And forced her to watch as the man she loved was happy with someone else.
He exhaled slowly, jaw clenching painfully. "There are many things you have to apologize for, but this is not one of them."
"I am sorry," she repeated nonetheless.
For a moment, he smiled, sharp, almost fond. For that single moment, it felt like they were back in time, when the two of them were still just Sleepers, fighting every day with their lives on the line. It felt like they were comrades once more, like they could trust each other implicitly.
The moment passed, and the smile vanished as if it had never been there.
She followed his gaze down to a particular raindrop. It had hit the glass at the top and was racing down along with its countless siblings.
"Do you min…"
"Just ask your damn question."
"Does it remind you of that place? The Tears?"
He chuckled bitterly. "So you read that memory."
She nodded silently. Another question was on her lips about what he had confessed, in the memory and in Eirene's dream both, but she refused to voice it. This was not the time nor the place.
The conversation was tense enough as it was. If not for Rain's presence, she was not even sure how it would have developed.
"It does. It reminds me of the Tears," he answered at last. "I spent a little more than a year in that damned place. It rained constantly. It was maddening, a constant, relentless barrage that ruined my mood fiercely." He chuckled. "And it was not particularly high to begin with. During that period, I could scarcely remember how it felt to be outside without being drenched from head to toe." He smiled crookedly. "I hated that place. And now, every time it starts to rain, I will have to remember it."
"Was there nothing good in there?"
The shadows writhed. "What is there not to like? The weather is incomparable. All of the Nightmare Creatures are specialized in toying with your mind and plucking at the most painful strings. The landscape is a never ending parade of rivers and valleys in which nothing but more of those abominations can be found. Oh, and there is a Spell damned Unholy Titan sleeping above. Perfect vacation spot if you want to die horribly."
"It sounds harsh," she commented after a moment, cursing herself and her awkwardness.
He snorted.
Nephis opened her mouth to ask about the Unholy, the question having been stuck in her mind ever since she had read the description of [Crown of Wrath], but he spoke before she could.
"Do you remember your first nightmare?"
A lighthouse flashed before her eyes, warm mornings spent with her family, laughter, comfort, the salty smell of the sea, and a thousand other little perfect memories. Then burning alive. A cocoon of black silk and the abomination it belonged to.
"Yes."
His eyes turned to her, and in them she was sure she saw sympathy.
"My third nightmare was similar," his voice was small, even smaller than before. "I woke up in a city named Aleras. Everyone was asleep, and soon after arriving, I fell asleep too. Inside that dream, I was the owner of a small coffee and memory cafe." He must have noticed the disbelief in her expression, given the way he chuckled. "I know. Someone as humble as me?"
That was not how she would describe him.
"But that is not important. Inside that dream, I was happy, safe, with plenty of money and the quiet, boring life I wanted." He smiled sadly. "Then I met her. Eirene showed up one day and kept coming back. Until one day, she asked me out."
Sunny closed his eyes, and when he opened them, there was a faint sheen in them. "I woke up soon after. But unlike you, that was not the end. I dreamed again. This time I was a Saint, and she was my best friend ever since we were children. That dream ended when you showed up."
Nephis could feel her chest tightening at the way he had said it, at the mix of gratefulness and resentment in his voice.
"In the final one, we met by chance, or that is what she wanted me to think. Things developed from there into friendship and finally something more."
Nephis ignored the pain in her heart and chose to ask instead, "Do you mind telling me what the problem is?"
The way he looked at her, like he was seconds away from breaking apart, made the pain in her heart all the more poignant.
"The problem is that I was happy in those dreams." A humorless chuckle escaped him. "The problem is that everything was as perfect as it could be. The problem is that even now, I wonder if I should have stayed."
"So do I."
The admission sounded foreign even in her own ears, as if she could not believe she had said it. It sounded wrong, because despite how strong was her conviction, it was the truth. When the pain was too much, when the weight on her shoulders proved too heavy, when she felt there were too many expectations placed on her to realistically meet, when all of those things and more happened, she wondered if she should have stayed inside that beautiful, perfect lie.
"I remember the doubt creeping in with every step I took toward the lighthouse," she admitted. "I remember asking myself if it would not be better if I just gave up. If I just stayed inside that dream instead of returning to the cruel reality outside, where the Ghouls and the Spell were awaiting me." Nephis took a deep breath. "But the worst part was the things I left behind. I had parents inside that dream. Real, loving parents. Not a hollow shell, not a man who was already dead but refused to recognize it, but real parents."
Sunny sighed softly, the sheen in his eyes shining brighter. "I met mine inside the dream."
Nephis could not avoid wondering how it would have been if the same had happened to her. If she had met her own parents inside her first nightmare instead of having false ones. More importantly, she asked herself if she would have been strong enough to leave if they had been there.
"How was it?"
He smiled bitterly. "Perfect. My mother was the vivid image of how I remember her, just as warm and loving as I remember her." He dragged a hand across his face, mourning clear on it. "My father... before the dream I could not remember how he looked. I will always be thankful for it, for reminding me, for giving me a chance to embrace them one final time, to see them happy."
She tilted her head, recognizing that expression. "Then why do you hate it?"
"Because it reopened a wound that was, if not healed, at least long scarred." His voice hitched. "Because I will always regret not having spent more time with them inside that damned dream. Because I will always wonder if that was how my father really looked. Because I will always ask myself if my mother truly was as caring in the real world."
"Reality cannot compare to a dream," she mused, having asked herself similar questions many times before. "It is something I told myself while ascending through the steps."
"So why did you leave?"
She smiled. "Why did you?"
He chuckled hollowly. "Because it was not enough. Because I still wanted more. I am a greedy man, after all."
"So am I," she said evenly. "Why should I be content with a lie when I can make it real instead?"
Sunny laughed, genuinely laughed, and for the first time in the conversation did not seem a single wrong word away from attacking her.
"Funny. I told Eirene something very similar."
She looked at him, at the tender smile on his face when he mentioned the woman, and her heart hurt a little more.
"You loved her, didn't you?"
He had admitted as much inside that dream, but she wanted to hear it again, to see for herself how he would answer when Eirene was not around.
Sunny smiled bitterly. "Only a little more than I hate her."
Nephis blinked in genuine surprise at the answer, finding it completely at odds with what he had said mere days before.
"Why?"
The shadows writhed slowly, shaping themselves erratically into abominable forms.
"Because it was not real," he answered. "The man inside that dream wore my face, answered to my name. His personality and appearance were similar to mine. But it was not me." A long sigh left him. "He had memories of his own, thoughts of his own, a life of his own. He was not me, and yet I am stuck with his memories, with the way he felt. With the things he loved and hated."
He looked away, back to the rain falling outside. "She told me that she could not force me to feel anything. That the way I feel about the false memories she implanted in me during the dreams is on me." Sunny shook his head. "How can I believe her when she lied about so many things? How can I be sure that what I feel for her is real and not a convenient lie she implanted in me to manipulate me more easily?"
A dark part of Nephis encouraged her to exacerbate those doubts, to poison him against the very idea of feeling anything positive about the woman. For a terrible moment, she was tempted.
She crushed the idea the moment it surfaced.
"The way you looked at her tells me your feelings were genuine." Every word felt like swallowing glass, and yet she said it nonetheless.
Sunny chuckled. "That is the problem, is it not? I will never be sure. Years from now, I will still ask myself if what I feel is real or something she forced on me."
Nephis did not know how to answer.
"You were right," he said quietly. "The hardest part was leaving, knowing what I was leaving behind."
"I would rather be wrong," she said after a moment, cursing once more the Spell for what it had done to them, to all of them.
"So would I," he agreed easily, then smiled without humor. "Pity that we live in the real world instead of that perfect one, right?"
She smiled without humor too. "Yes."