What was this feeling?
Sunny stared at the patch of grass
where Rain had once stood.
Just paces away—
a family that loved her.
That would have shielded her.
If they could.
A beat passed.
The others stepped from the PTV.
Another.
They ran toward him.
A final beat.
The world held its breath.
Ah.
That feeling.
It was not grief.
Not quite.
It was fury—
but deeper.
Hatred—
but colder.
Rage—
but older than memory.
He had forgotten what it was like.
He had known wrath before.
At the Winter Beast,
who had slain his comrades.
At the shadows
that had dared harm the Serpent.
Those had earned his spite.
But this—
this was different.
This was pure.
Inviolable.
No emotion,
no calculation,
just a truth that could no longer be denied.
And he knew who was to blame.
That wretched woman.
Morgan.
And her corpse-in-waiting of a father.
Anvil.
He had refused their summons.
Refused to kneel.
Refused to play their game.
So they had moved to force him—
by stealing the only piece of him
that hadn't rotted into silence.
His sister.
His Rain.
The strings that once tethered him to the world
had frayed long ago—
decayed by solitude,
withered by eons.
But now?
Now they sang.
And their song was vengeance.
He looked down.
The Serpent coiled on his arm stirred.
It had no need to be commanded.
It knew.
It slithered into form—
twisting, stretching,
becoming a tenebrific odachi.
Black as midnight.
Ragged as sorrow.
Heavy with promise.
Not a blade.
A sentence.
He gazed at it.
Then at the path of grass.
Where innocence had vanished.
His eyes dimmed.
His shadow bloomed.
Darkness spilled outward—
not as chaos,
but as worship.
The Dream Realm bent to his will.
Not with protest.
But with reverence.
They knew who walked.
They remembered.
Their Sovereign had called—
and they answered.
A Dream Gate of darkness opened.
Impenetrable.
Infinite.
Hungry.
Sunny stepped toward it.
No hesitation.
No farewell.
No need to look back.
Voices rose behind him—
shouted, reverberated.
He did not hear them.
Instead, he simply commanded,
"Effie…
get your family out of Bastion."
In the waking world,
reality itself
resisted him.
As if the laws of this place
could not bear his presence.
As if the world whispered:
You were not meant to be here.
But there—
in the Dream Realm—
he was not an aberration.
He was law.
He was truth.
He reigned.
Not in title.
In nature.
And now?
Now he would revel in that supremacy.
And Valor—
Clan of cowards.
Clan of tyrants.
Clan of fools—
They would learn.
What it meant
to draw the ire
of a Supreme bearing a Divine Aspect.
They would not be conquered.
They would be
undone.
…
Sunny stepped onto ash.
Not dirt.
Not stone.
Ash—
the powdered remains of a titan
once grand enough to shake heavens.
Its name was lost,
its glory buried beneath silence.
All that remained…
was the ash.
Slain by Anvil, Sovereign of Valor.
A monument of violence and pride.
In the distance,
a castle rose—
spires crowned with arrogance,
walls carved from conquest.
It stood like a prayer spoken in hubris,
raised high above the land,
cast in radiant light
to mask the rot beneath.
To those who lived within…
it was salvation.
Fortress.
Home.
To Sunny?
It was a coffin waiting for corpses.
A target.
Nothing more.
The Sovereign of Death felt no warmth.
No pity.
No restraint.
Only hatred—
sharp, cold, and divine.
The kind that burns quietly,
the kind that doesn't scream.
The kind that ends.
So he reached inward—
into that vast abyss beneath his material frame.
And from it,
he called them.
The shadows.
Not mere phantoms.
Not echoes.
But ancients.
Slain horrors.
Fallen nightmares.
Primordial aberrations.
Bound by pact and power.
Held in the hollows of his soul.
They rose behind him.
A legion of darkness.
Forces that once individually,
felled cities and toppled kings.
And now…
they bowed.
Not in reverence.
But in fear.
He was not their commander.
He was their end.
The Divine Shadow.
The Sovereign whose silence spoke of extinction.
The herald of death itself.
They waited.
Formless and massive.
Eyes like void stars blinking in reverent hunger.
Waiting for his will.
Waiting for permission to unmake.
And then—
he felt it.
Effie had moved her family.
His last thread of hesitation burned.
The time for reckoning had come.
He took a step.
A whisper.
A breath.
A divine command.
And the Dream Realm shuddered.
The legion stirred.
Then—
He vanished.
His body blurred—
flesh unraveling into shadow,
presence thinning into incorporeal mist.
Shadow-Step.
A Sovereign vanished from the world…
and reappeared within it.
Not at the gates.
Not at the walls.
Inside the heart of Bastion.
Inside the throne room.
Where a king in armor sat upon false power.
Blind.
Unaware.
Outside?
The heavens fell dark.
The land itself flinched.
And from that horizon—
from the edge of all nightmares—
his army descended.
Screaming without sound.
Moving without mass.
Devouring without mercy.
A swarm of sin and shadow.
Not loyal.
Not faithful.
Enslaved by death.
Ripped from the tombs of forgotten dreams,
unleashed not for victory—
but for vengeance.
And as the first tower fell,
as the walls cracked like old bone,
as the skies wept night—
as he took a step into the throne room.
His voice echoed across Bastion.
Low.
Cold.
Unstoppable.
"They shall learn to fear the shadows."
And they would.
Oh, they would.
---
He sensed her.
A flicker.
A thread.
A trembling note in the song of the Dream.
Rain.
His sister.
His student.
One of the last, precious tethers to a world now worth ash.
Held captive…
in a dungeon carved beneath Bastion's bones.
Unforgivable.
A shadow slipped from beneath his feet—
liquid and silent—
slithering like the breath of death through stone corridors.
It moved…
reached where his wrath had not yet burned.
And through that shade, he saw her.
Slumped forward.
Shivering.
Eyes hollow.
Soul fraying at the edges.
A mundane girl,
born of flesh and fragile breath—
crushed beneath the weight of Valor's sin.
He stepped through the darkness.
Not like a man.
Not like a Sovereign.
Like a verdict.
He arrived within the cell.
No light.
No warmth.
Only the girl—alone in her silence.
Rain.
His sister.
His pupil.
She didn't raise her head.
Didn't flinch.
Didn't even realize he was there.
Only a whisper escaped her lips—
a soft, broken exhale
that made his heart ache
in places long thought dead.
"…teacher… where are you."
She hadn't been there long.
Her body was unharmed.
But time wasn't what he mourned—
he mourned the idea that even for a breath,
she'd believed herself abandoned.
Sunny stood still.
The shadows curled behind him
like a mourning veil.
And he watched.
Watched as the girl who once laughed in the sun
now cried beneath the earth.
A child,
stolen and caged.
Tears streaked down her face—
not from pain,
but from the cruel weight of silence.
The symphony of vengeance
that had echoed through his mind
shifted.
Twisted.
Became fury.
"Rain…"
he said—
so softly, the darkness itself held its breath.
He had no lullabies.
No warmth.
No comfort to give.
Only peace.
Only solace.
He stepped forward,
and she vanished into his shadow—
drawn into the tender, merciless fold of his gloom.
He carried her.
Not like a hero.
Not like a brother.
Like a blade
unsheathed for the final time.
They stepped through the dark
toward the Dream Gate's glow.
The cohort stood by.
Waiting.
Watching.
Behind them,
Bastion began to burn.
Masters fought.
And Masters fell.
Saints raised arms.
And Saints were undone.
In the heart of the throne room,
the tyrant finally stirred.
Anvil rose from his seat,
summoned his memories,
summoned his pride.
Armor gleamed.
Steel sang.
And still—
he paled beneath the weight of the one before him.
Sunny stood still.
Odachi in hand.
Cloaked in that silence that screams of doom.
He did not speak.
He did not posture.
He studied.
And then the shadows stirred again.
One…
Two…
Three…
Four…
Five…
Five avatars emerged—
reflections of him, born of shadow and soul.
Each one real.
Each one armed.
Each one a death sentence.
Anvil watched.
Two Sovereigns stood face to face.
But only one cast a shadow deep enough to swallow a kingdom.
One was born of pride.
The other, of purpose.
And Sunny—
the Divine Shadow,
the Sovereign of Death,
the Heir of Shadow—
breathed, and the room grew cold.
Soul Serpent, currently in his grip as an odachi.
curled in his grip like a beast eager to feed.
From the shadows, five swords rose—
one for each avatar,
for each judgment yet to be passed.
He wasn't going to kill Anvil.
He was going to erase him.
Piece by piece.
Bone by bone.
Hope by hope.
And as the shadows pressed in,
as death took form and inevitability bent the knee—
He whispered, like a promise etched in blood:
"You raised a hand to my kin."
The words were cold iron.
Not rage, not wrath.
Reckoning.
"I raise a grave in return."
Then—
Anvil moved.
Too slow.
Sunny moved a breath later—
but time itself bowed before him.
The moment had already chosen a victor.
The air itself folded inward,
caught in the gravity of him.
Anvil saw it all.
The shadow that blurred forward—
the Sovereign he thought he understood.
But knowledge does not save you from the blade.
Sunny struck.
Pommel to the face.
Steel cracked bone.
Teeth split like chalk under pressure.
Anvil staggered, blood blooming like rust.
Before he could draw breath—
Two shadows flanked him.
Incarnations.
Each swung.
One took his arm.
Another, his leg.
The rest just watched.
The Sovereign of Valor collapsed—
not in death,
but in humiliation.
Sunny advanced, slow now.
Cruel.
Not with haste,
but intent.
He grabbed the shattered groove in Anvil's silver chestplate—
fingers curling into it like talons—
and hurled him upward.
Through walls.
Through silence.
Through sky.
Stone crumbled.
Air howled.
Light pierced through the breach.
But even that light refused to touch him.
High above—
Anvil, still dazed, still reeling,
drifted like the carcass of a fallen god.
Sunny rose to meet him.
Wings unfurled—
not feathered,
but made of screaming darkness.
With one swing—
flat of the blade—
he struck again.
Crack.
Anvil was cast down.
Like a star expelled from heaven.
Like trash flung from Olympus.
He crashed into the courtyard.
Where knights once trained.
They stood, watching.
Their Sovereign—
pinnacle of power—
pinned to the dirt.
Blood-soaked.
Groaning.
Dying, but not dead.
Not yet.
And then—
It came.
From the black beyond,
a creature stepped forth.
Not born.
Not summoned.
But loosed.
One of Sunny's legion.
Primordial.
Horrific.
Real.
Tendrils like spears,
teeth like old sins.
It moved once—
—and the masters ceased to be.
A red haze swallowed the courtyard.
Not war.
Not battle.
But extinction.
The cohort arrived…
So did Rain,
They saw Sunny.
Six of him.
Standing before a crumpled ruin that once was Anvil.
Odachi in hand.
The serpentine blade's edge dripping black ichor.
Shadow pulsing behind him in reverence.
No triumph.
No roar.
Five of him looked back at them…
But the last?
He swung.
Slow.
Inevitable.
And Anvil's head was no longer part of his body.
It rolled, graceless.
A relic of failure.
A tombstone of pride.
Sunny didn't speak.
Only silence.
speak.
Only silence.