before the end

A solemn quiet had settled over the temple like a velvet shroud.

The echoes of battle had long faded, leaving behind only silence and the distant groan of ancient stone. Effie had taken Kai elsewhere, eager to show him the temple as she remembered it—what had once served as her and Sunny's odd little haven, a fragile sanctuary carved from a crumbling dream. Their laughter had retreated into the halls, leaving Sunless behind with his thoughts.

Harus was gone, too.

The hunchbacked butcher had finally relinquished his post as Cassie's taciturn guardian and returned to his place beside Gunlaug. It was no dramatic farewell—just a quiet disappearance, as sudden and wordless as his arrival.

Sunny liked Harus, in his own way. Respected him. But he couldn't deny that with the old assassin gone, the air felt… lighter. Easier to breathe.

Because even when Harus smiled, he was still Gunlaug's blade in the dark.

Sunny had never forgotten *why* the Butcher had been the one chosen to walk with them, live among them, watch them. He wasn't there because he was friendly. He was there because he was loyal. Because Gunlaug, for all his generosity, was no fool. The golden tyrant might have given Sunny a long leash, but it was still a leash.

And Harus was the one holding it.

Now, with that leash quietly withdrawn, Sunny could finally do what he had been waiting to do since stepping foot in this place.

He could hunt the divine.

A spark of anticipation flickered behind his eyes. He turned to Nephis, who stood nearby in her usual calm stillness.

"Hey, Neph," he said casually, a sly grin tugging at the corner of his mouth as he held up the key he'd taken from the catacombs.

The ancient metal glinted faintly in the cold light, silent and weighty.

Nephis met his gaze—and understood instantly. Her pale hand reached for Cassie's with quiet purpose, linking fingers without a word.

The three of them walked together, crossing beneath the looming shadow of the nameless goddess's statue. Her hollow eyes watched them pass, unblinking and unknowable. They didn't pause. Didn't pray.

They passed through one of the sealed doorways leading deeper into the temple—into its true heart.

Sunny had never been here before.

Once, this sanctum had been forbidden to him. Guarded. First by the darkness that crawled through these halls like living mist. Then by the Black Knight himself—Fallen Devil, sentinel of this sacred place.

But now the devil was dead. The shadows scattered.

And the way was open.

They walked through what remained of the temple's interior—once-grand chambers now choked with dust and silence. Shattered remnants of altars lay in pieces, long-rotted scrolls and ceremonial tools left to crumble in disuse. Every step stirred centuries of stillness. The air smelled like old incense and dried stone.

To most, there was nothing here.

Just ruins. Debris. Forgotten relics of forgotten worship.

But Sunny… *Sunny knew how to listen.*

He slowed, narrowing his eyes as he came to a stop in front of an unremarkable stretch of wall.

There was nothing about it that caught the eye. No symbols. No markings. Just ancient masonry, stained by time.

And yet, something *pressed* against his senses. A subtle weight. A tension in the shadow that pooled there.

There was space behind that wall. Hollow space. And shadow—dense, quiet, and waiting.

He began to search, fingertips gliding over the cold stone, eyes alert for any irregularity. Eventually, he found it: a small, corroded lever, almost invisible against the rough surface.

He tried to pull it.

Nothing.

The rusted mechanism crumbled beneath his touch, disintegrating into flakes of time-worn metal.

Sunny sighed.

With a practiced motion, he summoned the Midnight Shard. The tachi appeared in his hand like a whisper of moonlight, the unbreakable blade catching what little light filtered through the ruined sanctum.

.

Absolutely

The hidden passage wound like a serpent through the stone—a narrow throat of shadow curling deep beneath the cathedral. Every turn whispered of age, of silence, of something ancient that waited far below the earth. The deeper they descended, the more the weight of the temple above seemed to press down around them.

Sunless led the way, his footsteps measured, careful. Behind him, Nephis moved like moonlight—silent, steady, her presence a constant, grounded force. Cassie came last, her hand still tucked in Neph's, her breath soft, barely audible over the distant pulse of stone and shadow.

They had been walking for minutes now, and yet Sunny could feel it in his bones—they were still beneath the cathedral. More than that. By his reckoning, they were approaching the exact center of it. The still heart beneath the beating skin.

As if in confirmation, the tight corridor opened suddenly into a large circular chamber. A hollow well yawned at its center, wide and perfectly round, like the eye of something ancient gazing up at them from the deep. A winding staircase spiraled down its inner wall, vanishing into darkness.

Sunny paused at the edge, frowning.

*"What is it with this place and creepy dark wells…"*

He didn't say it aloud. The others wouldn't find it funny.

Looking down into that abyss, a cold familiarity stirred in his chest. Descending further would carry him too close to the catacombs beneath the city—the same cursed tunnels he had once barely escaped with his life. Whatever waited down there wasn't just shadow and stone.

Behind him, Nephis shifted subtly, her fingers tightening around Cassie's.

Sunless hesitated only a breath longer before stepping onto the staircase.

The darkness welcomed him like an old friend.

Nephis followed, her footfalls light and measured. She said nothing, but her hand did not leave Cassie's for a second. And Cassie—delicate and blind—walked beside her without flinching, her free hand trailing gently along the stone wall for balance. The air grew colder as they descended, and Cassie's breath hitched once, but she didn't stop.

The deeper they went, the more the shadows thickened. Sunless felt them gather around him like a cloak, familiar and oddly comforting.

At least here, among shadows, he was never truly alone.

Eventually, the spiral path ended at a chamber carved directly into the bedrock—rough, primordial stone that bore no marks of chisel or hammer. It was as though the earth itself had been hollowed by ancient, forgotten hands.

At the far end of the cavern stood a door.

It loomed, forged from smooth black steel, utterly still and completely solid. Two torches flanked it, their flames pale and colorless, casting a sickly light that illuminated nothing but the doorway itself.

Sunless came to a halt, and two thoughts struck him at once.

First—the metal.

The door was made of the same strange, lusterless alloy as the Black Knight's armor. That alone was enough to make his skin crawl.

Second—the fire.

*The torches were still burning.*

He narrowed his eyes.

Thousands of years may have passed, and yet those flames had not died. They produced no heat. Their light felt wrong—ghostly and sterile. And most disturbing of all, their shadows did not move. They hung motionless on the ground like black stains frozen in place, unaffected by the flicker of the flame.

Behind him, Nephis stopped at the threshold, her expression unreadable. Cassie leaned slightly forward, frowning.

"…It's wrong," she murmured softly. "The fire… it doesn't feel alive."

Sunless turned his head, gaze sweeping over them both.

"Wait here for me," he said quietly.

Cassie flinched. "Sunny—"

"If those flames are anything to go by this place still has some enchantments active, so just let me make sure it's safe….. please."

Nephis said nothing, but she gave a slow, small nod. Her eyes met his with a steady calm, and then turned to Cassie, guiding the girl gently a few steps back into the deeper dark. Cassie's hand lingered at her side, unsure—almost reaching toward him—but she let herself be led.

Sunless turned back toward the door.

As he stepped closer, the air grew thinner. The chill ran deeper. He ordered his own shadow to stay behind, and, astonishingly, it did not argue. The shadow slipped away from his heels like a frightened dog, merging with the deeper gloom where Nephis and Cassie stood.

Sunless moved forward alone.

Crossing the threshold of light cast by the ghostly torches, a sudden chill sliced through him—sharp, penetrating, unnatural. The sensation ran along his spine like icewater. He tensed, expecting an attack. Nothing came.

*Protective charms,* he thought grimly. *Definitely dangerous. Even to shadows.*

But the question lingered, heavy and sharp:

*Were the flames meant to keep people out?*

*…Or something in?*

He stood before the black door in silence, staring up at its seamless surface. It would take an army—and a miracle—to break through it.

And yet—

There, nearly invisible, was a small keyhole.

He pulled the leather string from around his neck, revealing the small iron key he had taken from the corpse of the Lord of the Dead. It pulsed faintly in his palm, a muted glow of divine light flickering inside its aged metal.

The key slid into the lock without resistance.

It *belonged* there.

Sunless exhaled.

Then turned it.

A soft click echoed into the chamber, and the monolithic door began to shift. It opened silently, its movement accompanied only by a faint stir of air—as if the world itself held its breath.

Inside was a smaller room, no more than a cell carved into the heart of the rock.

And in the center of that room, chained to the floor in a circle of black stone, was a corpse.

It sat slumped, wrapped in tattered robes. Whether man or woman, he could not tell. The figure wore a mask—lacquered black, shaped into a demonic snarl with jagged teeth and three twisted horns curling like serpents from its brow. Its mouth was frozen in a grin of fury, fangs bared. Its eyes were deep pits of utter void.

The weight of it—*of what it had once been*—settled into Sunless's chest.

Behind him, even from the distance, Cassie shivered.

"…Sunny?" Her voice was faint.

"I get it now." he murmured.

And for the first time since entering the temple, Sunless felt truly unsure.

'*'

Cassie was afraid.

Not of the future—that, she could bear. The slow unwinding of fate was something she'd lived with all her life, half-seen and ever-shifting.

But this was something else.

This fear came from the silence.

The absence.

The cold, echoing space where a vision should have been.

She had felt it when Neph took her hand.

The pressure of those strong, callused fingers grounding her, a soft reassurance wrapped in steel. Neph's touch always calmed her—not just because it was steady, but because it was hers. The girl who guarded her like a flame in the dark. The girl Cassie had fallen for in a thousand quiet ways.

But the vision didn't come.

There was no rush of insight, no flash of fate. Nothing followed Neph's warmth.

And then Sunny emerged from the secret passage.

She didn't need eyes to see it. She *felt* the change in him, as clearly as wind against her skin. His movements—always deliberate, always quiet—had an edge to them now. His footfalls were uncertain. He hesitated, and in that hesitation was something she had never felt from him before.

Fear.

Sunny didn't get scared. Not on the day they stepped into the Dream Realm, not when monsters rose like waves before them, not even when he struck that terrible deal with Gunlaug just to buy her and Neph a way back to Earth.

He'd shouldered every burden. Always.

And now, something had shaken him.

But what?

Her visions had shown her nothing—no metaphor, no echo, no half-formed premonition. As if the weave of fate had simply… stopped.

That was more terrifying than any prophecy.

So she did what she'd done since the academy, back when the dark felt endless and her fear had no name—she reached for the people she loved.

They were her lighthouse. Her shelter in the storm.

Her everything.

"Sunny… Neph… what was down there?" she asked, her voice barely above a breath.

Neph moved behind her immediately, arms slipping around Cassie's waist in a silent promise: *you're not alone.*

Cassie leaned back into her without hesitation. Even blind, she could feel the way Neph was coiled with tension, shielding her. Neph didn't know either—but she would stand between Cassie and whatever it was, always.

"A prisoner," Sunny murmured at last. "And something else we can't talk about. Not openly."

Cassie wanted to ask.

Needed to.

But she stopped herself, lips parting only to close again.

She didn't want to force the truth out of him—not like that.

So instead, she softened her tone. Let her heart speak instead of her fear.

"Do you *want* to tell us what it is, Sunny?" she asked gently.

Because she knew he would.

Not because he had to.

But because he loved them.

Even if he didn't understand that yet. Even if the words had never passed his lips, it was there in the way he fought, the way he gave, the way he looked at them like they were the only steady thing left in his world.

He would tell them.

Because love always found a way to speak.

"I do," he said, and the quiet ache in his voice confirmed everything she already knew. "But you really have to promise me to keep this a secret."

"I promise," Cassie whispered, already reaching for him.

"We promise," Neph added, steady and strong.

"There's a Divine-ranked Memory," Sunny said. "A mask. It was… on the prisoner's face. I don't think it's for combat, but… it's Divine. If word got out—"

"It would be taken," Neph finished grimly. "At any cost."

Cassie's breath hitched.

A *Divine* Memory. She had read about them in the kinds of stories she used to roll her eyes at—power fantasies, childish tales dressed in numbers and tiers and empty glory. They weren't supposed to be real. Not for humans. Not for her.

And yet, there it was. Hidden below. Woven into a fate she had not seen.

How could something that vast, that vital, have escaped her Aspect entirely?

How had the strings of fate stayed silent?

Only one answer made sense.

Sunny.

He was [Fated]. In all the ways that mattered. A lodestar the world bent toward without realizing. She was certain—if not for him, that Memory would still be buried and blind. Waiting.

The thought made her ache. Not with fear, but with love.

So much love.

She stepped forward without thinking and wrapped her arms around him. Felt the sharp breath he took as she pulled him in close, his cheek resting against the rise of her chest, right over her heart.

He didn't pull away.

Neph moved with her, embracing them both. Warm, strong, steady.

Cassie stood between them, arms full of the boy who never cried, the girl who never flinched, and her own heart so full it felt like it might split open. She pressed her face into Sunny's hair and held him tighter, feeling Neph's arms cinch around the both of them.

This was what she fought for.

Not fate. Not vision. Not power.

Just this.

These two.

Her heart.