The world was ending — if not in truth, then in every way that mattered to those forced to witness it.
The sky had long since abandoned the pretense of stability, its once distant expanse now fractured into writhing layers of color and void, as though reality itself had been peeled apart to expose something raw and unfinished beneath. Concepts bled into one another. Time did not flow so much as stutter. Space stretched, folded, and tore in uneven intervals. The Spirit World was unraveling.
And at the center of that unraveling existence stood two abominations.
'They' did not merely exist within the world — 'They' overrode it.
Irontomb towered like an unspoken verdict, a headless god whose form rejected symmetry in favor of something far more deliberate. Four massive arms extended from its torso, each one bearing a different motion, a different purpose, as though they operated under separate laws of intent. Its body was composed of a dark, metallic substance that seemed less forged and more defined, like a concept given form rather than matter shaped into structure. Where a head should have been, there was only absence — a clean, absolute void that did not reflect light, shadow, or even perception. To look at that emptiness for too long invited a creeping sensation that something was looking back from a place that did not exist.
Behind 'It' loomed a phantom tower.
It stretched impossibly high, its base rooted in nothing and everything all at once, rising into layers that seemed to pierce through dimensions rather than simply ascend. Each level was constructed from thick, ancient books stacked upon one another in perfect, suffocating order. Every book bore a single brass-colored eye embedded into its cover, each eye open, unblinking, aware. The lower levels radiated something akin to knowledge — dense, suffocating, overwhelming in its completeness — while the higher levels darkened into something far more malignant. Madness seeped from those upper tiers like smoke, interwoven with Destruction, Misfortune, and Disaster, concepts layered so thickly that they warped the space around them.
Irontomb wielded Omniscience, Wisdom, and Principles — not as tools, but as absolute authorities. 'It' did not think. 'It' knew. Every movement carried inevitability, every action grounded in a certainty that left no room for error, doubt, or deviation.
Opposing 'It' was something that should not have existed at all.
The Vile Thieving Bird hunched against the broken sky, its massive frame cloaked in a mantle of disheveled black feathers that seemed perpetually in motion, rustling without wind, shifting without cause. Its body was uneven, almost wrong in its proportions, as though it had stolen parts of itself from different iterations of existence and forced them into a single form. Its back curved sharply, giving it a predatory silhouette, while its neck extended forward into a long, terrifying beak that gleamed with a dull, predatory sheen.
'Its' wings were vast — too vast — and when they spread, they did not simply occupy space. They interfered with it. The air bent around them. Time slipped along their edges. Feathers detached and reattached at random intervals, some dissolving into nothing, others reappearing moments before they had been lost.
Behind 'It' hovered the phantom of a colossal stone clock.
Ancient beyond measure, its surface was cracked and worn, its engravings half-erased by something that had devoured meaning itself. The hands of the clock were not metal nor stone — they were worms, writhing, coiling, living extensions of 'Its' own body. They moved in erratic, unnatural patterns, sometimes reversing, sometimes halting, sometimes skipping entire rotations in a single instant. Every shift altered something fundamental. A second stolen here unraveled a minute there. A minute distorted could fracture an hour.
The Vile Thieving Bird wielded Deceit, Theft, Loopholes, and Time.
Where Irontomb enforced reality, the Bird exploited it.
Where 'It' created rules, the other found ways around them.
Their clash was not a battle of strength.
It was a war of definitions.
When Irontomb moved, the world obeyed. Space locked into place, time aligned, causality reasserted itself with crushing force. Its four arms descended in perfect, calculated arcs, each strike carrying the weight of inevitability. When the Vile Thieving Bird responded, reality slipped. Attacks that should have landed did not. Movements that should have been impossible occurred. Entire sequences of cause and effect unraveled into contradictions.
A strike that had already hit would suddenly not have happened.
A wound that had been inflicted would never have existed.
The battlefield warped with every exchange, unable to sustain the contradiction of their existence.
And beneath that impossible war, two figures danced on a far more intimate battlefield.
Sunny ducked under the arc of a lilac, bone-like scythe, the blade passing just inches above his head as it carved through the distorted air. The weapon was alive in a way that defied simple classification — its surface smooth yet organic, its edges unnaturally sharp, a single draconic eye embedded near its center that tracked movement with unsettling awareness.
[Promise].
He had made it.
That thought flickered through his mind for only a moment before it was discarded, buried beneath the immediate necessity of survival.
Castorice moved like a shadow unbound by physical limitation, her form weaving through space with a grace that felt almost detached from the laws governing everything else. Her strikes carried both elegance and overwhelming force, each motion precise, each transition seamless. There was no wasted energy in her movements, no hesitation, no uncertainty.
Only intent.
Soul Serpent met Promise in a violent clash, the black odachi intercepting the descending scythe with a sharp, ringing impact that echoed even through the broken world. Sparks did not fly — shadows did. Dark fragments peeled away from the point of contact, dissolving into the air before reconstituting themselves along the edges of Sunny's blade.
For a moment, they were still.
Close enough to see each other clearly.
Close enough to remember.
Then they separated, stepping back in perfect unison, their eyes locked.
Sunny's black robes fluttered in the fractured wind, shadows coiling faintly around his form, augmenting him beyond what he would usually need. Seven shadows — each a each a fragment — layered over him, folding into his existence, amplifying him eightfold. His presence was no longer singular. For Sunny and Castorice, he looked like a pitch black figure, dark wisps falling off his body.
He was a convergence.
Sunless.
Hungered Mobius.
A Transcendent Titan.
Across from him stood Castorice.
Hand of Shadow.
Her presence was no less overwhelming, her sole shadow hundreds of times deeper than Sunny's seven. Her Shadow Core expanded endlessly, fed by the countless shadows she had consumed. Each one added to her, layered into her existence, strengthening her beyond conventional limits.
She was no longer bound by the gap between Divine Aspects and Sacred Aspects.
She had crossed it.
And yet…
Her expression broke the illusion of perfection.
There was pain there.
Not physical.
Something deeper.
Something far more fragile.
Sunny calculated.
Her abilities cycled through his mind with cold precision. Dormant. Awakened. Ascended. Transcendent. He accounted for each one, mapping out possibilities, outcomes, probabilities. Polyxia remained absent. That alone spoke volumes.
She still hoped.
The realization was almost amusing.
Then she spoke.
"Tell me, Mister. Do you regret anything?"
Her voice cut through the chaos, steady despite everything, though the sorrow beneath it was impossible to miss.
Sunny tilted his head slightly, his gaze empty.
"Of course. I just lost a valuable asset of mine, after all."
The words landed like a blade.
Castorice's expression shattered.
"She was your sister! How could... how could you..."
She stopped herself, drawing in a sharp breath, forcing composure where none remained.
"No… no, this isn't what you wanted. This is just what you think you want, isn't it? None of it could have been fake…"
Sunny snorted, the sound devoid of warmth.
"How long are you going to keep deluding yourself? One man sleeps with you, and now you believe he's some sort of misunderstood angel? Get real."
The space between them collapsed.
Shadow Step.
He appeared before her instantly, Soul Serpent descending in a lethal arc.
Castorice reacted without thought, Promise rising to meet the strike, the impact reverberating through both of them as their weapons clashed again and again, faster, sharper, more violent with each exchange. Steel met shadow, shadow met bone, the sound of their battle merging into a chaotic symphony of death.
Sunny lashed out with a kick.
She caught it.
Her grip tightened—
A coin made of shadows flipped into the air, recognition in Castorice's eyes.
Sunny became a blur, his movements accelerating beyond conventional perception, each strike landing in rapid succession, forcing Castorice into a purely reactive state. Instinct and experience barely held the line as she parried, deflected, redirected, her body moving before thought could catch up.
The shadows around them erupted into spikes.
She twisted, cartwheeling away, narrowly avoiding impalement as the ground itself turned hostile. Rolling to her feet, she swung Promise in a wide arc, the blade cutting toward his side.
He stepped in, not out.
The scythe missed.
He closed the distance.
She pulled the weapon back, aiming to cleave him from behind—
He vanished.
She fired immediately, detonating a portion of her shadow that was converted into highly volatile Shadow Essence, tearing through the space he reappeared in and forcing him to deflect it, the impact pushing him back just enough—
For her to close in.
Their dance resumed.
Deadly.
Intimate.
Unforgiving.
Above them, Irontomb and the Vile Thieving Bird continued 'Their' war, the world unraveling further with each passing second, yet neither Sunny nor Castorice spared them more than the barest fraction of attention.
Weapons remained locked as Promise and Soul Serpent pressed against each other, their opposing forces grinding against a single point in space where reality struggled to decide what should exist. The air around them vibrated in unstable layers, as if the battlefield itself had become a fragile construct barely holding its shape. Castorice's face was close enough to Sunny's that even the smallest change in expression would have been unmistakable, yet neither of them blinked, neither of them yielded, as though acknowledging hesitation would mean surrendering something far more important than victory.
Then Castorice spoke, her voice breaking through the tension like a blade forcing its way through steel.
"Look at me, Mister!"
Sunny's expression tightened immediately, irritation flashing across his features in a way that contrasted sharply with the calm brutality of their surroundings. The absurdity of the request seemed to strike him more than the battle itself, as if she had violated some unspoken rule of engagement. He responded without hesitation, his tone sharp and dismissive.
"What are you even talking about, you desperate woman?!"
The moment the words left his mouth, they separated violently. Neither stepped back so much as they were forcibly repelled by the pressure of their clash, both bodies sliding through fractured space only to reappear already moving forward again. There was no pause, no reset, no breath between exchanges. Their movements overlapped so tightly that it became impossible to tell where one action ended and the next began.
Castorice's weapon shifted mid-motion, Promise dissolving from its scythe form into a massive greatsword that seemed to carry the weight of countless deaths within its edge. She brought it down with overwhelming force, not as a strike but as an execution, forcing Sunny to meet it head-on. He raised Soul Serpent in its odachi form, bracing himself as the impact detonated between them. The collision sent a shockwave through his arms and spine, driving him backward and forcing his feet into the fractured ground, which buckled under the strain as though it had been waiting for permission to collapse.
Sunny's teeth clenched, his body straining under the pressure as he muttered through the force of the blow:
"The hell did those Aidonians feed you?!
Castorice did not respond. She was already moving again.
Her leg swept low with precise intent, catching his stance before he could recover. The kick struck his footing cleanly, and for a fraction of a second, his balance gave way. That was all she needed. He fell backward, but before his body could fully hit the ground, a shadow surged up from beneath him, gripping him like a living extension of his will and dragging him sideways out of the weapon's follow-up arc.
Promise had already reverted back into its scythe form, carving through the space where his chest would have been if not for the intervention. The blade passed so close that even the air seemed to split in delayed realization of what had almost occurred.
Sunny landed in a crouch several meters away, stabilizing himself through sheer instinct. His gaze remained fixed on her, but something colder had entered his expression.
"Are you trying to impress me with recycled tricks?"
Castorice's expression shifted slightly at that, her composure tightening as though she had decided something. Without answering, she moved again, her body surging forward with renewed intensity. The space between them collapsed instantly as they re-engaged, weapons colliding again and again in rapid succession. Each impact layered over the last, building a rhythm of violence so dense it blurred into something almost musical, though nothing about it was harmonious.
Then, abruptly, everything changed.
Neither of them backed away this time. Instead, they both moved inward at the exact same moment, abandoning conventional spacing altogether. Sunny dove downward, not retreating but sinking into his own shadow as though it were a gateway rather than a surface. At the same time, Castorice allowed her shadow to rise up around her, swallowing her form entirely as if it had been waiting for permission to consume her.
For a brief instant, there was nothing visible between them except two expanding masses of darkness, each asserting dominance over the concept of presence itself. Then both shadows stabilized, solidified, and emerged.
Where Sunny had been, a colossal Shadowspawn now stood. It towered over the fractured battlefield like a nightmare given physical law, its four arms flexing with controlled devastation. Four horns jutted from its head in symmetrical formation, some pointing skyward like broken spears, others curving forward like predatory instruments. A lacquerwood mask covered its face completely, carved with three horns integrated into its structure which added up to seven total, its eye sockets unreadable as though perception itself refused to settle there. Long dark hair flowed from beneath the mask, shifting despite the absence of wind, while his transformed robes adapted seamlessly into this new form, splitting into four sleeves and opening at the back to accommodate a tail that moved with deliberate intent.
On the opposite side, Castorice's transformation had completed as well. Her form had become a massive skeletal figure, its limbs elongated far beyond natural proportion, each joint moving with eerie precision. From its hollow mouth came the layered screams of countless souls, overlapping into a constant sound of suffering that did not diminish even as she moved. Her eye sockets burned with a lilac glow, not as light but as presence, as if something vast and sorrowful was looking outward through her emptiness. Draped over everything was her cloak of souls, a living mass of accumulated death that wrapped her entire form and reinforced itself with the defensive weight of millions of extinguished existences.
Neither of them paused to acknowledge the transformation. Instead, they simply reformed their weapons.
From Castorice's cloak, fragments of shadow detached and coalesced once more into Promise, now a scythe again. On Sunny's side, Soul Serpent slithered down the length of the Shadowspawn's arm in its tattoo form before reshaping itself into a massive odachi that matched his altered scale perfectly.
They stood at equal height, both emitting the stench of death.
And then they moved.
The battlefield became something beyond comprehension. Castorice used her immense reach to carve vast zones of controlled death, her scythe sweeping through space in arcs that did not merely attack but defined entire regions where existence itself became unsafe. Sunny countered with multiplicity, his four arms functioning independently yet in perfect synchronization, each strike compensating for another, each movement accounting for outcomes that had not yet occurred.
At one point, Castorice's scythe descended in a wide, overwhelming arc. Two of Sunny's arms shot forward instantly, catching the blade mid-descent and halting it completely. The force of the impact rippled through his entire frame, but he held it in place through sheer will and structural adaptation. At the same time, Soul Serpent shifted form again, transforming into a spear that lunged forward toward her core. The attack was precise, instantaneous, and lethal in intent.
But Castorice's cloak reacted faster than thought. A portion of the souls embedded within it detached and formed a barrier that intercepted the spear, absorbing its momentum with a sound like countless voices being silenced at once.
The exchange forced both of them to reset their positions, though 'reset' was no longer an accurate term. Space itself had stopped behaving consistently. Sometimes Sunny found himself behind her without moving. Sometimes Castorice's attacks resolved before they were initiated. Sometimes entire sequences of motion repeated or reversed without explanation, as if the battlefield was struggling to maintain coherence under the combined existence of Irontomb and the Vile Thieving Bird.
Still, neither of them stopped.
Their voices rose simultaneously, cutting through the collapsing world around them.
"DIE ALREADY!"
"NOT UNTIL YOU OPEN YOUR EYES!"
The clash that followed was no longer structured. It was instinct layered over instinct, killing intent refined into form, movement reduced to its purest expression. They moved like beasts that had transcended humanity but retained its precision, their techniques no longer distinguishable from the concept of Shadow Dance itself. Sunny crawled through angles of attack that should not have existed, using his extra limbs to both strike and reposition, while Castorice controlled vast spatial zones with her reach and overwhelming defensive pressure.
Above them, Irontomb and the Vile Thieving Bird continued their war, indifferent to the smaller apocalypse unfolding beneath them. Yet even their conflict seemed to ripple in response, as if the Universe itself could not decide which catastrophe deserved precedence.
But down here, none of that mattered.
For that brief instant, there was no motion between them. Only the recognition that escalation had already passed the point where restraint could exist.
Then Sunny acted.
Not forward, not outward in any ordinary sense, but through a rupture of his own existence as three shadows peeled away from the Shadowspawn form. Their separation was not gentle or controlled; it was violent in its conceptual strain, as though reality itself resisted the idea of something so unified being divided. Yet resistance meant nothing here.
The first to emerge was Doom, a massive black wolf partially obscured by a rolling gray fog that clung to its body like an extension of its being. In its jaws rested a longsword of absurd scale, a weapon so large it appeared less forged than declared into existence. It did not survey the battlefield. It did not hesitate. Its gaze locked onto Castorice immediately, and in that silence there was only the certainty of judgment already decided.
The second was Fiend, whose arrival disturbed the air with a subtle but deeply oppressive instability. His body was encased in blackened heavenly steel, as though he had been forged in collapsing heavens and reforged in something worse each time. Heat pulsed faintly from its maw and claws, not uncontrolled hunger but restrained annihilation. Unlike Doom, Fiend did not immediately commit, hesitant as the burning embers of his eyes landed on Castorice.
The third manifestation was quieter, but far more destabilizing.
Ruan Mei had been reduced and rewritten into a black odachi formed of bone and marrow, faintly pulsing as though it still remembered circulation and thought. Sunny took it without hesitation, gripping it alongside Soul Serpent in a dual-wield stance that altered the weight of his presence entirely. He was no longer a singular convergence of power but a layered system of annihilation, holding two histories of death that no longer agreed on what killing meant.
Castorice noticed the change immediately.
Her skeletal head turned slightly, not toward Sunny himself but toward the space behind her. Promise moved first, cutting through empty air with surgical precision aimed at nothing visible. Yet the moment it completed its arc, reality responded as if struck, and space behind her fractured like a wound opening under delayed pain. From within that rupture, something vast forced its way outward, dragging existence apart with claws that were neither fully skeletal nor fully real.
Polyxia emerged at her full size, not restraining her Transcendent Ability.
The Wings of Ruin, Shattered Sky, Queen of Curses, Draconic Doomsayer unfolded into being with a scale that rendered measurement almost insulting. Her skeletal-draconic body extended across impossible distances, coiling through space in segmented arcs that made that was filled with evil. If Sunny and Castorice were already beyond conventional scale in size, she was something that broke even that comparison, her length alone being a dozen skyscrapers. Her form was a mix of black, pallid gray, and a soft lilac.
Unlike Sunny's Shadows, she was whole.
A complete Shadow Creature, anchored by a full Shadow Core that radiated stability rather than enslavement. Not born of domination, but of trust — something Sunny, despite all his power, had never fully possessed in sufficient measure to replicate.
Her presence alone reshaped the battlefield. Doom lowered its head slightly, fog thickening around its jaws. Fiend's posture sharpened, hesitation replaced by focused evaluation. Even Sunny's adjusted subtly, its four arms recalibrating as if acknowledging an equal.
Castorice did not retreat. Instead, the Cloak of Death expanded and compressed faintly, souls layering upon souls as if reinforcing themselves against Polyxia's overwhelming presence of malevolence. Behind her skeletal frame, the second Hand of Shadow stirred, its presence no longer passive but responsive, as though recognizing a counterpart it had not anticipated.
For a moment, everything stabilized into a fragile and unbearable equilibrium.
Then Polyxia turned her head toward Sunny.
The silence between them carried too much history to be reduced to instinct or recognition alone. It was not confrontation, but something unresolved — something that had never been allowed to settle into definition. Sunny exhaled slowly through the Shadowspawn form, his voice distorted but still recognizable as he spoke without turning fully away from Castorice.
"…So you're here too."
Polyxia did not respond in words. Instead, the air around her vibrated faintly, as though language itself had been reduced into a less precise medium.
Castorice answered instead, her voice layered with the countless souls within her cloak, each syllable carrying accumulated death.
"You brought her into this."
Sunny tightened his grip on both Soul Serpent and Ruan Mei, the Slaying Blade and the Aeonic Erudite, while his Shadowspawn remained unmoving.
"I didn't bring anything. You could have accepted your death in peace... but I suppose two Shadows are better than one."
Fiend shifted half a step forward before stopping again, claws flexing as internal heat surged and settled. Doom's fog thickened further, its longsword scraping faintly against distorted air. The battlefield was no longer anticipating combat — it was aligning itself for inevitability.
Then Polyxia moved.
The Wings of Ruin coiled through space with unnatural elegance, placing herself between Castorice and Sunny's Shadows. The motion did not strike, yet it immediately altered the structure of reality, forcing multiple Curses to spill from her maw, attacking everyone present all at one... even herself.
Castorice did not retreat, but the Cloak of Death reacted instinctively, flowing against the spew of pure evil that now existed on the battlefield.
Sunny tightened his stance, dual odachis steady, while Castorice raised Promise fully, its edge shimmering with accumulated inevitability.
Doom surged forward first, its longsword carving through space in a wide arc that distorted gravity along its path. Fiend followed immediately, abandoning hesitation as it launched itself toward Castorice's Cloak of Death, claws igniting with controlled catastrophe as it collided with layers of soul-bound resistance that erupted into thousands of overlapping voices.
Polyxia intercepted Doom mid-charge, skeletal-draconic claws colliding with the Wolf of Nothingness in an impact that sent cascading shockwaves through reality, while simultaneously redirecting Fiend's momentum through curses that targeted his grip. Castorice stood at the center, the Servant of Death, her scythe Promise sweeping through arcs that held nothing but death.
At the same time, Sunny — the Hungered Mobius — met Castorice directly once more. Four arms collided with overwhelming reach, dual blades clashed against a scythe that seemed to determine outcomes before motion completed, and every exchange between them deepened the instability of a battlefield already failing to maintain coherence.
Polyxia's presence dominated one side of the battlefield like a living catastrophe stretched across horizons that should not have existed in a single space. The Wings of Ruin moved through the air with deliberate, terrible elegance as she engaged Doom and Fiend simultaneously, her skeletal-draconic body coiling and uncoiling, Cursed scales rippling with power. Every motion she made was accompanied not by force alone, but by layered Curses that rewrote environmental law in localized bursts. Gravity stopped being consistent. Distance stopped being trustworthy. Even causality began to develop resistance to itself.
It was as if the world had decided, independently, that everything touching Polyxia was now an enemy.
Doom, the Wolf of Nothingness, adapted first. Its body dissolved mid-motion into a shifting mass of gray fog, shedding its physical form entirely as Polyxia's Curses attempted to assign it new definitions. In fog form, it became less a creature and more a refusal to be targeted, slipping through the cracks of imposed reality as attacks passed through it without finding anything solid to anchor to. For several exchanges, it seemed almost untouchable, a concept moving through conceptual punishment.
Fiend was less fortunate, though far more resilient in its own way. The Devourer of Voracity met Polyxia head-on, its heavenly blackened armor igniting with internal heat as it endured layers of Cursed environmental hostility. The air around it began to attack it, temperature shifting unpredictably, spatial tension compressing its limbs, even momentum itself resisting its movements. Yet Fiend did not retreat. It pushed forward through every correction the world attempted to enforce upon it, claws carving through distortions as though defying reality was simply another form of breathing.
But resistance only delayed inevitability.
Polyxia exhaled.
It was not breath in the normal sense, but a layered release of draconic Curses that spread outward in fractal waves. The effect was immediate and horrifying in its simplicity: the world stopped being neutral. Every element of existence around Fiend and Doom became hostile by definition, accumulated Curses being released in a compressed beam.
Then the draconic breath struck.
It did not hit Doom directly. It defined the space Doom occupied as invalid.
The gray fog that was the Wolf of Nothingness flickered violently, attempting to reassert cohesion, but the Curse embedded within Polyxia's breath did not allow stable identity. It rewrote the fog's internal consistency into contradiction. The fog collapsed inward, compressing violently as if all its potential states were being forced into mutual cancellation.
For a moment, there was Nothing. Then, there was nothing.
The Spell registered it.
[Your Shadow has been destroyed.]
He did not react.
Not because he did not notice, but because noticing had long since ceased to be meaningful in a battlefield where destruction was a temporary inconvenience rather than a conclusion.
Fiend roared next.
The Devourer of Voracity attempted to adapt, its heavenly steel body reinforcing itself against environmental hostility, but Polyxia's Curses did not function like damage. It functioned like disagreement with existence. Everything about Fiend was being violently rejected by the world.
If it resisted heat, space became colder in unnatural spikes that shattered structural integrity. If it reinforced density, gravity inverted in localized bursts that tore at its joints. If it stabilized movement, time desynchronized across its limbs.
Fiend moved anyway.
It always moved.
But movement alone was no longer enough.
Polyxia descended through space in a sweeping arc, her skeletal-draconic tail carving through layered reality like a guillotine for concepts. The impact did not strike Fiend directly so much as it intersected every possible version of Fiend's position simultaneously. The result was not explosion, but erasure across multiple states of being.
The announcement repeated.
[Your Shadow has been destroyed.]
Fiend's form fragmented under the pressure of layered Curses and rejection, collapsing into scattered remnants of blackened steel and distorted essence. Even those fragments attempted to reconstitute, but Polyxia's Curses persisted, denying coherence. The Devourer of Voracity ceased to meaningfully persist as a singular entity.
And yet Sunny's expression remained unchanged.
Simply… accounting.
They were Shadows. Extensions. Assets. Tools. Loss was not unfamiliar territory; it was expectation. And unlike living beings, Shadows were not irreplaceable. He just had to kill new ones... better ones.
Polyxia's body coiled again, shrinking slightly as she redirected remaining Curses inward. Fiend's destruction had not been without consequence — her own skeletal frame bore fractures of backlash from overusing Curses, though they healed in real time, exchanging her accumulation of them to regenerate, causing her size to rapidly shrink. Doom's absence had already shifted the battlefield dynamic, freeing space in a way that felt almost intentional.
Space opened between Sunny and Castorice.
Castorice noticed immediately.
Sunny met her halfway.
Serpent and Ruan Mei — what remained of them — danced through the air as dual odachis once more, their blades intersecting Castorice's scythe in rapid, overlapping exchanges that fractured nearby space with each collision. Every strike carried Shadow Essence from Castorice's own reserves, which she was now actively siphoning from Sunny remain and ambient fragments scattered across the battlefield.
The dynamic had shifted.
She was not just defending.
She was consuming.
As they fought, a portion of Sunny's remaining Shadow Essence was forcibly extracted, drawn into Castorice's Cloak of Death where it was refined and repurposed into amplification. Her movements grew sharper, her timing more precise, her counterattacks heavier. The battlefield around her began to respond in kind, as though her existence alone was enough to impose pressure on reality.
Blasts of Shadow Essence erupted intermittently from her cloak, detonating outward in unstable arcs that struck Sunny's Shadowspawn form directly, eroding its structural coherence. Each impact caused portions of his massive form to destabilize, forcing him to recalibrate continuously just to maintain shape integrity.
And then Polyxia struck again.
Her tail swept through the battlefield in a wide, horizontal arc, not targeting Castorice or Sunny directly, but the Curses imprinted on his Shadow Shell. The impact landed with enough force to fracture it.
The Shadow Shell shattered.
Sunny's massive form dispersed violently, collapsing inward as shadow mass spilled across fractured ground like broken ink. What remained was his original human form — still wearing the Weaver's Mask and his dark robes — but stripped of the overwhelming Shadow Shell that had previously provided him leverage in its powerful form.
For the first time in this exchange, he looked small.
Though, this wasn't much of a problem.
Activating his transformation Ability, his seven shadows... turned into seven Sunnys. Eight Transcendent Titans in total stood, and each of them activated Shadow Step, teleporting at speeds so high that Castorice and Polyxia couldn't keep up.
All eight versions of him split up the twins' attention across the fractured space of the massive platform within the Spirit World simultaneously, sharing a unified consciousness distributed across multiple bodies. Each one moved independently, yet none were truly separate. One mind, multiplied.
The odachi formed of Ruan Mei's bone and flesh shattered under Polyxia's residual tail pressure moments earlier, its bone structure unable to maintain cohesion against the Curses. That left only Serpent — and an unmanifested Shadow, which he summoned into his Soul Sea.
Rain.
Rain's Aspect answered first.
All eight versions of Sunny spoke at once, their voices overlapping yet perfectly synchronized, not echoing but converging into a single authoritative utterance that did not belong to any one body. The Weaver's Mask dulled the emotional weight of the act, but not its conceptual force.
"You… are now the vile, evil, Corrupted Hand of Shadow."
The words did not function as insult or declaration. They functioned as Epithets — temporary bindings imposed onto existence through the manipulation of conditions and spiritual alignment. The effect was immediate and subtle, both Castorice and Polyxia shifting as their existences were temporarily overwritten.
For a fraction of a second, both of them were forced into roles they did not choose.
Corrupted. Evil. Vile.
Sunny did not wait for them to go to normal.
His gaze shifted slightly, and Serpent — still coiled in its bladed form — was thrown upward with brutal precision. It spun through fractured air, rising above the battlefield like a thrown execution order. For a brief moment, its form destabilized mid-flight, shadow peeling away to reveal something entirely different beneath it.
A tall, shadowed figure manifested around the blade's trajectory.
Feathery wings unfolded.
A golden halo ignited above its head.
The silhouette of Khaslana, Bearer of Chaos, descended into existence not as a summoned entity but as a replica, Serpent temporarily assuming a borrowed Divinity. Light bled outward from the form — not pure, not holy, but Unshadowed, a contradiction of darkness itself.
Sunny's voice followed immediately after, calm and precise, as though he were issuing a correction to reality.
"You are the bright, radiant, purifying, Unshadowed Bearer of Chaos."
The Epithets locked in.
For an instant, the battlefield dimmed as if all surrounding shadows had been evaluated and found incompatible with current conditions. Then Khaslana — Serpent in borrowed form — extended its influence.
The Unshadowed Domain activated.
Light expanded outward in a slow, inevitable bloom.
It did not illuminate so much as erase assumptions. Shadows were not pushed away — they were erased. The Cloak of Death surrounding Castorice began to unravel in strands of screaming souls, each layer of accumulated protection forcibly stripped of its structural legitimacy. Polyxia's presence fractured under the same principle, her draconic form forced to reconcile with a Domain that denied the existence of Shadows.
For the first time, Castorice staggered.
Her skeletal frame, previously protected by her accumulated shadows, was suddenly exposed to raw conceptual rejection. The Unshadowed Domain did not burn her like fire in a physical sense — it redefined her defenses as invalid constructs.
Burn marks appeared across Castorice's skeletal structure — not conventional flame, but luminous scars etched by contradiction itself. Her movement faltered as Promise briefly faded away. Even the voices within her cloak's remains screamed differently now, no longer unified, but scattered, as if the souls themselves were struggling to exist under new conditions.
Polyxia reacted faster, but not cleanly.
Her massive skeletal-draconic form convulsed as the Unshadowed Domain stripped away her existence. Each Curse she had accumulated — each rejection of nature — was forcibly peeled back or neutralized. All she could do was sacrifice Curses in order to heal herself.
It worked.
But at a cost.
Her vast, horizon-spanning body shrank violently, collapsing inward as though reality itself had decided she no longer required that scale to remain present. Bone segments restructured, curse density condensed, and spatial mass was forcibly redistributed into survivability rather than dominance.
When the process stabilized, Polyxia was no longer a town-spanning catastrophe.
She was the size of a bus.
Still dangerous. Still alive.
But no longer overwhelming.
The Unshadowed Domain faded shortly after, its conceptual contradiction exhausting Sunny's Essence. Serpent fell from the sky like a drained relic, collapsing back into its original onyx serpent form beside Sunny's nearest body, its borrowed Divinity gone, its presence diminished.
Sunny exhaled once.
The Epithets dissolved.
Rain's Aspect released its hold.
All eight versions of Sunny simultaneously returned their attention forward as the battlefield's rules returned to... some amount of normalcy, even as Irontomb and the Vile Thieving Bird spat concepts at each other.
Castorice stood amid the aftermath first.
Her skeletal form disappeared, her human skin carrying severe burns.
Polyxia, now drastically reduced in size, remained behind her, wings partially folded, Curses vastly diminished to less than a hundredth of what they had been. The Queen of Curses had traded scale for endurance.
Castorice huffed lightly, a sound that carried both exhaustion and disbelief, before speaking with a strained clarity.
"So… so that's how it is, Mister. You experimented on your sister to change her Soul Core into a Shadow Core. Then you killed her to keep her as your Shadow."
Sunny tilted his head slightly, one of his eight bodies adjusting posture in unison. There was no anger in the motion, no satisfaction either — only evaluation.
He chuckled softly.
It was not warm.
It was not cold.
"Her Aspect is wonderful, you know. It can both set conditions and provide me with a way to perform divinations by consulting the Spirit World. She is worth much more… than those Shadows you took from me."
Castorice did not respond immediately.
Instead, Polyxia shifted slightly behind her, lowering her head. The dragon's beak nudged faintly against the Servant of Death. The gesture was not aggressive. It was… hesitant.
Castorice listened.
Then, slowly, she straightened using Polyxia's snout as support, her burned body not at threat of collapsing. Her voice softened — not in weakness, but in recognition of something that did not fit the narrative she had constructed.
"Polyxia… she wanted to say that, perhaps she and I are short-sighted, or we don't know the full picture, but… this simply isn't Mister."
Sunny blinked.
Across all eight of his synchronized bodies, the motion was identical, perfectly mirrored.
A pause followed — not the pause of battle, but the pause of interpretation failing to resolve a contradiction.
Then he tilted his head slightly.
"Huh?"
Castorice did not answer his confusion immediately.
Instead, something unexpected broke through the exhaustion lining her expression — something small, fragile, and utterly out of place within a battlefield that had collapsed into layered contradictions of existence. She giggled. The sound was soft, almost breathless, as though it had slipped out before she could stop it, and yet it carried a strange warmth that did not belong in a war defined by annihilation.
"I thought something similar. I wondered… how can the Mister Sunny who would arrogantly praise his own food, who would watch as I made dolls, who would judge Lord Phainon's and Lord Mydei's competition, who argued with Lady Hyacine over Little Ica's diet, whose embrace was so warm… how could a person like that be the person I'm looking at now?"
The words did not strike him like an attack.
They lingered.
Hung in the air.
Refused to dissolve.
Sunny stared at her for a long moment, his eight bodies perfectly still as the shared consciousness behind them processed the statement not as a threat, but as something far more irritating — something that required attention. Slowly, his gaze shifted toward Polyxia, whose reduced draconic form remained close behind Castorice, watching him with that same quiet awareness that had always made her difficult to read. Then his attention returned to Castorice, and when he spoke, his tone carried the familiar sharpness he used to cut through anything he didn't want to engage with.
"Listen, I get that you have your attachment issues, but you've got to be either delusional or stupid. Didn't you say it yourself? I killed my sister for more power. I took the Coreflames of all your dead friends. I even killed one of them myself. Besides, you can't just choose the parts of me that you like and decide that the rest doesn't exist without being a little insane."
He paused.
And then, unexpectedly, he blinked.
Why was he humoring her?
The realization came a fraction too late. For a brief moment, none of his bodies moved. The battlefield still writhed around them — space folding, time stuttering, distant remnants of Irontomb's collapse rippling through existence while the Vile Thieving Bird vanished with its prize — but for Sunny, that noise dulled into irrelevance.
Castorice answered him before he could correct himself.
"I… suppose you aren't wrong. Perhaps the two of us are a little too obsessed. Perhaps we are delusional or stupid. But… isn't it the same for you?"
Sunny's expression tightened slightly.
"…What are you getting at?"
She took a step forward — not aggressively, not as part of an attack, but simply to close the distance in a way that felt more personal than tactical. Polyxia shifted subtly behind her, lowering her head as though giving her space to speak. Castorice continued:
"In all honesty, you're the worst brother in existence. You're one of the worst people I've ever met."
She did not hesitate when she said it.
There was no anger in her voice.
Only clarity.
"Even so… you just aren't looking at me like you did before. You looked at Miss Rain, and even though you were terrible at expressing it, it was obvious you loved her. Right now… you aren't looking at all."
Castorice smiled faintly, the expression fragile beneath the damage she had taken, yet undeniably real.
"Whatever your goal is, what happens after? You're seeking eternity… but wasn't that eternity right in front of you all along? You act as if you're hollow, but you were just emptying yourself. So what? Just because you were hurt once, you decide to throw away yourself and be somebody you're not?"
She hesitated for the briefest moment, as if organizing her thoughts, then continued with a quiet certainty that contrasted everything around them.
"So… uh, my point is that I believe I've seen enough of you over the centuries to know what is and isn't you. So stop throwing a tantrum… and find peace within me, Mister."
As she finished speaking, she raised her hand slowly, the tip of her index finger lifting toward him. Shadow Essence pooled there — not internally, not hidden, but openly gathered, condensing into something dense and dangerous. Behind her, Polyxia reacted in perfect synchronization, her jaws opening as the remnants of her Curses began to swirl outward, merging with Castorice's Essence, which carried the potency of countless souls.
What formed between them was not simply an attack.
It was a convergence.
A Curse layered with intent.
A Curse that carried the Absolute Law of Death — bringing out the Divine decree of Shadow God.
Sunny stood still.
For the first time in a very long time, something genuine twisted across his expression — not calculation, not indifference, but offense. It was subtle, but unmistakable.
Was she… questioning him?
Not his strength.
Not his methods.
But his resolve.
His ideals.
His perseverance.
The very foundation he had built himself upon.
The idea that he would find immortality no matter the cost had never been negotiable. It was not a desire that could be debated or softened. It was a certainty, an inevitability he had chosen long ago, because the alternative — an end, a conclusion — was the only thing that made existence equal, and he refused to accept that.
For a brief moment, silence stretched between them.
Then Sunny spoke.
"Fine, then. Don't curse me when I kill you."
All eight of his bodies dissolved instantly, collapsing back into shadows that surged inward and reassembled into a single form. That form did not remain human for long. It twisted, reshaped, and reconstructed itself into something far more rigid, far more defined — a mechanized knight clad in black, its surface absorbing light rather than reflecting it.
The transformation was not random.
It was deliberate.
Sunny knew this existence.
He had killed it.
And now he became it.
The fifth Step of Shadow Dance.
He did not merely copy the form — he became it, layering identity over identity until distinction no longer mattered. He was Sunny, but he was also AR-26710. He was an Outskirts rat, but he was also a soldier in Glamoth's Iron Cavalry. He was shadow, but he was flame.
Fragments of memory bled through the transformation.
His mother was nameless since birth.
His mother was Changing Star.
He had to kill someone, no matter what.
He had to kill someone, no matter what.
Black flames erupted across his armored form, not spreading outward but condensing tightly around him, their intensity rising as though fueled by something far deeper than Essence. Two wing-like structures formed behind him — not physical wings, but extensions of burning will, translucent and shifting like capes made of fire.
He raised his hand.
Pointed a single finger at Castorice.
The flames gathered.
Compressed.
Focused into a singular point of release.
Across from him, Castorice and Polyxia had completed their own preparation. The swirling mass of Shadow Essence and curses had stabilized into a concentrated beam, its structure feeding into itself in an endless cycle of reinforcement. It was not just power — it was inevitability shaped into motion.
For a moment, neither side moved.
The battlefield seemed to hold its breath.
In the distance, the last remnants of Irontomb collapsed inward, its impossible form breaking apart under the contradictions imposed by the Vile Thieving Bird, which clutched something unseen before vanishing entirely. Reality trembled in the aftermath, but none of it mattered here.
Because this—
This was the conclusion.
Sunny's desire sharpened.
To kill her.
To prove her wrong.
To reject everything she had just said.
To reach immortality.
The flames intensified.
Surely, it was enough.
Surely, it had to be enough.
Then both sides released.
The beams collided.
A column of black flames met a compressed mass of Cursed Shadow Essence, and the impact did not explode outward immediately. Instead, it compressed further, folding into itself as both forces struggled for dominance. The air screamed. Space fractured. Time stuttered violently as the clash refused to resolve.
Sunny, Castorice, and Polyxia all roared simultaneously, pouring everything they had into the attack.
Essence burned.
Will burned.
Everything burned.
The deadlock stretched.
And in that stretch—
Sunny's gaze met Castorice's.
Then Polyxia's.
Something shifted in him. Memories surged forward, uninvited and unrestrained. Small things. Insignificant things. Moments that had never mattered in the grand scheme of his plans, yet refused to disappear now that they had surfaced.
Her laughter.
The way she focused when making dolls.
Arguments that had no real consequences.
Warmth.
Something fragile.
Something real.
For a fraction of a second, he remembered.
Not as a concept.
Not as a calculation.
But as something he had actually felt.
His flames faltered.
Just slightly, but enough.
The balance broke.
The Cursed beam surged forward, overwhelming the weakened resistance of his flames and crashing into him with unstoppable force. The black fire collapsed inward, devoured by something that did not negotiate, did not hesitate, did not allow exceptions.
Sunny did not move.
He did not try to escape.
He understood immediately.
He had compromised.
And in compromising, the condition that sustained his immortality — the absolute refusal to waver — had been broken.
The Innate Ability failed.
The flames vanished.
The curses consumed him.
As Death closed in, as his existence began to unravel under the weight of something he could no longer resist, Sunny smiled genuinely smiled.
"Ah… there really is no Curse crueler than love."
A moment later...
His Nightmare was over.
***
Sunny's eyes opened once more, finding himself standing at an edge. Before him, the colossal steel corpse of a headless Lord Ravager remained, floating aimlessly in the Spirit World.
He blinked.
'...Why am I alive?'
And naked. His little Serpent was bare for the world to see.
...Who knew that freeballing in front of the corpse of a conceptual being could be so liberating?
"Brother-in-law, please stop swinging that around. What if it gets tangled up?"
Sunny closed his eyes.
"Don't worry, that isn't how it works..."
He trailed off, blinking for a moment as he turned towards his right. Polyxia, having returned to human form, sent him a look that lay somewhere between disappointment and relief. It seemed that she has completely run out Essence and Curses, considering the partial transformation that she constantly has active to conceal the Cursed scars on the right side of her face with a dragon mask wasn't currently active. Other than those markings, and the rest that was spread under her clothing, she was almost identical to Castorice.
Almost, since she wasn't as well-endowed.
Sunny sighed, creating pants made of shadows. His eyes landed on Castorice, who lay unconscious with her head on Polyxia's lap. He clicked his tongue out of jealousy.
"Lucky."
She glanced at him, right eye sealed shut as the remains of the Curses her Flaw placed on her body crossed over it. She pat the spot next to her, causing Sunny to sit down.
"If you were a good puppy, perhaps you'd be in her spot instead."
"Geez. Yeah, maybe I made a little mistake—"
"A massive mistake."
"Rub it in, why don't you."
Sunny clenched his hand. Seeing Castorice's state, he could guess what happened.
He died, permanently. He knew, since he could see it in his runes... [Unfulfilled] was grayed out, implying that its conditions weren't able to be met. In a way, it ironically represented that he has been fulfilled. He thought his shadow was hollow, and it became that way.
After killing him, it seemed that Castorice had spent whatever souls she hadn't burnt through to bring him back as a complete Shadow Creature. He felt no pull on his mind to serve her, nothing that limited his freedom.
Polyxia tilted her head, a small, yet smug smile gracing her beautiful face.
"Well? Do you have anything to say?"
Sunny sighed:
"Plenty. Like an apology. Because I am probably the sorriest person alive right now."
He stared at Irontomb's husk. It was honestly so foolish. In the beginning, he hurt Rain to keep her with him — as if she was some kind of possession. He pursued immortality to keep that state of 'being together' until the end of time, perhaps a reaction formed by the trauma of his parent's deaths. He had grown so focused on immortality that she became a tool for it, not the reason why he had pursued it in the first place.
Sunny dragged his hands down his face.
"I don't even have Rain's Shadow anymore. What a joke."
As Castorice killed him and brought him back as a... well, he was always a Shadow. In any case, Rain's Shadow was completely lost upon his death. He had foolishly chased something, and failed like a clown.
He blinked as Polyxia pulled him in by the ear.
"If you keep moping, I'll bite you."
"...Which form?"
"Dragon."
Sunny made a sour face:
"I think it's pretty reasonable to mope a little bit."
Polyxia stroked Castorice's hair with one hand, the other pinching Sunny's ear with all her Transcendent might.
"Well, it's fixable. The Demiurge is still sleeping somewhere in Irontomb's 'heart,' right? Of course, you decided to skip that and have that damnable bird fight 'It' instead, which almost got us killed, by the way."
Sunny briefly wondered if she was going to tear his ear off, before systematically putting everything together in his mind.
"Huh. The Demiurge Matrix should still have everyone recorded, so..."
Sunny paused, an awkward chuckle escaping him.
"Yeah, I don't think we can do that, yet."
Polyxia sent him a perplexed look.
"Why not?"
"Because the Vile Thieving Bird snatched it before dipping."
Polyxia blankly stared at him for a moment, before making a horrified expression.
"...Can't you be helpful and not cause any problems for one moment?!"
Sunny averted his gaze as Polyxia tightened her grip.
"Well, we can have make-up sex until Cassie wakes up—"
"Get the Demiurge Matrix back first, then we'll talk!"
"On it!"
"Not right now!"
Sunny pouted.
Then, after a moment, he leaned into Polyxia's grip, forcing her to let go lest her arm got awkward. Leaning his head against her shoulder, Sunny smiled.
"You know, Poly, your shoulder isn't that much worse than your lap."
"Stop talking already. And put on a shirt!"