The heart of the Estuary was out there, in front of them, looming in the boundless darkness like a black monument to the harrowing battle Ariel had once fought against the Stone Titan.
The first time around, Sunny had simply been drawn here by the currents after following the Guiding Light through the mist. The sacred relic of the sybils could guide its owner anywhere — or rather, to anyone. As long as one knew their True Name.
The True Name that allowed Sunny to reach the heart of the Estuary had been placed in Cassie's memories by Torment, and then erased from Cassie's mind as soon as she channeled it into the Guiding Light. It had to be erased because Cassie could not have withstood knowing it for more than a few seconds... not back then, at least.
During the Nightmare, neither Sunny nor Cassie knew whose name Torment had bequeathed upon them. But come to think of it... it had to have been the True Name of the Cursed Terror who had made its nest in the heart of the Estuary — of the Thieving Bird.
Merely knowing the name of a Cursed Terror would plant a seed of Corruption into the soul of an Ascended, as long as they remained aware of it for more than a few seconds. In fact, even enduring it for those seconds had been a miraculous feat on Cassie's part.
'Torment...'
Although the harrowing Plague was long dead — or had never existed at all, rather, just like the Mad Prince had only ever existed in the Nightmare — and could not come back to haunt him, Sunny still felt uneasy when thinking about her.
Torment had known countless things that even he did not, and took them all with her to the grave.
In any case, today, Sunny did not need the Guiding Light to find the heart of the Estuary. The mist was gone, after all, and so were the turbulent waters. So, the stone edifice of the Great River's source was revealed in all its daunting immensity, hidden in the darkness, and all they had to do was steer the ship towards it.
Because of that, Sunny could get a much better look at the heart of the Estuary than he had in the Nightmare.
All three of them — Sunny, Nephis, and Ananke — remained silent, looking at the colossal black sphere in subdued silence.
'...Huh.'
The Estuary was irregularly shaped and could only roughly be called a sphere. In truth, it resembled an ellipse more, or perhaps even an inverted pyramid with rounded edges. Several tall, strangely shaped mountains protruded from its surface, their peaks gaping with dark openings like volcanic craters.
It was a shape that seemed difficult to describe, but could actually be easily relayed with one word.
The heart of the Estuary — and therefore of the entire Tomb of Ariel — was shaped... like a heart. It was a titanic heart made of black stone. The mountains were the aortae, and the Great River used to flow through them like blood.
Which it had been, once.
Sunny had assumed that the Estuary had been fashioned out of the heart of the Stone Titan, but never thought that the resemblance would be so literal.
'Crazy bastard.'
Ariel, the Demon of Dread, had really just ripped out an Unholy Titan's heart and used it to create his impossible River of Time in the pyramid built from the Titan's corpse.
"We are here."
His voice echoed in the darkness, making Nephis and Ananke shift uncomfortably. Ananke remained silent for a long while, and then smiled bitterly.
"So this was where Aletheia came searching for truth. This was what she found... where the curse that haunted and destroyed my people was born."
Sunny looked at her, lingered for a bit, and nodded.
"Yes. But it is not that simple, either."
He looked ahead, at the dark immensity of the dead Unholy One's heart, and sighed.
"Aletheia was not searching for just any truth. She was searching for the truth of how to slay the gods — and she found it here, in the graveyard of secrets that Ariel had chosen to bury. So, it was not just the curse that destroyed your people that was born here... it was the great curse that destroyed the entire world."
He paused for a moment, and then added solemnly:
"This was where the Doom War truly began. Where its seed was planted into fertile soil."
And where his personal curse had taken hold as well.
A bitter smile appeared on Sunny's lips, too.
"Land the ship. Turn its bottom toward the stone in advance, though... the laws of existence work strangely here."
As the Time Slayer approached the heart of the Estuary, they experienced a dizzying sense of the world shifting. Suddenly, the weathered surface of the black rock, which had been ahead of them, was below them instead, and the dark expanse of the Tomb of Ariel that had been behind them was suddenly above them like a lightless sky. The miraculous ship landed softly on the rock, and when the three of them disembarked, it disappeared with a shimmer, drawn into Ananke's Soul Sea. Sunny glanced at her, briefly wondering if all Supremes kept a flying ship in their souls. Was that a memo all Supremes except for him had received, or were Ananke and Nephis just unique in that way?
Was there a secret Supreme Academy where Sunny had not been invited to, for all aspiring Sovereigns to learn such handy tricks?
Then again, he had a whole wandering Citadel in his own Soul Sea at the moment, so who was he to complain?
For a moment, Sunny wondered what would happen if he summoned the Nameless Temple and let Ananke tether herself to its Gateway. Would she be able to cross the realm boundary and enter the waking world, or would the Gateway remain dormant, since she had never been a person of the War Realm to begin with?
They would have to check and see later... Sunny was aware, of course, that he was suddenly thinking about all these unrelated matters simply to ignore the complicated mixture of emotion brewing in his heart. He finally returned to the Estuary... the place where he had won his long-awaited freedom at the cost of losing his fate, his companions, and his place in the world.
'Was it worth it?'
Sunny felt like he had made a terrible, irrevocable mistake by abandoning his friends to pursue liberation. That was why he was here to undo what he had done, after all. He was full of regret and longed for all the things he had lost, and he understood what true freedom was much better now, as well.
But, at the same time...
He felt that the answer was yes. That it all had been worth it, in the end.
If he were the person he had been back then, and was given the same choice, he would still choose to break his shackles and become free.
Perhaps someone more enlightened and wise could have made a different choice, but not Sunny... not the man he used to be, at least. And he had to break his chains first to become the man he was today — the man who accepted the burden of responsibility, which bound him like a chain, and was ready to tether himself to the people he held dear as well, even if it meant sacrificing his freedom.
Sunny had to break the chains that had been forced upon him first in order to come back and choose them of his own free will, here in the Estuary...
What had started here was bound to end here, as well, just like the Great River used to begin and end in the Estuary once.
2944
"What a dreary place."
Ananke's voice sounded subdued.
As they gazed upon the surface of an Unholy Titan's heart, she looked around with a peculiar expression, a pale smile playing on her lips.
"I must say, my lord and lady... it is a strange thing, to witness the dark truth that lies beneath the surface of your world. We knew, of course, the legend of how the Demon of Dread had built the Tomb of Ariel and created the Great River from the flesh and blood of the Stone Titan. But seeing the Titan's heart with your own two eyes, hidden here in the darkness, is an entirely different experience."
Sunny gave her a long look, then shrugged.
"Hideous things hidden in the darkness beneath the bright surface of reality are the theme of all existence, it seems."
He sighed and turned to face the distant mountains.
"Those mountains ahead of us are where we can enter the true Estuary. So... let's go."
They traveled across the vast expanse of black rock in silence.
The Estuary was different from how Sunny had remembered it. It felt just as eternal and indestructible, lost in absolute darkness, but there was no roar of the rushing water surrounding him from all sides like a maddening whisper.
There was no graveyard of ships, either — no countless Chain Breakers and ketches laying shattered on the rocks like a great monument to all his sins.
Instead, there were things that were not supposed to be here, but had inexplicably found their way to the Estuary nonetheless — ruins of magnificent gilded structures, carcasses of enormous Nightmare Creatures that glistened in the dark, giant formations of glimmering crystal, and the like.
It seemed that these were the things that the Thieving Bird had stolen, then grew bored with and discarded without actually taking them into its nest.
Ananke stopped for a moment, glancing at a particular ruin. Sunny felt that it was vaguely familiar, as well, albeit it was hard to tell due to how utterly destroyed the structure was.
"It's the Knowledge Temple of Fallen Grace."
Ananke's voice sounded confused.
"It had been sealed, cut free, and carried away by the River long before Fallen Grace itself was destroyed and pulled over the Edge by the currents, plummeting into the darkness. What is it doing here?"
Sunny raised an eyebrow.
'Right. This is the drowned temple where we fought the Defiled Sybil.'
He lingered for a moment, then looked away.
"It must have spent thousands of years laying on the floor of the Tomb. All kinds of things must have accumulated there over the eons... and all kinds of harrowing beings, as well... so the Thieving Bird would undoubtedly visit to pick up a few curios."
The lightless expanse on the bottom of the great pyramid was most likely a special kind of hell. Some of the beings that had populated its terrifying expanse were now probably in Antarctica, while some must have made it outside the Tomb of Ariel. Sunny had no doubt that plenty remained, though.
So, he wasn't in a hurry to go where the Thieving Bird had gone bravely and discover the truth for himself.
They continued forward cautiously. Soon enough, the vast tunnel that Sunny had once traversed by using the Mirror of Truth revealed itself from the darkness, as colossal and daunting as before.
The circular entrance was surrounded by tall pillars. There were weathered stone steps leading up to the maw of the tunnel, some of them cracked by the passage of ages. Jagged pieces of black rock lay scattered on the ground, and an inexplicably eerie feeling permeated Sunny's entire being as he gazed upon the dark portal leading into the dead heart of an Unholy Titan.
"The two of us must not go any further." Sunny was not sure if he could brave the tunnel without succumbing to the Corruption. Being a Shadow Creature, he was supposed to be more resistant to it than most, but there were parts of him that were still human as well. So, there was no guarantee that he would escape being near the dreadful records of the Void unscathed. Ananke hesitated for a short while, then pulled one of the Ark Amulets from beneath her mantle and offered it to Nephis.
"It is fortunate that you are a Shaper, Lady Nephis. I wouldn't have been able to teach you how to use these amulets otherwise." The Ark Amulets were enchanted relics, but they were not Memories. Instead, they had been carved from Daeron's bones by the survivors of the Ark and enchanted using a combination of Shaping and runic sorcery, so special Verses had to be invoked in order to use them.
Ananke had taught Nephis the Verses while they traveled to the heart of the Estuary, noting how deep and stalwart her knowledge of the Names was... not knowing that Nephis had received her first lessons in Shaping from Ananke herself.
Nephis took the white amulet, studied it for a few moments, and then nodded.
There was no point in wasting time. Sunny threw one last glance at the mouth of the tunnel, then turned to Nephis and said in a somber tone:
"There is no telling what we'll encounter inside. So, summon us back the second you leave the tunnel. Alright?"
Nephis gave him a glance and smiled faintly.
"Alright."
Sunny hesitated for a moment.
"Well, alright. Let's do it, then."
He and Ananke stood in front of Nephis as she recited the Verse.
An odd feeling overcame Sunny...
It was as if he dreamt of a warm meadow, the smell of the grass in the wind, and a gentle sun shining in the blue sky above him.
When he opened his eyes again, he was already on the shores of the lake that lay hidden in the heart of the Estuary.
...It was obvious that Nephis had not summoned them as soon as she left the tunnel, though.
In fact, Sunny felt that quite a bit of time had passed since she saw them last.
The air was filled with the scent of ash.