After Nephis slew the Crimson Terror, the Spire began to crumble.
The Gateway collapsed first, vanishing in a blinding flash of essence. Then came the tower itself—groaning, cracking, and collapsing into ruin. Above it, the artificial sun of the Forgotten Shore dimmed… then died. Its light snuffed out in a single breath, plunging the world into an endless, suffocating night.
With no sun, no sea, and the crimson coral labyrinth reduced to crumbling dust, the Forgotten Shore became a corpse of a realm. A lightless wasteland stripped of wonder and color. The creatures of Nightmare had been culled, their howls silenced. What remained was silence, ash, and memory.
Nephis wandered through that dying land like a ghost.
She traveled back to the Dark City and spent some time hunting down the remaining abominations and preparing for a long journey. With the help of the Dawn Shard and the Nameless Sun, many powerful Nightmare Creatures fell to her blade. For a while, she entertained the idea of trying to cross the Hollow Mountains but eventually had to abandon it.
She knew that the deadly mountain chain stretched further than Ravenheart in the west. There was no passage there and going north meant moving further away from human Citadels. So, it only left east. There was a chance that the Hollow Mountains were not as tall and unassailable there, or even that there was an end to them somewhere in those unexplored regions. She left the Dark City and retraced the steps of the journey that she, Cassie, and Sunny had made before avoiding the Ashen Barrow.
Following the jagged edge of the Hollow Mountains, she pressed deeper into the white waste.
The desert defied reason. Nothing could survive its heart. Not men, not monsters. Even on the periphery, she came close to death. The heat was blistering by day, and the cold turned marrow to ice by night. The deeper she ventured, the more the world twisted—silent, vast, and charged with an ancient, echoing fury. The inner reaches were a Death Zone, she was certain. Even Nephis would not walk out of them.
And now?
Now she sat in the white sands beneath the bark of a withered tree so ancient it seemed to have been fossilized in place. Her armor was cracked and dust-stained. Her hair clung to her face, stiff with sweat and grit. Her hands trembled sometimes—not just from weakness, but also from something worse.
She was fraying.
Her thoughts drifted more and more. Sometimes, she could barely recall her old life. The waking world felt like a distant dream, a pale imitation of the Dream Realm. There were moments when she was sure this place—this strange, brutal world—was the only real one. That she had always belonged to it. That was her only truth.
Only one thing kept her tethered.
Sunny's runes.
She smiled faintly, just for a second. She can't remember clearly but two or perhaps three months ago, his runes had changed. He had gained a new Attribute—something unheard of. Not only did Sunny carry the Weaver's legacy, but few days ago he obtained a second Divine-ranked Memory. Where did it come from? His Aspect Legacy, perhaps?
He was changing. Growing. Becoming something more.
Just like me…
She wasn't alone anymore, either. The desert had granted her company.
Strange, yes—but company nonetheless.
One of them was Eurys, one of two skeletal figures nailed cruelly to the white bark of the ancient tree she leaned against. When she first approached, she thought he was dead. But he had raised his skull, smiled with hollow eyes, and called himself a humble slave.
And beside him was Azarax—the Azarax. Plague of Steel. Conqueror of a Hundred Thrones. King Among Kings.
He introduced himself with arrogant flair, chestless and boasting even in undeath. At first, she thought he was delusional.
But then she felt it—the weight of his presence, the lingering echo of his soul.
Azarax wasn't boasting.
He was that powerful.
And so the three of them sat—one warrior, one slave, and one king—beneath a dead tree in a dead land. A strange company of ruin and memory.
Eurys cleared his throat.
Or at least, he gave the impression of doing so.
He had no throat. No tongue. No lungs. Just brittle bones nailed to the bark of an ancient, lifeless tree. And yet—somehow—he spoke. His voice echoed from nowhere, dry and spectral, as if drawn from the whisper of the wind itself. Nephis had long stopped trying to understand how.
Perhaps some souls were simply too stubborn to fall silent.
"Hey, hey!" the skeleton rasped with mock impatience, his empty sockets fixed on her. "How long are you going to sit there, glowing gloomily like some tragic statue? Aren't you going to start moving again?"
Nephis gave a tired sigh, her shoulders slumping slightly beneath the weight of cracked armor. She didn't look at him.
"The last battle drained me," she murmured, voice barely above a whisper. "I'll move when my strength returns. Not before."
Eurys let out something like a chuckle. A sound made of dry mirth and rattling bones. He turned his hollow gaze toward the horizon, as if remembering something—or someone.
"Another Nephilim…" he mused, more to himself than to her. "You remind me of an old friend. Though she was even more abominable than you. Hard to imagine, I know."
Nephis finally turned to face him, an eyebrow arched in flat suspicion. Her expression was neutral, her tone sharper.
"You mentioned someone crossed this desert before. Who was it?"
Eurys tilted his skull slightly, a strange glint of amusement dancing in his sockets. If he could smile, he would have.
"Oh, my. Yes… there was someone. A child, of all things. No more than thirteen. Terrifying little thing. Disturbing, even. Far more monstrous than you, and that says quite a lot, since you are Nephilim."
Nephis blinked. For a fleeting moment, her eyes widened—shock flashing across her face like a crack in ice—but she quickly concealed it, returning to her usual blank, impassive calm.
"And who," she asked evenly, "might that be?"
Eurys made a show of trying to shrug, his nailed bones twitching feebly against the bark.
"Ah… the name escapes me... Wait, no, it's coming back. Yes, yes! He had amethyst eyes—cold and indifferent, like the Cosmos. Skin pale as death. Hair like fresh-fallen snow. And the stench—gods, the stench—he reeked of void and sin. It clung to him like a second skin. I remember now. He called himself... Icarus. He said he was prince, The Morning And Evening Star."
Nephis went still.
All stillness. No breath, no blink. Her sword-hand trembled once—then stilled.
The name struck her like a thunderclap, echoing in the chambers of her mind, scattering disbelief and caution. A child. A child had crossed this desert? That was madness. Sleeper or Awakened—it didn't matter. Even Transcendents perished in these dunes. It was not merely improbable. It was impossible.
But the name...
Icarus.
Her brother.
A name she had buried beneath the ashes of memory and despair. A name she dared not think of anymore. Her family was gone—burned away in fire and war. There was no one left. No one…
Was there?
A quiet flame flickered in her eyes—white and faint, but unmistakably alive. Hope, fragile and defiant, sparked in the void she had become.
Icarus.
Her brother was alive.
Her brother had crossed the desert of death… and survived.
She bowed her head, a single breath escaping her lips like a prayer lost to the wind.
Nephis lifted her head slowly, her voice trembling, threaded with desperation and hope barely held together.
"Is… is he alive? Where is he now? What was he doing here? What happened to him?"
Eurys shifted uneasily, his bones creaking against the ancient bark to which he was bound. Something in her tone unnerved him. What was this emotion? What was wrong with her?
"Well… I don't know," he replied, voice dry as the desert wind. "He came seeking something. Said he was looking for Aletheia of the Nine. An old acquaintance of mine, long gone now. Dead or worse, really. When I told him she was unreachable. he asked for another Seeker."
The skeleton paused, his sockets narrowing slightly.
"So i sent him to the battlefield. The one where the undead fight every night, doomed to claw and tear at each other for all eternity. A fitting place for a lunatic chasing phantoms."
A silence lingered between them. Then Eurys added with a dismissive click of his jaw:
"He's probably dead, of course. Muttered something about challenging the Supremes. Hah! An Awakened challenging Demigods? That's not ambition—that's suicide. So yes, he's most likely nothing but bones and ash now."
The words landed like knives.
Nephis's expression fractured. The fierce white light that had briefly ignited in her bleak gray eyes faltered, flickered—and finally died. Something within her collapsed, silent and unnoticed by all but herself. She forced her face into stillness once more, but inside... inside, a fragile spark of hope had just been smothered.
Even Icarus couldn't survive that.
Even brilliant Morning Star couldn't possibly…
"Why… w-why would he do something so… so stupid?"
The question fell apart, barely more than breath. Despair tinged her voice now, quiet and lost, like a child reaching for a hand that was no longer there.
Eurys remained silent. Watching her curiously, unnerved and yet intrigued. There was pain in her voice, a kind of trembling loss he hadn't expected from a creature like her. Who was this boy to her?
Wait…
The boy was an abomination, yes—reeking of void and ancient sins. That scent still haunted his senses. And she was Nephilim. The resemblance was subtle… but now that he thought about it…
Wait.
Could it be…?
"Oh my," Eurys said suddenly, realization dawning in his voice like an eclipse. "He did say something ridiculous about 'a big brother's duty' and 'saving the world'—such melodramatic drivel! He mentioned having a little sister. Said he had to protect her. Heroic nonsense, if you ask me. Always with the world-saving types, hmm? I once had a friend like that—foolish to the end."
Nephis didn't respond. She stared at the pale sand, hollow-eyed. Her emotions roiled beneath the surface, too raw to name. Tears didn't fall—there was no moisture left in this forsaken wasteland. Even sorrow dried up here.
Hope… was a cruel thing. A flame that warmed for a moment—only to leave your soul frostbitten when it died.
But Hope was all that was left from her.
Then, suddenly, a scoff cut through the silence like a crack of thunder.
"Dead?" Azarax finally spoke, his voice laced with scorn. "Like hell he is! My disciple doesn't die so easily. He learned from me, after all!"
Eurys rolled his sockets—if he could've rolled his eyes, he would have. He was far too familiar with Azarax's grandstanding. Nephis, meanwhile, sat unmoving, the sand brushing against her boots. The wind whispered across the dunes like distant voices of the forgotten. She slowly turned toward him, a quiet intensity returning to her gaze.
Even if Icarus had died… even if she never saw him again… she wanted to know. She had to know. Who was her brother, truly? The world had forgotten him. Overshadowed by their parents' fame, he had become a nameless ghost—a tragic footnote in a lost war.
But she hadn't forgotten. Not anymore.
And now she knew who exactly killed her brother.
"What kind of person was he?" she asked softly.
Azarax let out a laugh that seemed to rattle the very bones of the desert.
"Oh, he was the only one with taste! He recognized me for what I truly am—the rightful King of All! Unlike you, brat."
He puffed up—figuratively, of course—as though awaiting applause.
"He acknowledged my brilliance and begged to learn from me! So I took pity on the poor soul and taught him my combat technique, essence manipulation, the works. He was a bit clumsy with a sword—utterly hopeless, actually. But the spear? Much better. Made sense. He was a sorcerer, not a warrior. His aspect wasn't suited to combat at all."
Azarax clicked his tongue, mildly annoyed by the memory.
"Still, he was stubborn. And clever. Too clever. Could hold his own in hand-to-hand just fine. I suppose even without physical augments, he made up for it with brains and—well, of course—with my unparalleled teachings!"
He raised his ghostly chin proudly.
"It was his wisdom that impressed me the most. After all, he recognized greatness at first glance!"
Nephis stared at him, expression blank.
A long silence followed.
Then she exhaled softly, almost a sigh.
Eurys was visibly struggling not to laugh, turning his skull away as if the effort alone would grant him mercy. If his hands weren't nailed to the bark, he might have buried his face in them.
Nephis slowly closed her eyes in deep, soul-crushing mortification.
So that's how he did it...
Her brother—her glorious, noble brother—had survived the horrors of the desert… by kissing the ass of a skeletal narcissist nailed to a tree.
He probably curtsied, too.
He'd extorted the dead.
Shameless.
Absolutely, irredeemably shameless.
And yet, in the corner of her mouth… a faint twitch. Not quite a smile. Not quite grief. Just something quietly alive.