A divine shadow stood in the heart of the illusory Tomb of Ariel.
Across a coffin, past a trail of light, perched a vile bird consumed by insanity.
The bird's form stirred,
talons shooting forward and plunging into the shade's chest.
Farther still did the appalling claws go, finding their prize inside the soul of Weaver's heir.
The loathsome thief grasped the strings of fate and tore.
At that moment, the terror and its spoils were plucked from creation itself, vanishing in a golden flash.
Limp, the shadow fell.
As the Nightmare Spell's illusory world began to be unmade, so too did the former puppet at the foot of Oblivion.
***
When Sunny regained consciousness, the world around him was replaced by an empty void. As he gazed down, his Memories were nowhere to be seen. His flesh was missing, and his bloody organs clung to the form of his skeleton. The ghastly sight startled him from his dazed state.
'w-What... the hell... is t—this?!'
The pain was unbearable, and yet he lacked air with which to scream. Without eyelids, he was unable to shield himself from the horrifying scene. He could sense the fragments of Weaver's lineage straining against a force attempting to unmake him.
He fought against the agony for what felt like an eternity. Maybe it truly was, if time even existed in this strange place. Eventually, his mind began to splinter. The pain remained, but it began to feel detached. Like a sound heard through a thick wall. In fact, it wasn't just pain. Every sensation, every thought, began to blur.
Sunny was no stranger to pain, so he knew that the effects on his mind were stemming from something else. The insidious force that was eroding his body and soul was stripping away his psyche as well.
If he didn't act now, it would be too late. He would lose the clarity of mind needed to form even the simplest thought.
He gazed at his surroundings. 'Where am I?'
Below him was a large golden thread, radiating with an indescribable brilliance. Stretching as far as he could see, many branches extended into putrid nodules that rested along the surface of the string. These nodes radiated a peculiar sense of corruption, ravenous rather than aggressive. For each putrid mass there also extended a thinner silvery thread reaching high above to a glowing bubble, dotted with countless stars connected in a dazzling tapestry.
Sunny quickly recognized the patterns on the bubble from the inner workings of the Nightmare Spell during his evaluations. It seemed he had found the chance to view the sorcery from beyond its confines. Having made this observation, he began to suspect that the vast thread below, and the corrupted nodules, represented time itself accompanied by the Seeds of Nightmare consuming the world.
To confirm his theory, Sunny looked more closely at his immediate surroundings. He noticed a almost imperceptible golden mobius strip surrounding him. Along the mobius strip, a flickering thread extended downward until it connected with the flow of time.
The end of the small thread connected to the mobius strip glided across the surface, while the end anchored on the flow of time oscillated across its vast length.
'Great! It seems Cassie's master plan to grant me freedom hasn't just severed my bond to Nephis, but seemingly to reality itself! Dissolving next to the river of time? What a splendid way to spend the rest of my free life!'
Spite, of course, would be among the last facets of his mind to persist. But, just as quickly, something else surfaced in his thoughts.
'Rain... Neph.. I want to see them again'
And thus, he began to act.
Sunny's weaves had slowed the erosion of his being, but he could sense them starting to give. He was struggling to maintain his consciousness.
He needed to escape this damnable space. The Tomb of Ariel loomed close, but the real version would simply be an inescapable prison guarded by a legion of dark butterflies. Sunny peered down at the flow of time.
With nothing to find purchase on, he was unable to propel himself. Well, it seemed that's how physics operated in this strange space, but he couldn't be too sure.
Sunny could not step into the shadows, nor could he unwrap his oh so valuable helpers from his body. His will surged, every fiber of his being channeled his desire to move back towards the flow of time. He tried every power at his disposal. The shells of the Azure Serpent and Crow-Crow refused to form. He quickly found that anything he tried to summon was obliterated by the force eroding what remained of him. He couldn't even access his Soul Sea or runes. He pulled on his faint connection to Serpent. He even fruitlessly attempted to push himself downward by channeling essence into his degloved feet. Nothing worked, yet he persisted, trying even the most absurd of ideas.
Slowly, he became aware of a noise resonating inside his eroding soul, growing louder alongside his will to survive. At the height of its volume, Sunny began to fall.
His weaves failed. Undeterred, he continued to will his descent. One by one, his Shadow Cores cracked, shattered, and dissolved. Soon, all that remained of his body was a skull with two exposed optic nerves floating in their sockets. His physical vision had failed long ago, leaving him with nothing but the monochrome view from his final remaining shadow.
'Damnation..'
In the final moments before Sunny lost consciousness, he harbored a desperate hope that momentum would still carry some part of him back to reality —if momentum even existed in a space like this. The last thing he perceived was a slight tug to the side.
***
The divine shadow's scant remains shifted course ever so slightly and fell in the direction of a small putrid node.
As the shadow collided with it, their final core shattered, and their body vanished.
This marked the end of their journey; though if one had looked incredibly closely, they would have seen tiny, mysterious, fragments slipping through the surface of the Seed of Nightmare.