Sunny had a nightmare again. Waking up in cold sweat, he couldn’t remember what he had dreamt about, but was momentarily paralyzed by an overwhelming feeling of a… dark, dreadful, devouring obsession.
His mental state must have suffered a greater blow than he had thought, for him to keep suffering from repeated nightmares. Well… that was not an unreasonable result, considering what had happened during the Battle of the Black Skull and after.
‘I should summon Nightmare and let him guard my sleep. He can subjugate a few of these dreams, too.’
As soon as Sunny thought that, he felt that something was wrong.
‘Wh…’
In the next moment, the raft beneath him lurched, and then, the calming murmur of the flowing water suddenly turned into a deafening roar.
Sunny was thrown off the cool wooden surface and tossed into the depths. Feeling water surge into his mouth and nose, he cursed, swiftly sensed the surrounding space, and tried to find the familiar piece of flotsam… it was his only refuge in the mist, after all.
The raft was a few meters above him. Struggling against the current, Sunny swam upward. There was something strange, though… the previously dark expanse of water around him was now suffused with light, and the higher he reached, the brighter it became.
Finally, Sunny breached the surface and shut his eyes tightly, blinded by sunlight.
The ever-present mist… was gone.
Pushing his body against the current, Sunny swam toward his reliable raft, climbed onto the slick wood, and coughed out a mouthful of water. Then, he brushed his wet hair back and tentatively opened his eyes.
After days spent in the twilight of the ghostly mist, it took them a few seconds to adjust to the brightness of the day. Slowly, a breathtaking vista revealed itself from white radiance.
Sunny gasped slightly.
In front of him, as far as the eye could see, was a vast expanse of clear, sparkling water. Gentle sunlight reflected from its surface, making the whole world seem as if it was littered with gemstones.
High above, in the great firmament of the blue sky, seven suns were shining with beautiful light.
One sun was rising from the waters far away to his right, painting the sky and the flowing water with a thousand shades of soft lilac. The colors of dawn slowly brightened as they gradually turned into a vast expanse of vibrant blue right above Sunny. Far to his left, another sun was drowning in the bloodred water, turning the world into a conflagration of fiery crimson light.
The eastern horizon was at dawn, and the western horizon was at dusk. However, it was the middle of the day where Sunny was.
He stared at the incredible sight for a while, awed, then shifted slightly and looked back.
Behind the raft, the world was exactly the same — there was nothing but water. No sign of the mist remained, as if it had never existed at all.
Sunny sighed, then turned north again… or at least in the direction he chose to call north, considering that the only rising of the seven suns was to his right. It was also the direction of the current that continued to carry his raft forward.
He spent some time taking in the strange, wondrous landscape of the Nightmare world.
‘It reminds me of something.’
Sunny lingered for a few moments, wondering. Then, he took a deep breath.
The seven radiant suns, the vast expanse of clear water… it reminded him of a Soul Sea. His own would have been similar, if he had radiant soul cores instead of the lightless shadow cores.
Of course, he only had five of those, and the dark waters of his soul were still and unmoving. His Soul Sea was also infinitely smaller. There were other differences, too.
Still… the world in front of him seemed too eerily beautiful to be a mundane place.
Which posed a question…
‘Where the hell am I?’
There was no desert in sight. There was no black pyramid, either. All Sunny could see was the bright water and the seven strange suns. It was a known fact that the sky, including the celestial bodies populating it, was not uniform across the different regions of the Dream Realm… still, he was pretty sure that he had never been anywhere near a place like that.
And there was definitely nothing like that within the Nightmare Desert.
Sunny could reluctantly imagine that the Spell had sent him into a past so distant that the desert was still the bottom of a sea. However, even that would not explain the strangeness of the vibrant sky above him.
“Just what kind of Seed did we enter?”
There was the sound of splashing, and the Sin of Solace calmly walked across the surface of the water to stand atop the wooden raft again. He was perfectly dry and unbothered by the sudden change of scenery. There was a slight smile on his porcelain face.
“Quite a sight, isn’t it?”
Sunny nodded silently, then suddenly looked intently at the spot where the apparition was standing.
The pale wood was dark and wet with water. When the mist had mysteriously disappeared, the raft must have overturned… revealing its bottom side.
And that underside was riddled with chaotic, manic lines.
They were runes, thousands of them, all blending into one demented tapestry. But… not only runes. Sunny recognized some of the crudely carved symbols, but others were entirely unfamiliar to him.
With a shudder, he noticed that there were even the familiar letters of the human language.
Translated by the Spell, all the symbols were repeating the same words:
“Wish wish wish be careful of wish wish be careful of what you wish for wish for wish for wish for wish WISH WISH BE CAREFUL OF WHAT YOU WISH FOR BE CAREFUL BE CAREFUL OF WHAT YOU WISH WISH WISH FOR…”
Sunny froze.
The words continued, spilling over the ancient wood as they broke and crisscrossed each other. Just like the single rune on the other side of the raft, it looked like they had been scratched into the incredibly durable wood by someone’s nails. The lines were rough and frantic, but deep and forceful.
Sunny scowled, feeling an uncontrollable desire to move away from the deranged weave of runes. He felt a sense of dire madness radiating from them, and was irrationally wary of being infected by it. However, there was nowhere to move — the whole raft was covered by the mad litany of twisted symbols.
The part of it that he could see, the part where the Sin of Solace was standing calmly, and even the part where he was kneeling were all riddled with them.
Suddenly tense, Sunny looked away and glanced at the beautiful expanse of sparkling water once again.
…Somehow, it didn’t seem as dreamy anymore.
