There was no transition—no crossing from one space to another. Instead, reality unravelled around him.
Up and down ceased to exist. Forward and backward became meaningless. He moved, but not in any direction, his body shifting without momentum, slipping through a place that refused to hold shape.
The ground was there. Then it wasn't.
Light bent, but there was no source. Shadows pooled deeply in places that should not cast them. Space stretched and collapsed, folding into itself, yet somehow never moving at all.
Sunny exhaled slowly. He had stepped into a place without rules.
A fractured weave.
Strings hummed faintly around him, stretched across something unseen, threading through the void like veins of reality. They did not sway, did not tremble—yet they pulled, dragging at perception, demanding attention without movement.
This was not simply a hidden room.
It was a broken piece of something far greater.
Somewhere ahead—or perhaps behind—a shape hovered.
Sunny's eyes narrowed. He had no sense of distance, yet the thing was undeniably there, waiting in a space that did not hold weight.
He moved—or thought he did. The world shifted again, bending under the concept of action rather than the reality of it.
And then, he saw it.
It was physical. Material, yet unnatural.
A structure resembling a dreamcatcher, woven from threads that should not exist. The strings glistened with conflicting qualities—soft as silk, rigid as steel, shifting between textures that refused to settle. No pattern held for long, each loop unmaking itself only to be remade an instant later.
Symbols lined its outer ring. True Names, carved in an ancient script Sunny could not understand—fractured meanings, pressing against his mind without revealing their significance. They whispered, but the moment his mind began to grasp at them, they shifted away.
It was lighter than air. Heavier than fate.
And at its centre—
Sunny's breath slowed.
A divine flame swirled violently, twisting against pure darkness. They clashed, battling in silence, yet never overcoming each other. The fire did not consume the void, and the darkness did not smother the light. Their movements were seamless, intertwined, as if this conflict was never meant to resolve—only to exist.
From its core, ethereal strings extended outward, shimmering faintly. They did not move, yet they pulled, threading through fate and existence alike.
Weaver's strings.
Interwoven with them, golden sorcery flickered—a power meant for gods, the same force that had bound the Chain Lords' deaths into their blades.
The artifact did not simply exist within reality.
It held it. Defined it. Undid it.
Sunny remained still.
Everything about this thing was wrong—or perhaps too right. It did not belong here, but it had never belonged anywhere else.
His instincts whispered against the presence of something impossible, yet Blood Weave sang with recognition.
He reached forward—
And space collapsed.
Everything twisted inward.
Reality shuddered.
And something recognized him.
Sunny did not step forward.
He wasn't sure he could.
The mist shifted, curling inward, swallowing the space around him in slow, deliberate waves. It did not move with the wind—it moved with intent, threading itself between the broken strands that hung suspended in the void.
The world had lost its shape.
There was no up, no down, no forward or backward. Just existence without structure, unraveling at the edges.
And then—
Something spoke.
The words did not pass through the air. They did not vibrate against his ears.
Sunny felt them.
They sank into his spine, curling around his bones, slipping between his ribs with a sensation that was not pain, but something worse.
Understanding forced upon him.
The voice was rough, husky, its tone laced with a maddened excitement—as if it was not simply speaking, but delighted by the act of asking. The cadence felt unstable, flickering between clarity and distortion, never fully committing to either.
"What must be unravelled before it is known?"
The words pressed deeper, wrapping around his lungs, coiling against his very being.
Sunny did not answer immediately.
The mist thickened. The severed threads shuddered.
The thing was waiting.
His mind worked quickly.
Unravelled before it is known.
This was not just a question—it was woven into the fabric of this place, the very essence of what had come undone.
What did unravelling mean here?
Sunny's gaze drifted to the threads. Their ends were frayed, torn, half-erased from existence. They had once belonged to something whole—something structured. Now, they simply hung, untethered.
Something once written. Something stripped away.
His breath slowed.
This place was like him.
Lost. Forgotten. Unmade.
The thought settled heavily. He was no longer fated. No longer tied to the certainty of destiny.
He had once been something defined—a force shaped by the weave of existence. Now, he was severed.
His true name—Lost From Light—was a title that belonged to nothing. No past, no future, no tether to the world that once acknowledged him.
Just like the threads in the mist, hanging in the void, waiting for something—or someone—to define them.
Before something was known, before it became real, it had to be unraveled.
Unwound from the weave that bound it.
Separated from certainty.
Pulled from the pattern that dictated what it was.
Only then could it be understood.
He inhaled, letting the weight of the space press against him.
Then he spoke.
"A name."
The mist recoiled.
The voice did not respond immediately.
The silence stretched, shifting between expectation and hesitation, lingering at the edges of an answer not yet revealed.
Then—
Reality trembled.
The severed threads pulled taut, straining against the space, bending toward something unseen.
The mist collapsed inward.
And Sunny fell.
Into something deep, into a world that did not acknowledge him.
It wasn't like being rejected by the War Realm, where the rules strained against him, resisting his presence but ultimately yielding. This was different. Harsher. Deeper. More absolute.
Existence itself was pressing against him, trying to force him out, as if his very presence was an error that needed correction.
It made his bones feel heavier. His breath came slow, dragging against air that did not want to fill his lungs.
But he had escaped fate once before.
And if it dared to bind him again—
He would fight it.
Sunny clenched his fists. He refused to vanish, refused to let something so insulting dictate his existence.
The shadows heard him.
And they answered.
They gathered around him, curling around his limbs, pressing against his back like unseen sentinels. They did not recoil, did not hesitate—they knew him, even if the world did not.
He was their master, their lord, their sovereign.
The weight of rejection remained, but it did not break him.
He pushed forward, stepping out of the alley.
And immediately—
He realized something was wrong.
The Outskirts were alive.
Not in the way they should be. Not as remnants of a world that had already fallen.
No, they were full, packed with far too many people.
That wasn't supposed to be possible.
The Dream Realm had been their salvation, their escape from this dying husk of a city. Tens of thousands had been evacuated, whisked away from the crumbling remains of reality. The Outskirts—once teetering on the brink of collapse—had emptied overnight, swallowed by the grand migration into the unknown.
But now—
Now it was as if the evacuation had never happened.
As if the Dream Realm had never existed.
The streets were clogged with movement, filled with bodies that should no longer be here. People dragged themselves forward, not with purpose, but with the slow, unyielding rhythm of those too exhausted to die but too hollow to live.
Their faces were sunken, skin stretched thin, their eyes dull like dust settling over forgotten remnants of what they once were.
The Outskirts had always been a place of suffering, a breeding ground for crime, desperation, and the ghosts of those too weak to reach beyond it.
But now—
Now it felt like something had kept them here, refusing to let them fade, forcing them to endure long past what should have been possible.
This was not his future.
But was it truly the past?
Or had he stumbled into something more fractured than time itself?
Sunny exhaled slowly.
The mist had swallowed him. The threads had pulled.
The answer had been spoken.
And now— He was somewhere familiar yet foreign.
The streets stretched ahead, shaped by memories that felt half-formed, their edges blurred by the weight of time. He knew this place. Or at least, he had known it. But something was wrong—off, not simply because he had found himself here, but because the world itself seemed too untouched, too preserved.
Sunny narrowed his eyes.
Then, instinctively, he sent two shadows forward, letting them slip past the crumbling walls, weaving through the shifting masses of hollow figures.
Happy darted toward the movement, eager, chaotic, weaving between bodies with the playful energy of a creature untethered by doubt.
Crazy spiralled upward, erratic in its search, stretching high above the streets, winding against the skyline as if chasing something unseen.
And what they found—
It stopped him cold.
There, flickering on a giant screen, government propaganda looped mindlessly, its polished tone empty against the backdrop of misery. The symbols, the message—it wasn't unfamiliar.
But the date—
Sunny's breath slowed.
Sixteen years.
He had been sent sixteen years into the past.