Chapter Text
It wasn't supposed to be like this.
Cassie told her his True Name would just allow her to impose her will onto him. That's what she told her. That's what Nephis had placed her hopes on when her deception failed.
This wasn't supposed to happen.
It was supposed to be her way of saving him, even if it was against his will.
He was supposed to go home, meet his sister, have fun with his friends, live that peaceful life he dreamed of.
It wasn't supposed to be like this.
This wasn't supposed to happen.
Standing up, Nephis shook off her looping thoughts and looked at her shadow. It was impossibly dark and endlessly deep, a jet black silhouette standing out even in the lightless hell of the forgotten shore.
“Sunny,” she began, “do you mind scouting?”
He didn't answer. He never did, but in the next moment, another shadow slipped out from her shadow, slipping into the distance. Nephis closed her eyes, and in the next moment, she felt her perception shift, watching through Sunny's shadow, the happier one between the two, and took in their surroundings,
Nephis hated it. Even if this was the most useful curse she could have ever taken upon herself, she hated it with every fiber of her being. She hated that she could see through those shadows. She hated that she could use his ability like it belonged to her. She hated that she could see in the dark just like he could.
What she hated most of all, though, was how she needed to make use of this curse if she wanted to survive.
Scouring the desolate landscape, she spotted two awakened beasts, the carapace scavengers that survived the culling, wandering around aimlessly. Completely blind.
Nephis had just spotted food.
Nephis looked towards her shadow. He would've seen the same thing she had. He would've seen food.
“Sunny,” she said, “com- do you want to come out?”
A moment later, her shadow separated from her feet, quickly stretching and deforming into a familiar figure before the shadow seemed to detach itself from the floor. Soon, a short boy was standing in front of her, looking out towards the beasts.
Sunny.
Without sparing her a glance, he began making his way towards the beasts, with Nephis following closely behind.
“Same plan?” She asked, just to fill the silence that hung over them like a noose. “Me as bait while you attack from behind?”
Sunny just nodded, continuing his silent march towards the beasts while trying his best to ignore the fact she even existed.
Nephis didn't know if Sunny couldn't talk anymore or if he simply decided that he never wanted to speak to her again. She didn't know what she preferred to be the reason for his silence. Either could be possible. After all, he had hidden the fact that he still had a body for an entire month, letting her stew in the guilt of thinking she had completely crippled him for life.
Nephis tried not to resent him for that, but it was difficult to stamp out the bitter feeling that welled up in her chest when she thought about those first few weeks, back when she used to desperately dig her fingers into the ashen wasteland, as if hoping she could grab the shadow and pull it out.
There was the fact of Sunny's flaw, however. He couldn't not answer questions. At least, that's what she concluded from what Cassie told her about her vision, and she had asked Sunny plenty of questions. Sunny hadn't answered a single one.
Had she really snuffed out the voice she wanted to hear most?
Dispelling her thoughts, she moved ahead. The beasts noticed her approach, completely oblivious to the real threat. She danced between them and let herself smile when the first one fell, a sword embedded in the soft shell at the back of its head. The second would have turned around to confront the attacker, but Nephis was too large of a threat to turn its back on, and so it too fell in the same way.
After the therapeutic experience of killing abominations, Nephis sat down on the fine sand and began preparing a fire while Sunny butchered the meat and harvested the shards off of the carapace scavengers. It was risky starting a fire, but Sunny's shadows were circling a wide area around them. They would be alerted long before anything approached them.
And besides, the only creatures to have survived the culling were of the awakened and dormant ranks, both of which were easy to deal with. At least for the two of them.
She dug underneath the ash left behind by the coral until her hands found seaweed, completely dried out from the utter lack of water and the abysmally dry ash coating it. She set them up in a loose pile before igniting it, starting a small fire.
Nephis heard a whooshing sound, and suddenly, a soul shard hit her in the back of the head, and before she could gain her bearings, a second one followed suit. She turned to glare at Sunny, but the damn asshole had already collapsed into a shadow.
Well, she could still glare at her own shadow. No one was here to comment on how crazy she looked for doing so.
“Can you please just stop?” She asked, because there was no one to see her rant at her own shadow either.
Nephis knew she could hardly blame him for despising her, but it still stung in a way she couldn't describe, to have him be so hostile towards her in almost every interaction.
Their… situation was a crushing thing to think about. Nephis had been trying so desperately to not be like the ghouls that ruined her life, to be someone who would prioritize the lives of people she loved over her insane dreams even if she would never give up on them and fight to see her goal accomplished to the very end.
In the end, she had ended up doing exactly what they had done to her. Nephis had stripped Sunny of his freedom, isolated him in a way that couldn't be undone, closing off any possibility for him to ever live a normal life.
All because she had been too stubborn- arrogant, a voice in her mind corrected - to let Sunny decide for himself.
Cassie had theorized that Sunny's true name would allow Nephis to command him if she used it. Theorized that it would be a temporary thing, a split second weakness she could use as a last ditch effort when the prophecy came to fruition.
And Nephis had believed her.
How foolishly naive.
Shaking her head, she cast the dire thoughts aside and began cooking, and while waiting for the meat to cook, she decided to check on her runes.
Name: Nephis
True Name: Changing Star
Rank: Dreamer
Class: Devil
Soul Fragments: [1840/4000]
Her eyes flicked down to the bottom of her runes, where Sunny's runes now lay.
Shadow: Lost from Light
Name: Sunless
Rank: Dreamer
Class: Monster
Shadow Fragments: [1926/2000]
Looks like Sunny was close to rising in class again, despite how abysmally slow his rate of growth was. That was good. An additional shadow would be helpful, even if it took what was probably five whole months to reach this point.
And maybe if they kept getting stronger, they would find a way to get rid of this accursed bond.
Taking the meat off the fire, she held some out to Sunny, who climbed out once again to eat. He may not need to eat anymore, but she knew he still preferred to do so. The simple act of eating was grounding in a way, making him feel more human. She watched as he summoned the endless spring and took a sip, the incessant thirst somehow pressing down harder on her mind. Her throat was dry, so fucking dry.
Sunny's eyes met hers across the small fire, and he slowly, and deliberately took another sip before setting the endless spring down beside him.
It was a petty action. He could've just given it to her, he knew very well how thirsty she was, but he was intent on making her life harder in what little ways he could without risking her life.
After all, if she died, so would he. Sunny was the shadow being cast by Nephis, and how could a shadow exist with nothing to cast it?
Nephis got up and walked over to where he sat, took hold of the ornate glass bottle and drank from it greedily, taking large gulp after large gulp to the point her throat began to hurt from the volume of water she guzzled down.
The memory, however, was dismissed abruptly when she was only halfway done. She clenched her fists, the anger in her chest flaring brighter, her pride demanding she give an answer to the humiliation, but she suppressed her feelings and said nothing. She was in the wrong here, her pride had ruined their relationship so much, she couldn't listen to it again and destroy what was left.
Nephis just had to be patient.
If she was patient there would surely be a way to fix what seemed so unfixable.
Besides, it was not like she couldn't blame him for this, no matter how much she wanted to. For any of the countless little inconveniences he caused her on a daily basis.
Couldn't blame him for wanting to kill her.
After all, what she had done was a betrayal so vast even she couldn't forgive herself for it.
How could she blame Sunny for despising her when she had stripped him of what it meant to be human? How could she expect anything else when she despised herself?
Sunny watched as Nephis quietly clenched her fists, but said nothing about him dismissing the memory before she was done. She just went back and sat, eating the scavenger meat with her head hung low.
Her lack of reaction infuriated him to no end. He didn't know what he wanted her to do, but the fact she did nothing was grating on him.
Every time he made her life more inconvenient, she said nothing. When he tossed the soul shards far away from her so she would have to walk the distance to crush them, she said nothing. When he only half heartedly butchered the meat before vanishing, making the process harder than if she just did it from the start, she said nothing.
Sunny had even “lost” the cutlery she had managed to salvage from the dark city, but even then she said nothing. He knew Nephis liked that set. Liked that she could eat using a bowl with that tiny spoon instead of just her hands like a beast, but still she didn't say anything.
Even going as far as making her beg for something as basic as water had failed to elicit a reaction out of her.
He could ask her why she remained silent, but he didn't want to.
When the bond came to be, his flaw began treating her as the same person as him.
For the first time since he was infected by the Spell, Sunny could choose to remain silent, and he held onto that choice like a lifeline. It was the only choice he could make of his own free will after all.
Besides, he already knew the answer to that question.
Nephis didn't say anything because she felt guilty. Sunny couldn't care less about her guilt though, the guilt she felt did nothing to erase the fact that she stripped him of his humanity.
Sunny was like Saint now. He was nothing more than an Echo she could call on for her own convenience.
A part of him wished he was as mindless as an echo, that he didn't have to live with the reality of what he had become, but fate wasn't that kind.
What Nephis had done to him wasn't so kind.
And Sunny hated her for it.
He hated her with a deep visceral passion.
He hated her with an intensity he had never felt before, an intensity he didn't think he was capable of.
Still though, despite what she had done, there was a small part of Sunny that still loved Nephis. A tiny part that whispered she only did it because she thought it would save him. A part that asked him to stop tormenting her at every given opportunity. A part that made it impossible to really enjoy any of the petty little acts of spite he inflicted on her, only leaving him with a deep twisting feeling in his gut when he watched her suffer, giving him absolutely no satisfaction whatsoever. A part that spoke of forgiveness. A part he ruthlessly crushed every time it reared its ugly head.
Sunny wouldn't become that wretched, that pathetic.
He refused to be pathetic enough to forgive his slaver.
Pathetic enough to stop hating Nephis with all he had.
So what if he gained nothing from what he did? Sunny was a creature of spite, and the woman sitting across him had given him plenty of reasons to be spiteful.
And so Sunny held onto his hatred, even if he could do nothing with it now.
Because he would find a way to be free.
And he wouldn't let what Nephis had done to him go unanswered.