"My... my lord?"
The child's voice trembled as it spoke, filled with fear. It was small, fragile—burdened by terror that should never belong to someone who had once been so great.
Sunny forced a smile as he looked at her.
Only a few days ago, Ananke had been a Saint—wise beyond measure, resolute, capable of making decisions that would have broken others. Now, her existence had been reduced to the body of a small child.
And not only her body.
"Yes?" Sunny replied, faking a calm, gentle tone.
Ananke slowly lifted her gaze. Her dark eyes, far too large for her childish face, shimmered with silent terror.
"I'm scared..."
Her voice broke. She trembled slightly and lowered her head, as if admitting it were something shameful.
Sunny didn't hesitate. He knelt down and wrapped her in his arms, holding her carefully, as though she were something that could break at any moment.
"There's nothing to fear, Ananke," he whispered. "The three of us will leave this place alive."
A lie.
Sunny was incapable of lying—at least to others.
But lying to himself had always been the easiest thing in the world.
For a few seconds, neither of them spoke. The world seemed to pause in that small moment stolen from the surrounding horror.
Ananke looked up again. Her face was still pale, but her voice was a little steadier now.
"My lord...?"
Sunny tightened his embrace.
"Yes?"
She hesitated, as if afraid of asking for too much.
"Could you... tell me a fairy tale?"
⸻
Sunny was kneeling.
She... was gone.
There were no screams. No light. No farewell.
Only her black blanket remained, lying abandoned on the deck, gently stirred by the wind.
There was no trace of Ananke.
Her existence had vanished, as if she had never been there at all.
Sunny clenched his fist.
If his skin had not been so impossibly strong, his hands would have been bleeding from the force of his grip. The pain pierced his chest and sank deep into his soul—heavy, suffocating.
He grabbed the cloak with both hands, clinging to it as though it were the last thing she had left behind.
Then he heard footsteps behind him.
Nephis approached in silence.
She said nothing.
Neither did Sunny. The pain was too deep—too familiar, and yet unlike anything he had ever felt before.
He felt Nephis's warm arms wrap around him. She held him tightly, as if trying to keep him from falling apart. Her forehead rested against his back, and for a brief moment, Sunny stopped resisting.
"Neph..." he murmured, his voice broken. "Why can't we ever protect them...?"
The words escaped on their own.
"The ones we care about..."
Silence answered them.
Nephis gazed at the infinite sea stretching out before her.
Days... weeks... hours?
Since they had entered that storm of time, the notion of how long they had been there had stopped mattering. Or perhaps it had ceased to exist altogether.
After all, they were sailing along a river of time.
Even now, with a deeper understanding of Ariel's Tomb, the experience still felt strange—almost unsettling. They had discovered that the higher the ship rose, the further into the "future" they traveled. And the deeper they sank into those turbulent waters, the farther back into the past they were carried.
Did it make sense?
Probably not. Any human scientist would have lost their sanity trying to apply logic to something like that.
And yet... in the end, it did make sense.
Ariel's Tomb had been built with the blood of an unholy titan. Nightmare creatures that stood as the counterparts of divine beings—of the gods themselves. They existed across many ranks, from unholy monsters to the supreme apex: titans.
If anything could defy logic, the laws of the world, and the very concept of order... it was them.
But that realization was not important now.
Nephis let her thoughts drift as the Chain Breaker moved slowly across the impossible sea. Again and again, her mind returned to the words she had spoken to Sunny after Ananke's death.
She had believed them when she said them.
They had not been spoken merely to comfort him.
Even so, that did nothing to ease the loss.
Ananke.
At first, she had been an elderly woman brimming with enthusiasm, almost childlike in her excitement at meeting the "bearers of the spell." For someone who revered Weaver, the Demon of Fate, discovering that what had once been a small, isolated spell had spread across all of humanity—hundreds of millions of people—had been nothing short of a miracle.
From the very beginning, Ananke treated them with decorum and reverence, calling them "my lords."
At first, Nephis had been unable to stand her.
The greatest goal of her life was to destroy the Nightmare Spell. She loathed it with every fiber of her being. Seeing a powerful Transcendent venerate that vile thing, speak of it with devotion... was repulsive.
Yet as time passed, as she came to understand the old woman's customs, Nephis began to comprehend—if only slightly—why Ananke felt the way she did.
That did not mean she shared her faith.
But she did acknowledge her worth.
The help Ananke provided them was invaluable. She taught them the art of true names, how to navigate the river of time. She shared her knowledge of the past, of the ancient Awakened and the path they walked to ascend without the guidance of the Nightmare Spell.
Nephis listened to every word with care.
So much so that it became almost impossible to remember that, in theory, Ananke was not real.
This was their Third Nightmare. Ananke should have been nothing more than a creation of the spell, like everything else around them. And yet... Ariel's Tomb was strange. Far too strange.
That Ananke had memories. She had a personality. She possessed wisdom, affection, fear.
What made her so different from the real one?
That was why her departure hurt so deeply.
They would never see her again.
Their teacher. Their companion.
And the worst part was the way she left.
Not as the powerful Transcendent she had been for centuries.
But as a small, fragile child, trembling with fear... asking to be told a fairy tale.
That memory pierced something deep within Nephis.
For a moment, the vermilion sea vanished.
She remembered a room that was far too silent.
A world far too large.
The weight of impossible expectations resting on shoulders far too small.
She remembered what it was like to be alone.
What it was like to have no one to protect her.
What it was like to learn, far too early, that the world had no mercy.
Nephis turned her gaze away.
She did not want to follow that thought any further.
Ananke had joined the list of people who mattered to her... and whom she had lost because of the Nightmare Spell.
And Nephis knew, with cold and absolute certainty, that the list would only continue to grow.
All she could do now was move forward.
Keep going.
Search for solace—
even if it was nothing more than an illusion.
——
So I lied to you, the Mordred and Kai mini-arc is canceled because it was probably going to get out of hand. I got too stressed trying to give it personality, etc., for such a mini-arc.
Although I haven't ruled out the idea of a mini-arc like this in the future. My apologies if anyone was interested in that part.