When his eyes slowly opened, Sunny realized he was wandering through the darkness alone. The last thing he remembered was peace, calmness… and then death.
He had held Nephis in his fragile arms while she ignored his countless cries, passing on [Light Bringer] and fulfilling [Shadow Bond] yet again.
Really, he had lost count by now.
Somewhere along the way — across these unceasing regressions — he had begun to remember the previous cycle. And the one before that.
It… it always started the same.
One moment, he was locked in a desperate battle against Asterion and Mordret. The next moment, Asterion was crushed.
It was odd, really, considering how the Dreamspawn's domain operated. But against the will of an Unholy-Titan — a true Profaned God — it was simply negated. Despite his domain remaining whole and intact, it was utterly crushed from within.
In this cycle — now the four-hundredth regression — he walked through the endless darkness.
His thoughts were scattered.
He didn't know what to think.
Sunny already knew that this was a Nightmare, but its nature was… different.
Under normal circumstances, he would assume the role of someone from the past. Nightmares were supposed to send Awakened humans into the past to resolve a conflict. Though the true purpose was something far greater.
To change fate.
However… this was the future.
Or, more precisely, one possible future where Supreme Sunless still existed.
It felt strange to possess these memories again. In a sense, they were truly his.
This Nightmare must be the future he had once come from.
And so, its purpose was simple.
To achieve that future, complete [Regressor], and return to the past.
And yet…
'What… am I supposed to do?'
Sunny found it hopeless.
What was he supposed to do?
Abaddon — The Lord of the Abyss was too strong.
In every cycle, he was crushed like an insect. Or he fell into the quiet sleep of death beside Nephis. Or he wandered the perpetual darkness, like he was doing now.
Or he was embraced by the Profaned God's endless flowers.
He wondered… how old he was at this point.
He had spent so many cycles trying different methods to confront that god. Countless attempts. Countless strategies.
Countless failures.
At least a few years had passed by now — cycles repeating the same battle, the same moment, over and over again.
Sunny dragged himself deeper into the wandering darkness. He wasn't quite sure what application of True Darkness this was, but it was sickeningly beautiful.
A scene he had grown intimately familiar with during these endless regressions.
"Enjoying this, aren't you, Abaddon?"
Sunny looked up at the sky.
At its center hung a massive eye — an eye that held concepts so vast that he couldn't truly comprehend what he was seeing.
Naturally, it was an Unholy-Titan.
And yet, Sunny had the unsettling feeling that its might went far beyond that rank.
It felt like gazing upon a true being of the Void.
If he had to compare the presence… it felt like staring directly into Nether's murderous unleashed intent, back in the Tomb of Ariel.
This existence was on that same scale.
Abaddon himself did not seem to regard Sunny at all.
Perhaps it had already realized that a loop was occurring. It was a higher being, after all. Sunny could only assume that it possessed some way of perceiving the nature of [Regressor].
It was almost amusing.
Both of them were aware of the repeating loops.
Yet neither had given up.
Unfortunately, Abaddon was not like his shadow steed — Nightmare.
A thousand years could pass, and another thousand after that.
And Abaddon would still never yield.
Sunny, however… already understood how hopeless this was.
And he was slowly beginning to follow that same path.
How much longer would this continue?
How much more would he have to endure?
The answer…
There was none.
There was no number to define this hell.
'No cost too great…'
He repeated that mantra in his mind again and again while walking deeper into the darkness.
By now, he could feel it.
Abaddon's gaze had fallen upon him.
And with that gaze came the familiar sensation of pleasant, irresistible exhaustion.
Sunny was dying again.
The darkness had already seeped into his soul, blooming flowers of vibrant life that would soon consume him completely.
His avatars had perished long ago.
In a sense, he was truly alone.
Sunny collapsed to the ground, unable to see anything but the endless field of everblack flowers. The sky had vanished, swallowed by a darkness he could not perceive.
All except for the calamitous eye above.
Truly, this was the power of an Unholy-Titan. It could not be compared to its Cursed brethren.
'No wonder…'
'It managed to kill… the Sun God's… avatar…'
It truly lived up to its name.
Sunkiller.
Moments before death claimed him, Sunny noticed something.
Words began to emerge within his fading vision, pale and distant against the endless darkness. What followed was the Spell's voice, though… distorted.
But still—
Cold. Indifferent. Eternal.
[Supreme-Titan 'Sunless' has chosen to regress.]
[The Attribute 'Regressor <400th Turn>' has activated in an unstable manner!]
[The Attribute 'Regressor <400th Turn>' has been modified!]
[Regressor <401st Turn> (???)]
[You have regressed.]
Sunny exhaled slowly.
So it was happening again.
The flowers devoured the last fragments of his soul, and the vast eye in the sky watched in silence as his existence faded away.
Then—
Sunny died.
Time lost its meaning. The concept itself began to twist. For a moment that felt like a thousand years, there was nothing.
No pain.
No darkness.
No self.
Then his eyes opened. The battlefield returned all at once.
His friends were alive, again.
The sky burned with the fury of Sovereigns, again.
And Sunny was fighting Asterion once again.
And yet again… the battle ended the same way it always did.
Asterion was crushed.
The flowers bloomed with their sickening will.
Death claimed them all.
Nephis died in his arms, her body trembling faintly as the last light of her soul passed into him.
Her Aspect, [Light Bringer], blossomed within his being.
White, heavenly wings unfurled from his back.
And for the four hundred and first time—
his hell began again.
—
It was only after three hundred and eighty-nine cycles that Sunny began to go truly mad.
Though it was also in these unceasing regressions that he found the means to harm Abaddon, albeit only once.
Retreating to the Nameless Temple — the only structure that still held in the terrible battle, he began to fight back.
He began to… pick up a hint of some greater power within him. It was quite odd, if one considered the fact that just for a moment—
He did not use Shadow Essence. Instead, it was something akin to Soul Essence.
What had harmed Abaddon was unlike anything he had ever seen before, and it came directly from his Odachi — Soul Serpent.
With its ability [Slaying Blade], as well as the Shadow Realm's fragment, he finally left a scratch on the Profaned God.
And then, he succumbed to death.
It took him a long while, but he finally realized what Abaddon embodied.
The Lord of the Abyss did not destroy in the sense of destruction. Destruction implied effort — the application of force against something that could resist. Even the greatest Nightmare Creatures Sunny had ever faced had fought, in their way. Had pushed. Had torn. Had wanted something dead badly enough to enforce their wills upon it.
Abaddon simply existed, and the darkness around him amplified, and the things caught within it grew tired, and then they grew still, and then they were gone. The flowers were not so much a weapon as they were a symptom. The visible expression of a process that had already been underway long before the petals ever bloomed.
Entropy.
Abaddon embodied Entropy.
The oldest law. The thing that had been quietly persisting since before the first god drew breath — the slow and patient certainty that everything burning would eventually run out of something to burn, that everything moving would eventually run out of somewhere to go.
'Sunkiller…'
The title made a savage kind of sense now. The Sun God — Surya's fire did not lose to this darkness by being smothered. It lost the same way any flame lost — by consuming everything around it until there was nothing left, and then consuming itself, and then going out.
Abaddon had simply given the Sun God's avatar a glimpse of its own ending.
That was what the abyss held. A glimpse into the fate awaiting the world.
The Flame of Desire would one day burn out. Abaddon was simply its messenger.
It was quite funny, really. An Unholy-Titan that embodied Entropy.
As Sunny regressed for the seven hundred and ninetieth time, he laughed.
In what world was he going to manage putting down Entropy?
He was a mere Supreme. What was he supposed to do—
As he felt himself giving up, he repeated the mantra once more.
'No cost too great… no cost too great… no cost too great… no cost too great…'
[Supreme-Titan 'Sunless' has chosen to regress.]
[The Attribute 'Regressor <790th Turn>' has activated in an unstable manner!]
[The Attribute 'Regressor <790th Turn>' has been modified!]
[Regressor <791st Turn> (???)]
[You have regressed.]
—
By the thousand and first regression, Sunny had stopped grieving.
He could not have said when. The part of him that once recoiled at the sight of Nephis dying had worn through somewhere between the nine hundredth cycle and the nine hundred and fiftieth — ground down by repetition until the raw edge became scar tissue and the scar tissue became nothing at all.
He still caught her. Every time. His arms cradled her before his mind did.
[Light Bringer] flooded into him, warm and foreign. [Shadow Bond] completed his existence time and time again. The white wings tore open from his back in all their glory. He looked at them for exactly as long as it took to confirm they were there, and then he flew at Abaddon.
He had abandoned Shadow Essence around the nine hundred and eightieth regression. The reason was simple. In the seven hundred and ninetieth cycle he had touched something — a single glancing contact with a power that did not come from inside him but from the world itself. For one moment he had bent reality, and the wound he opened in the Profaned God had been the only wound he had ever opened. The only evidence, across every cycle, that Abaddon could be touched at all.
Two hundred regressions spent clawing for it.
And… nothing.
'Disaster,' he thought, somewhere in the thousand and ninetieth cycle, Abaddon's darkness already rising past his knees. 'That's what I called it.'
He died before the thought finished.
The flowers bloomed. Light Bringer returned. The wings spread.
He flew at Abaddon again.
The Profaned God did not move. It simply existed — vast, patient, its enormous eye tracking Sunny with the same total absence of urgency that a mountain tracked weather. Something was aware behind that eye. He had no doubt of that anymore. It watched him the way Entropy watched everything: without hurry, without malice, without any particular interest in the outcome, because the outcome was never in question.
It was a truth.
Sunny raged, regardless of the enviable law of Entropy.
He raged with everything left in him, which by this point was not what it had once been. The calculating boy who had crawled out of the Forgotten Shore was still somewhere inside the wreckage — he could feel the spirit of him occasionally, distant, buried under the weight of what felt like centuries — thousands of years. But the rage had burned through most of the scaffolding. What remained was rawer. Strategy and hope no longer dwelled within him.
He arrived, through sheer grinding exhaustion, at something that was no longer will so much as momentum. A body that kept moving on the single repeating notion that he refused to fail.
'No cost too great…'
He fought. He died. He came back.
He fought. He died. He came back.
Watching the light leave Nephis's eyes became arithmetic around the nine hundredth cycle. Screaming at the sky had become silence around the thousandth. The charge toward Abaddon had become reflex long before that — weave and shadow doing what the mind no longer commanded, because commanding it would never change the outcome.
One thousand two hundred regressions.
One thousand three hundred.
Disaster remained out of reach. He reached for it in the space between his countless deaths and returns, in the moment Light Bringer graced through him and the wings snapped open and everything held still — and found nothing. Whatever he had touched in the seven hundred and ninetieth cycle was not something he could merely call upon again.
One thousand four hundred.
Somewhere around the twelve hundredth regression, the seam between his Supreme Self and his true self — that of a Sleeper — had dissolved. He could no longer find where one ended and the other began. The Sleeper who had first stepped into this Nightmare and the man who had been dying inside it across what felt like millennia had become a single continuous thing, quietly, without any moment he could point to — the distinction simply ceasing to exist.
He was just Sunny. He was just Sunless.
Sunless who flew at Abaddon. Sunless who died. Sunless who came back and flew at Abaddon again.
One thousand five hundred regressions.
And he was still losing.
—
[Regressor <1704th Turn> (???)]
Two hundred and four more regressions.
Dissolution preceded consciousness. His mind surfaced through layers of accumulated fracture — thoughts arriving fragmented, memories arriving in error, the architecture of his own self presenting itself in ruins. Familiar shapes. Unrecognizable functions.
Gold ran down his face before his eyes had even fully opened.
Seventeen hundred deaths, carried forward on and on. Compounded and expressed permanently through his body now, thin rivulets tracing his jaw, catching what little light the assembling battlefield offered. The wounds Abaddon had dealt had apparently never healed across any regression. Each cycle had simply buried them deeper into his soul until they became constituent parts of his existence rather than damage inflicted upon it.
Lost from Light rose. He had forgotten the name Sunless long ago.
'WhatdoIdoWhatdoIdoWhatdoIdoWhatdoIdoWhatdoIdoWhatdoIdoWhatdoIdoWhatdoIdo'
The thought repeated, cycling, looping, no longer shaped like a thought so much as the ghost of one — the last echo of a human mind that had worn itself down to a single question it could never answer.
He still suffered. Whatever he had lost, whatever pieces of Sunny had been ground away across seventeen hundred cycles, the capacity for suffering had survived all of it. He was certain of that. A god of shadows and death, and now also light and destruction, bleeding gold and cracking at the seams, still aware — with total and profound clarity — that this was hell.
Complete and utter hell.
'MakeitstopMakeitstopMakeitstopMakeitstopMakeitstopMakeitstopMakeitstopMakeitstop'
He wanted to stop. He did not know how. Regressor activated regardless of his will, beneath it, around it — a switch with no off position, a function that had long since stopped requiring his participation. He opened his eyes, drank in [Light Bringer], and rose to his feet. None of it required a decision anymore.
His hair was white now, heavy and strange, threaded at the tips with gold that burned faintly against the dark of the battlefield. A star blazed where his Flame of Divinity had once been — vast, impersonal, the terrible luminance of something that burned because that was simply its nature, and everything adjacent to it was simply consequence.
His shadows spread across the ground and pulsed with gold.
That had begun around the fifteen hundredth regression. Golden darkness threaded through the black, veined through it, pulsing with a divine burden — both natures existing in permanent uneasy cohabitation, refusing to resolve or separate.
Quite an odd appearance, even for Lost from Light.
Lost from Light, stripped of most reactions across seventeen hundred cycles, found his gaze occasionally pulled toward it. His most fundamental self had been transfigured alongside everything else.
Even the nature of his Shadows had changed.
Three wings extended without his mental commands. On his left, two extended in black and golden taints. On his right, one of Nephis's own burned in terrible radiance.
Gray-black shards of crystallized Memory clung to his shoulders. His cloak burned along one edge and froze along the other, neither state yielding. In his hand, Soul Serpent writhed — past wielding, past dismissal, past any category that required a human frame of reference. Golden cracks and black cracks ran through his existence simultaneously, deepening with each cycle, each activation of Regressor extracting something from a reservoir that had been running dry for a very long time.
He had not noticed Apotheosis occur.
He was far too fractured and consumed. Too thoroughly eroded across seventeen hundred dyings to perceive his soul expanding past every threshold separating mortal from divine — swallowing what remained of the world whole, silent, total, and without ceremony. Sunless had dissolved around the twelve hundredth regression with no witness to mark his achievement but himself. A name ceasing to mean anything and then ceasing to exist, shed alongside the last pieces of the person who had carried it.
Though his True Name Lost from Light remained, his humanity did not.
He was a Spirit now, encompassing an uncertain concept due to the very nature of his duality.
A Sacred-Titan. A god assembled from the wreckage of a sardonic rat from the city outskirts who had never possessed the good sense to simply cease.
A dying god, now.
The cracks made that clear enough.
Deep inside the wreckage of everything he had been, one thing remained. One could not call it a thought, nor a will — but it was there regardless.
Avenge humanity.
Reduce Entropy to ash.
Even that was dimming.
He was going hollow. He could feel it — the last warmth guttering, the last recognizably human thing preparing to go quiet. When it did, there would be nothing left but the direction. A god-shaped projectile aimed at Abaddon and incapable of stopping.
But then he looked at his hands.
The cracks. The gold bleeding through black. The wounds eating not his body or his soul but his existence itself.
He was dying.
And if he was dying...
...then the Nightmare would end.
Dying meant death. And if he finally died, the Nightmare would end, no?
Across the devastation of his expression, the structural echo of a smile surfaced — belonging to someone unreachably distant, with dark eyes and raven hair and a sardonic running commentary on the gap between how catastrophic things were and how he elected to regard them. Seventeen hundred regressions separated them. An apotheosis. A forgotten name. The full grinding weight of thousands of years lived inside a single Nightmare.
The echo had survived regardless.
Lost from Light raised his True Voice — the direct imposition of a divine existence pressed against the bones of the world — and called out to Abaddon. To Entropy.
The Profaned God's eye rotated unhurriedly. Present since before the first star ignited, fully prepared to remain after the last one faded.
'atrestatrestatrestatrestatrestatrestatrestatrest'
He flew, turning into a torrent of shadows, golden darkness trailing behind him in radiance, and met Entropy once more.
He died.
His eyes opened.
He died again.
And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again.
Each regression deepened the cracks in his spirit origin. Each death extracted something from an existence that had already been hollowed out. Lost from Light registered this with the flat, distant clarity of a god who had shed the capacity for panic several hundred cycles ago.
Buried beneath the ruin of his divine existence, beneath the star, the mismatched wings and the golden shadows, the fractures running through his very being — one thing persisted.
A single wish, quiet yet absolute, growing more certain with each accumulated death.
Enough regressions…
Enough deaths…
And [Regressor] would have nothing left to regress.
He died again, and opened his eyes, and smiled with no face at all.
And flew at Entropy, over and over.
—
[Regressor <1821st Turn> (???)]
The world was ablaze and in chaos.
Far below the battle, the endless desert had been reduced to a wasteland of molten glass and drifting ash. Dunes that had once stretched across the horizon in silent waves were collapsing into craters of glowing sand, their surfaces liquefying beneath the unbearable violence raging in the sky. Vast clouds of burning dust spiraled upward, pulled into towering storms by the pressure of two monstrous powers colliding above the realm.
The heavens themselves had become the battlefield.
An immense sea of fire spread across the firmament, its incandescent tides crashing against vast currents of devouring darkness. Radiant flame and writhing shadow intertwined in a colossal storm that churned through the sky like a celestial maelstrom, casting violent flashes of gold, black, and white across the dying desert below.
Within that storm moved a single figure.
Lost from Light—had long since abandoned the frail limits of humanity.
Now, as a Sacred Titan, an existence that towered above the laws that once bound him. His vast form drifted through the burning sky wrapped in an ocean of living shadows, each one moving with a terrible will of its own. Fire flowed through those shadows like molten veins, blazing with a pale brilliance that did not resemble ordinary flame.
The two powers had fused within him.
Shadow and Light.
Death and Destruction.
Nephis's divine light had long ago merged with the abyssal essence of Lost from Light's own soul, amplifying his strength beyond anything he had possessed during his mortal life. The ancient bond between them had become something far greater across the countless regressions of the Nightmare.
The two halves of their power did not oppose each other.
They magnified one another.
Every movement Lost from Light made carried the weight of both.
The shadows surrounding his colossal form were no longer mere darkness. They had become a vast and devouring dominion that obeyed his will with absolute loyalty. Within their depths burned the radiant fire he had inherited from the brightest star of humanity, turning the abyss itself into a weapon of blinding destruction.
At the center of that terrible union, a relic of seven rings pulsed with dreadful vitality.
[Curse].
The shadowbound artifact clung to Lost from Light's existence like a malignant star, its power woven into the very structure of his soul. For thousands of years it had fed upon suffering, memory, and death, evolving alongside him through every regression and every battlefield soaked in blood.
Now it no longer resembled the relic he had once carried.
Its power had grown monstrous.
Black flames rippled through the shadows surrounding Lost from Light's body, strange distortions of darkness and fire born from the relic's influence. Those flames devoured light and shadow alike before returning the consumed energy to their master in an endless, ravenous cycle.
The Sacred Titan had become a living catastrophe.
And yet—
even that monstrous power was not enough to face the being before him.
The sky was utterly black. It was a true, unfathomable abyss.
Across the firmament, a vast mass of writhing darkness expanded outward like a blooming wound in the heavens. From its depths extended countless shapes resembling immense flowers, their grotesque petals unfolding slowly as they drifted through the void.
Each blossom radiated a terrible presence.
Each one devoured light.
Abaddon.
The Profaned God did not descend upon the world as a single body. Its existence sprawled across the sky like a cosmic plague, an immeasurable entity whose true form remained hidden within layers of devouring darkness.
Those countless flowers were merely fragments of its being.
Each carried the authority of Entropy.
Each carried a fragment of the oldest law in existence.
Their presence consumed the heavens, vast fields of abyssal blossoms spreading outward across the sky until the desert below vanished beneath their terrible shadow.
Lost from Light faced them alone.
The Sacred Titan rose higher into the burning sky, his colossal wings unfurling behind him in a vast arc of shadow and flame. Beneath his command, the desert itself responded to his will. Winds screamed upward from the shattered dunes, spiraling toward the battlefield in towering currents of death and destruction.
The world answered him.
As a Sacred, Lost from Light was no longer merely a creature that held Will over some small fragment of the world.
The world itself recognized his authority.
The desert roared beneath the sky as its vast weight lent strength to his Will.
Even so, the enemy he faced carried something greater.
Abaddon was not merely powerful.
It embodied Entropy.
The inevitable collapse of order.
The final erosion awaiting every world and every star.
The countless blossoms of true darkness spread through the sky, their monstrous petals unfolding further as they moved toward the Sacred Titan. Each flower devoured the radiance surrounding Lost from Light's form, absorbing the light of his flames into an endless void that hungered for the death of existence itself.
Lost from Light answered with something new.
For the second time in countless regressions, he reached beyond shadow and flame.
Across the battlefield, faint points of pale brilliance began to gather.
They appeared first as distant sparks drifting through the air. Then those sparks multiplied, flowing together into luminous streams that spiraled toward the Sacred Titan from every direction.
Starlight. An Art of 'Disaster.'
It did not resemble ordinary light.
The radiance carried a strange weight, ancient and sorrowful, as though it had traveled across immeasurable distances to reach the battlefield. Those pale currents flowed through Lost from Light's shadows and fire without resistance, weaving themselves into the storm of power surrounding his colossal form.
The fragments of humanity answered him.
Every life that had ended beneath the endless regressions of the Nightmare had left a faint echo behind. Those echoes had drifted across the world unseen for millennia, fragments of soul essence scattered through the fabric of reality itself.
Now they gathered.
Lost from Light drew them into himself without hesitation.
The storm of starlight surrounding him brightened as countless fragments of human souls converged upon his presence, merging with the terrible forces he already commanded.
Shadow.
Fire.
Death.
Starlight.
Destruction.
Passion.
Disaster.
The union of those powers reshaped the battlefield.
The devouring blossoms of Abaddon surged forward, their endless darkness spreading across the sky in a suffocating tide. Yet wherever the pale radiance of starlight touched that abyss, the devouring void trembled.
Entropy… faltered.
For the first time since the beginning of the Nightmare, the Profaned God encountered something that truly opposed it.
Lost from Light felt the resistance clearly.
The starlight did not belong to the present world.
It carried the memory of countless lives, countless struggles, countless fragile hopes that had endured across endless cycles of destruction.
It was the lingering will of humanity itself.
And it burned. Oh… it burned so bright.
Within the storm of power surrounding the Sacred Titan, faint threads of silver light appeared among the currents of starlight.
Those delicate strands shimmered briefly before vanishing again, forming a fleeting pattern that stretched across the battlefield like an impossibly vast design hidden beneath the surface of reality.
Lost from Light saw it for only a moment.
The [Silver-Sky Weave].
A weave he did not remember creating.
A design left behind by original Sunless.
The revelation vanished as the sky erupted once more.
Abaddon answered in turn.
The countless blossoms of darkness surged toward the Sacred Titan, their petals unfolding into vast maws of devouring void. Entire regions of the sky collapsed beneath their advance, the ancient authority of Entropy grinding against the radiant storm Lost from Light had summoned.
The clash shook the heavens. No, it shook the universe.
Shadow and flame roared outward from Lost from Light's wings as he launched himself into the advancing swarm, his colossal blade carving through the sky with unstoppable force.
Each strike shattered dozens of abyssal flowers.
Each movement unleashed storms of starlight that tore through the suffocating darkness surrounding him.
The battlefield became a storm of annihilating power.
Yet even as Lost from Light fought with the full might of a Sacred Titan—his Will tempered by thousands of years of battle, his authority amplified by the union of shadow and flame—he could feel the truth pressing against his soul.
The world stood beside him.
But Abaddon carried the will of many worlds.
The endless blossoms of Entropy filled the heavens without limit, each one radiating the ancient law that governed the eventual death of everything that existed.
Against that terrible inevitability, even a Sacred Titan could only endure for so long.
Still, Lost from Light did not retreat.
Within the storm of shadow, fire, and starlight, the ancient relic [Curse] pulsed like a dark star bound to his soul.
And the Sacred Titan smiled.
Because for the first time in seventeen hundred regressions—
the darkness of Entropy had begun to bleed.
The wound in the heavens widened.
One of Abaddon's monstrous blossoms convulsed violently as cracks of pale radiance spread across its abyssal petals. The devouring void within it shuddered, unable to swallow the invading starlight fast enough. Threads of silver brilliance tore through the flower's heart, burning with the lingering will of countless human souls.
Then the blossom ruptured.
The sky trembled as the fragment of Entropy collapsed into a storm of dissolving darkness, its essence unraveling beneath the weight of Lost from Light's strike.
For a fleeting moment, the battlefield grew brighter.
Not with flame.
With starlight.
The Sacred Titan hovered amidst the storm he had created, wings of shadow stretching across the heavens while rivers of radiant fire coursed through their depths. Beneath him, the desert howled beneath the pressure of his Will, the broken world lending him every fragment of strength it possessed.
Across the sky, however—
the Profaned God stirred.
The countless blossoms of true darkness shifted in unison.
A slow, terrible movement rippled across the firmament as the endless flowers turned toward him, their grotesque petals unfolding further. What Lost from Light had destroyed had been no more than a single fragment of Abaddon's immeasurable body.
The sky was still full of them.
Thousands.
Perhaps millions.
Their combined Will descended upon the battlefield like the collapse of a dying universe.
The pressure was immediate.
The radiant currents of starlight surrounding Lost from Light trembled violently beneath the crushing authority of Entropy. Vast regions of shadow fractured and collapsed as the ancient law pressed against his dominion, grinding relentlessly against the Sacred Titan's tempered Will.
Lost from Light did not move.
The shadows around him thickened.
Fire surged through them.
Starlight gathered once more.
He rose to meet the inevitable.
The first wave of blossoms descended.
They fell from the heavens like a meteor storm of living darkness, their monstrous petals opening wide to devour the radiance surrounding him. Entire regions of the sky vanished into their abyssal maws as they collided with the storm of power the Sacred Titan had summoned.
Lost from Light answered with annihilation.
His blade carved through the sky in a sweeping arc of shadow and flame, scattering the leading blossoms into fragments of dissolving void. Rivers of starlight followed the strike, erupting outward in brilliant torrents that tore through the surrounding swarm.
Dozens of flowers perished.
But hundreds more surged forward.
The sky darkened further, and a second wave crashed against him.
The Sacred Titan fought with terrifying precision, every movement shaped by thousands of years of battle. His Will remained unyielding as shadows twisted around his colossal form, striking, devouring, and obliterating everything that came within reach.
Fire roared through the heavens.
Starlight burned through the abyss.
Still the blossoms came.
The endless body of Abaddon moved like a cosmic tide, its countless fragments advancing with the slow inevitability of a collapsing star.
The pressure increased.
The currents of starlight surrounding Lost from Light began to thin as the swarm pressed closer. Shadows splintered beneath the suffocating weight of Entropy's authority, their edges unraveling as the ancient law eroded his dominion piece by piece.
Another strike shattered a dozen blossoms.
Another wave closed the distance.
The Sacred Titan's wings fractured under the relentless assault.
Fragments of shadow scattered across the battlefield like torn banners drifting through a burning sky.
Yet Lost from Light continued to fight.
His blade rose again.
Shadow followed.
Fire followed.
Starlight followed.
But the swarm had already surrounded him.
Hundreds of blossoms opened at once.
Their devouring darkness converged upon the Sacred Titan from every direction, an inescapable prison of living entropy that crushed inward with terrifying force.
The storm of power surrounding Lost from Light collapsed beneath the impact.
Shadows vanished and his flames were swallowed.
The currents of starlight flickered violently before dispersing into the suffocating abyss.
The Sacred Titan felt the ancient law finally close its grip around his existence.
His colossal body began to break apart beneath the overwhelming pressure. Wings of shadow disintegrated into drifting fragments. The blazing fire within his soul dimmed as the abyssal petals tightened around him.
Still—
Lost from Light smiled.
The expression carried neither fear nor despair.
Only complete, sickening satisfaction.
Because he could feel it now.
Deep within the fractured structure of his soul, something began to tremble.
The power bound to his existence across countless regressions had begun to strain against its limits.
[Regressor].
For thousands of years it had dragged him back from death, forcing him to relive the endless war against Entropy again and again.
But now—
the cycle was weakening.
Each return had grown more difficult.
Each resurrection carried a heavier cost.
And for the first time, Lost from Light could feel the inevitable end approaching.
The shadowbound relic [Curse] pulsed faintly beside his fading soul.
Above him, the devouring blossoms of Abaddon closed completely.
The Sacred Titan's body shattered beneath their crushing authority, dissolving into fragments of shadow and dying flame.
His final thought lingered calmly within the collapsing storm.
It would not be long now.
Soon—
[Regressor] would reach its limit.
[Sacred-Titan 'Lost from Light' has chosen to regress.]
[The Attribute 'Regressor <1821 Turn>' has activated in an unstable manner!]
[The Attribute 'Regressor <1821st Turn>' has been modified!]
[Regressor <1822nd Turn> (???)]
[You have regressed.]
—
[Regressor <1862nd Turn> (???)]
The Nameless Temple was in ruins.
Its black marble walls had endured for longer than most worlds existed, unblemished by time, untouched by decay. Vast pillars rose toward a distant ceiling lost in shadow, their surfaces carved with ancient lines that no living being remembered how to read. The immense hall stretched endlessly forward, culminating in a throne of polished stone that seemed to drink the faint light lingering in the air.
Now, even that ancient silence was being devoured.
Everblack petals drifted through the broken entrance of the temple like a slow, inevitable snowfall. Each blossom unfolded as it touched the marble floor, its abyssal surface absorbing the dim radiance of the hall. More followed behind them, spreading outward across the vast chamber with dreadful patience.
Entropy had arrived.
Across the endless hall, another sound echoed.
Footsteps.
Lost from Light walked slowly through the Nameless Temple.
His body struggled to maintain its shape. At times he appeared almost human — tall and pale, with long white hair that faded into gold at its tips. Three immense wings stretched from his back, their dark feathers jagged and uneven, forged from fractured shadow. Black armor covered his body, though it was no longer something he wore — the metal had fused with his flesh long ago, growing from his bones like a second skeleton.
Yet the form did not remain stable.
Shadow bled from the cracks in his body. His limbs flickered between flesh and darkness, dissolving briefly before reforming again. The wings behind him fractured into drifting fragments, then gathered themselves once more.
Golden blood fell to the temple floor with each step.
Lost from Light laughed.
The sound rang through the vast chamber with unsettling clarity, echoing between the ancient pillars and vanishing somewhere far above.
He had been laughing since the moment he entered.
Behind him, the tide of black flowers continued to spread.
They advanced slowly, inexorably, filling the immense hall with their suffocating presence. Their countless petals brushed against the marble like whispers, leaving faint distortions in the air as the authority of Entropy seeped into the temple.
Lost from Light did not look back.
He continued walking.
Finally…
His thoughts churned endlessly, a broken chant echoing through the depths of his mind.
'FinallyFinallyFinallyFinallyFinallyFinallyFinallyFinallyFinallyFinallyFinallyFinally.'
The war was ending.
After thousands of years…
After thousands of deaths…
His existence had endured far beyond its intended limits. The power of [Regressor] — the strange Attribute buried deep within his soul — had begun to weaken. Each return from death had become more difficult than the last, as though the very concept of his resurrection was slowly losing its place within reality.
Lost from Light could feel the truth clearly now.
This death might truly end him.
If it did not, the next would.
And if not the next…
Then surely the one after.
The regressions were nearly finished.
A quiet satisfaction filled him as he climbed the long staircase toward the throne.
Above the temple, something immense shifted.
The sky itself had darkened as Abaddon descended from the heavens. The vast body of the Profaned God gathered beyond the roof of the Nameless Temple, its countless blossoms of devouring darkness spreading across the firmament like a malignant constellation.
The ancient structure would soon be crushed completely.
Lost from Light laughed louder.
Even now, he could not resist mocking that monstrous thing.
His broken body reached the top of the staircase.
The Sacred-Titan sat down upon the throne.
The black marble welcomed him with silent indifference.
His wings sagged behind the throne's backrest, their fractured feathers scattering fragments of shadow across the floor. The armor fused to his flesh creaked softly as his body settled into the ancient seat.
He was alone.
Utterly alone.
A Sleeper had entered this Nightmare long ago.
Across countless regressions, that fragile existence had grown into something monstrous. Taking the role of a Supreme. Then going beyond — to that of a Spirit. A being that had achieved Apotheosis within a Nightmare — a feat that should never have been possible.
And yet it had happened.
But now it meant nothing.
Lost from Light could no longer remember when he had stopped caring about victory.
Once, he had repeated certain names to himself during every regression. Those names reminded him why he fought. They gave him purpose when the endless cycle of death threatened to swallow him whole.
Over time, those names faded.
The memories attached to them slipped away across the centuries.
Now he could barely recall them at all.
"…"
The quiet words drifted from his lips, barely louder than a whisper.
Truly.
No cost too great.
And yet here he was.
Finished.
The tide of everblack flowers continued creeping across the temple floor. They had reached the base of the throne's staircase now, their petals unfolding slowly as they climbed the ancient steps.
Lost from Light watched them with distant eyes.
It was not that he lacked the strength to stand again.
He could still fight.
Even now he could rise from the throne, tear through the approaching swarm, and wound Abaddon once more. His mastery of [Silver-Sky Weave] had reached a profound level across the short regressions he had wielded it. The technique had been designed for a single purpose.
To kill Abaddon, Lord of the Abyss.
But the world itself could not sustain it.
There was not enough Soul Essence remaining…
Even with the desert answering his Will, with the union of Shadow and Flame within his soul, even with Nephis's knowledge of fire, passion, and destruction flowing through his Memories…
It was not enough.
The disastrous starlight he could summon remained incomplete.
His Shadow Essence could carry the authority of death, but without sufficient fuel the weave could never reach its intended power.
If he had become a Divine Titan…
Then perhaps Abaddon could have been slain.
But that path was forever closed.
Becoming Sacred through endless regression had been possible.
Becoming a true god was not.
Lost from Light leaned back against the throne.
His body trembled faintly as more cracks spread across his skin, leaking threads of shadow.
A strange emotion stirred in his chest.
He was unsatisfied.
He was… unhappy.
And he was very, very lonely.
Outside the temple, Abaddon descended further.
The immense pressure of Entropy pressed down upon the Nameless Temple like the weight of a dying universe.
Lost from Light attempted to close his eyes — though a faint disturbance in the air stopped him.
His gaze drifted lazily toward the far end of the hall.
There, something enormous had entered the temple.
An eye.
A vast, malevolent eye filled with immeasurable darkness watched him from across the chamber. Its abyssal pupil seemed capable of swallowing the entire hall whole.
The Profaned God had come to witness his death personally.
Lost from Light felt no fear.
The eye drifted slowly toward the altar, its dreadful presence suffusing the temple with the cold authority of Entropy.
Yet something about its presence felt… wrong.
Across thousands of regressions, Abaddon had never behaved this way.
There was tension within the abyss.
Unease…?
Lost from Light simply leaned deeper into the throne and closed his eyes.
If Abaddon wished to end the cycle, then let it end.
The will of Entropy descended upon him without hesitation, and the pressure struck instantly.
Golden blood erupted from Lost from Light's body as the Sacred-Titan lost cohesion beneath the crushing authority of the Profaned God. His wings shattered into fragments of shadow, his armor cracked apart, and his physical form collapsed completely.
A pool of living darkness spread across the black marble throne.
Abaddon pressed down further, eager to erase what remained of his existence.
But in that moment, something unexpected happened.
Lost from Light's blood touched the throne.
And the black marble drank it.
The ancient stone absorbed every drop silently, as though the temple itself had been waiting for that offering since the beginning of time.
The crimson stain vanished completely.
Seconds passed…
The temple remained still…
Then the voice of the Spell echoed through the vast hall, audible to the naked air itself.
[You have offered yourself as a sacrifice to the gods.]
[The gods are dead, and cannot hear you.]
[Your soul bears the Star of Divinity.]
[You are a Divine Shadow.]
The puddle of shadow upon the throne stirred faintly as the ancient words reverberated through the temple.
Abaddon moved quickly. Panicked.
The monstrous eye surged forward, its abyssal gaze intensifying as the authority of Entropy descended once more to finish what it had begun.
But the Spell was not finished.
The shadows filling the great hall trembled—
They began to move.
The darkness gathered along the pillars and walls of the Nameless Temple surged outward like a living tide, stretching across the chamber in vast tendrils that twisted toward the invading blossoms of Abaddon.
The everblack flowers were seized instantly.
No — they were crushed.
Their abyssal petals collapsed beneath the sudden violence of the temple's awakening shadows, torn apart before their devouring darkness could spread further.
The enormous eye struggled violently as those shadows coiled around it.
Above the temple, the vast body of Abaddon reacted.
Across the heavens, countless blossoms of Entropy churned in agitation.
Then the Spell spoke again.
[Shadow God stirs in his eternal slumber.]
[The 'Shadow God' has opened its eyes.]
[The 'Shadow God' is ■■■ with your conclusion 'Eternity.']
Power surged through the temple like a rising storm.
Lost from Light's shattered body suddenly reformed upon the throne, flesh and armor knitting together beneath a flood of essence that poured into his soul from every direction. The vast reservoirs of shadow that had once been drained now overflowed once more, swelling with an ancient strength that did not belong to him alone.
And beside the throne, another figure stood.
It resembled him.
Yet it also resembled someone else.
The man who had once been Avatar Sacred Sunless watched the sky with calm indifference as his form began to unravel into countless strands of shadow.
Above the temple, Abaddon descended in fury.
The desert trembled and the sky split apart.
From the fractured plains below, straight lines of darkness erupted toward the heavens like spears piercing the sky. The ground itself cracked open as an immeasurable realm of shadow began to manifest within the world.
The Realm of the Shadow God had come.
And as the avatar's voice rose calmly toward the trembling heavens, the boundless sea of shadows spread across the entire desert.
["Abaddon…"]
—?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!—
["And you."]
The second voice did not belong to Lost from Light.
It emerged from the avatar standing beside the throne — calm and ancient, carrying a weight that did not belong to any living being. As the words spread through the trembling air of the temple, the shadows gathered with sudden purpose. What had been scattered darkness within the hall surged forward as one, twisting into immense tendrils that coiled around Lost from Light's broken body.
They lifted him gently from the throne.
The black marble of the Nameless Temple groaned as more shadows flooded into the chamber, pouring through cracks in the walls and fractures in the floor. Outside, the desert had already begun to split apart beneath long, perfectly straight fissures stretching across the horizon. From those wounds in the world, pillars of living darkness rose into the sky, forcing back the encroaching blossoms of Entropy.
Lost from Light was carried upward through the shattered roof of the temple, cradled within the vast grasp of those shadows as they ascended into the sky.
Above the temple, the monstrous presence of Abaddon stirred violently. Countless everblack flowers twisted across the firmament as the Profaned God focused its terrible gaze upon the rising storm of darkness. The massive eye that had entered the temple earlier recoiled, struggling against the shadows still crushing its withering remains.
The avatar turned its head slowly, looking toward the vast mass of Entropy gathering in the heavens.
Then it spoke again.
["Abaddon. Don't touch this shadow."]
The tendrils tightened around Lost from Light and rose higher into the sky. The Shadow God spoke in righteous fury.
["This one is mine."]
Within the Nightmare Spell, something ancient had awakened. A fragment of a god's soul, buried within its foundation since its origin, had found a vessel to descend into.
Using that fragment as a catalyst, the Shadow God had manifested through one of Lost from Light's avatars — and taken it as his own.
Shadow God had come personally.
[The Shadow God 'Izanami' has descended into your Avatar.]
Lost from Light… was no longer alone.