Bursting onto a wide clearing, Sunny slid on the moss and came to halt close to its middle. The smell of blood permeated the air here, both frightening and familiar.
'Where is she, where is she...'
Looking around, he noticed someone laying on the ground, their motionless figure buried in the mist. Dashing there, Sunny fell to his knees and stared down with wide eyes.
Jet... it was Jet. Her black leather armor seemed unbroken, but her beautiful face was contorted in a grimace of terrible agony. The moss was greedily drinking blood that flowed from the terrible wound where her arm had been viciously severed.
'Curse it all!'
Sensing his presence, Jet slowly opened her eyes. Her lips moved weakly:
"Sunny... be..."
'Behind me, in the fog!'
Before Jet finished her warning, he was already jumping to his feet and spinning around. There was a vague shape moving in the mist. Because of how quickly Sunny had reacted, he had no trouble dodging its strike.
The Sin of Solace hissed, slicing the figure apart.
'That won't do anything.'
Why did he think that?
Right... seemingly woven out of mist, ethereal, elusive. It had to be a wraith of some kind, meaning that physical attacks would be ineffective against it. It seemed that Sunny's subconscious had discerned the insidious nature of the enemy faster than his conscious mind did.
For this battle, he had to discard the jade jian and summon the Cruel Sight instead.
A split second later, the mist wraith seemed to dissipate into the swirling fog. Sunny could not sense its presence at all, which meant that the abomination could attack at any moment, from any direction.
Letting go of the Sin of Solace, he called upon the somber spear. Now... he just had to survive until it was summoned...
'No... I'm missing something...'
Sunny froze in place, torn between the dire need to be absolutely focused and the gnawing feeling that he was forgetting something terribly, terribly important.
'What... what is it?'
He couldn't allow himself to get distracted. A moment of inattention could mean death.
'Focus!'
His other two scouting shadows - gloomy and happy - were going to reach the clearing in a few seconds. Only when his body was augmented by all five shadows would he have the luxury of sparing some thought to the gnawing feeling.
Jet's hoarse voice resounded from below, faltering and weak:
"Sunny... careful... she's..."
He looked down, and then...
Sunny was suddenly inexplicably calm.
His lips moved:
"...She's you."
The Cruel Sight finally manifested itself into existence.
The happy shadow flew into the clearing.
The mist wraith... Undying Slaughter... was already there, waiting for it.
A terrible agony tore Sunny's soul apart.
Falling to his knees, he heard the Spell whispers and thought:
'Your shadow has been destroyed.'
[Your shadow has been destroyed.]
'Your shadow core has been destroyed.'
[Your shadow core has been destroyed.]
'Now, Gloomy...'
Another flash of indescribable torment pierced his existence, throwing Sunny to the ground.
Wreathing in pain, he struggled to stand up.
'I... I knew this would happen. How did I know?'
Finally, he managed to rise to one knee. The mist was suddenly unbearably cold, casing his body to shiver.
Sunny raised his head and saw two icy blue eyes looking down at him.
'I am going to die now.'
The ghostly blade pierced his chest.
***
Sunny waited for a moment, then slowly straightened and looked around. The Chain Breaker was laying on white sand, tilted awkwardly...
The forest clearing was gone. The bleeding, broken figure of Jet was gone. The corpses of his shadows were gone, too.
...But he remembered it all clearly.
The misty shore, the black cliffs, the cold twilight of the pine forest, the dread of dying on his knees.
'I died.'
But he had not. Otherwise, how would he be standing here, on the deck of the Chain Breaker?
'Neph and Cassie must have saved me, somehow, and retreated back to the ship.'
It was at that moment that he heard Neph's voice:
"I'm fine. I can still put up a fight."
Sunny flinched and stared at her with a deadpan expression.
"What... what did you just say?"
She raised an eyebrow.
"I said I can still fight."
Sunny continued to stare at her silently.
His mind was utterly empty.
'These are the exact words she said when we first landed on the island. No, not just her words. Everything is exactly the same.'
He looked around again, noting every small detail of their surroundings. He was right - it was as if the last hour had never happened.
As if Sunny had returned to the past.
He slowly raised a hand and ran it across his face.
'...What the hell is going on?'