Published at 12th of November 2026 7:39 am

Chapter CH.3244 Three Fortunes

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The Jade Palace was a place of stark contrast. The fuming volcano, the soaring peak of a mountain; the white snow, the black ash. Heat and cold clashed here like sworn enemies, even if they were like two sides of the same coin.

Sunny and Mordret had been the same once, a long time ago. Both shadows and reflections were masters of mimicry, after all, so their powers shared a common trait. However, as people, they could not have been more different.

Now that neither of them was truly a human, though, their past differences seemed faint and distant. Sunny could not bring himself to feel the same intense emotions Mordret had stirred in him once — fear, anger, caution, bitterness, distrust... it was not the same Mordret anymore, after all.

He had not been the same when they entered the Nightmare, and after thousands of years that they had been apart, that distance could have only grown.

And yet, Mordret did not feel like a stranger. On the contrary, meeting him made Sunny feel a faint sense of nostalgia.

The dire passions that had once blazed in his heart were like cold embers now, and meeting someone from the distant days of his youthful innocence felt like meeting an old friend.

Sunny offered Mordret a reserved smile. That said... he had no intention of trusting the King of Nothing. The man had always been a wild card, deviously unpredictable and entirely impossible to prevent. Thousands of years spent in the Nightmare must have only exacerbated his strange personality, no matter which version of Mordret had become the last and only one.

‘Still. Seeing him is strangely... reassuring.’

Sunny looked at his own face reflected in Mordret's eyes.

“So, how have you been?"

Mordret lingered for a moment, studying him with a neutral expression. Then, wrapping his dark cloak around himself to stave off the frigid wind, he shrugged.

"My Nightmare has been uneventful.”

Sunny could not help but scoff.

Countless years spent in a world where gods and daemons mingled with humans, battling beings of the Void from time to time, and this guy had the audacity to say that nothing particularly notable had happened?

It was hard to believe.

Then again, very few things seemed truly notable when one looked at them from the towering height of eternity.

Mordret smiled faintly and looked away.

“Well, maybe I did have one or two close brushes with death. And perhaps I did experience many wondrous things... and countless harrowing things, as well."

He sighed.

"Unlike the rest of you, I barely experienced the Unmaking. I spent some time in the Great Mirror, side by side with Mirage, sharing in her vibrant fantasies. Then, I ran away and hid myself in the eyes of humans, experiencing life after life through them. Some of those people were wonderful; some of them were monstrous. Most were somewhere in the middle. Sharing their lives was my attempt to engineer my own Unmaking and prepare myself for Apotheosis."

Opening his arms, he gave Sunny an elegant bow.

“But as you see, I am still mortal. Eventually, I was overcome by nostalgia and decided to travel down memory lane... perhaps to remind myself who I was, or maybe simply because I had no other ideas. So, I snuck into the Ivory Tower, thinking of killing Hope... but instead, I stayed there with her for a few centuries, trying to spy on Nether in the Sky Below in the process. With little success, naturally."

Mordret smiled faintly, then shrugged.

“So much time has passed, so I thought that I would have changed. And I did. But in many ways... the most important ways... I am still the same. Don't you find it curious? I thought I had left my Flaw behind, but even after becoming whole, after living immeasurably longer as a complete being than I had ever been broken... I am still the same shattered, fractured person. There's still no place for someone like me in the world, because there's no one else like me. So, if anything, I have become more like myself than I have ever been — despite all the time that has passed."

Sunny studied him silently for a while, then nodded.

"Yeah. It's a bit curious. Perhaps I am the same... honestly, I can't tell just yet. My mind is still reeling.”

Mordret looked at him with interest.

"What about you? How have you been?"

Sunny let out a quiet chuckle, his voice dark.

"Not too great, to be honest."

He inhaled deeply, then spoke in a neutral tone:

"I was quite unfortunate. My Unmaking was as vicious as they come, and at the end of it, there was barely anything of me left. My spirit did not collapse entirely, but that was about it."

He shook his head.

"But I was incredibly lucky, as well."

Sunny paused for a moment, a pale smile illuminating his face.

“After the Unmaking, I did not really remember who I was. All I wanted was to hide and lick my wounds. So, I crawled into a dark cave and tried to dissolve into the world, sinking into its vastness to escape the pain. I did not know it back then, but that was the first time I almost failed the Nightmare — because if I truly did fuse with the land around me, I would have become a force of nature void of personhood instead of a deity. But, luckily, a little girl wandered into my cave and pulled me back from the edge."

His expression turned warm for a moment, then wistful.

Sunny sighed.

"Later, I went a little mad. I swallowed a human city and killed everyone who lived there... I had a reason, of course, but not a good one. Not nearly good enough to justify my actions, let alone redeem them. That was the second time I came to the precipice of failing — because if I continued in the same manner, I would have probably still become a deity at the end of the Nightmare. Just not the kind of deity our world needs or the kind I wanted to be.”

He looked into the distance with a somber expression.

"This is what happened to the Supremes of Mictlan, I think. They conquered the Fifth Nightmare and became Spirits, but changed too much in the process — and in the wrong direction. So, despite their Apotheosis, they ended up destroying their own people."

Mordret nodded thoughtfully.

“The Nightmare Spell does not really care what kind of deities we become, after all. It only wants to forge us into gods. Just like it doesn't care what kind of Awakened we become as long as we continue walking the Path of Ascension."

Sunny hesitated for a short while, then said:

“I was lucky once again, though, because I met a wandering soul who forced a promise out of me and helped me step away from the edge. After that, I traveled for a bit and made a few friends. Eventually, I descended into the Realm of Death and threw a tantrum in front of Shadow God, demanding that he do his job and kill me. But he refused. So, I spent the rest of my time in the Shadow Realm, wasting away. That was the third time I came close to failing the Nightmare, as well as the third time luck was on my side."

He looked at the pristine white walls of the Jade Palace and smiled.

“If I stayed in the Shadow Realm, I would have probably remained stuck in the Nightmare forever, achieving nothing. But, fortunately, Cassie sent someone to fetch me, then helped me recover from the wounds dealt by the Unmaking. And here I am... not really unscathed and a little worse for wear, but at least in a position to try ending this Nightmare properly."

He turned to Mordret, his smile disappearing.

Instead, a scowl took its place.

“As long as I learn what the hell we need to do to conquer it. Did she tell you anything?"

Mordret slowly shook his head.

“Not yet. She has not been in the best state... and I have the feeling that she wants to tell us all together instead of repeating herself endlessly. I don't even think that the Jade Queen knows."

Sunny raised an eyebrow.

"The Jade Queen? Isn't her role simply to host the four of us?"

Mordret chuckled.

"Why would Lady Cassia need to use the Jade Queen's hospitality to gather us? She has her own cozy realm here — one she has been quietly developing since the Age of Heroes. If she simply needed a place to gather Supremes, she could have invited us there."

He shook his head.

“Plus, do you really think that she established a relationship with the Jade Queen by chance, all those centuries ago? This is Song of the Fallen we are talking about. When has she ever not had a scheme in the works, her every action pursuing several layers of overlapping goals?"

Sunny stared at him for a few moments, then let out a heavy breath.

“True enough."

His expression turned dim.

What was Cassie planning that she needed not only the four Supreme challengers of the Nightmare, but also the legendary Jade Queen to accomplish it?

Mordret chuckled.

“Well, I wouldn't worry about it if I were you."

Sunny looked at him dubiously.

"Oh? Why is that?"

Mordret just looked at him and smiled.

"Speaking of overlapping goals... do you really think that you arrived here when you did by coincidence? Sure, her primary goal was likely to help you regain some semblance of sanity. But it's quite obvious what else she needs from you, isn't it?"

He shook his head and looked in the direction where the great bridge stretched across the bottomless chasm that separated the great mountain from the towering volcano.

“If you were in such rough shape, going around slaughtering cities, then I don't even want to imagine what Changing Star is like now. Cassie managed to help you... but I don't think that she can help Nephis — or, rather, I don't think that she can help White Abyss. White Abyss needs to be willing to accept her help first, at the very least. You, however? If anyone has a chance of getting to Changing Star, it's Lost from Light. So, that one is on you."

Mordret looked at Sunny with something that resembled pity and patted him on the shoulder.

“And speaking of that... there seems to be a stray sun barreling toward us at this exact moment. She'll be here in a few minutes. So..."

He backed away, his face slowly turning a few shades paler.

“Good luck, I guess! I'll be rooting for you!"

With that, Mordret disappeared, fleeing into the reflections.

Sunny was left standing on the ramparts alone.

His eye twitched.

‘W-what? Already?'

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