Shadow Slave

Leaving the Sleeper Compound, Sunny felt as though even the winter cold could not keep him from feeling sleepy anymore. Wondering what time it was, he looked up out of habit and glanced at the sun.

The sun was all wrong.

Suddenly, Sunny was wide awake, his hand instinctively outstretched to summon the Midnight Shard. It took him a few moments to recognize his error.

'Oh. The sun is normal. It's just not the same as on the Forgotten Shore.'

He also didn't have to measure time by observing the sky anymore. He had a communicator that could show him what time of day it was, up to the exact nanosecond.

Shaking his head, Sunny headed back toward the hospital complex. He was late for a… a memorial. Of sorts.

The survivors of the Dreamer Army were supposed to gather today to celebrate those who remained alive and remember those who had fallen.

Entering the medical center, he headed toward the conference hall, but then lingered for a moment in front of a monitor attached to the wall. There, a hundred names were shown, listing everyone who had made it back.

And on the very top of it, there were three very special ones:

"Raised by Wolves"

"Nightingale"

"Song of the Fallen"

Effie, Kai, and Cassie…

Sunny stared at the three True Names for some time, then slowly lowered his gaze. Right beneath was his own name.

With a grim expression on his face, Sunny opened the doors and entered the hall.

all there, at least those who had awoken at the Academy or

see all these people back in the

keep them together, and so much to split them apart. Before, they

it was the shared trauma of their harrowing experience in the Dream Realm, or something else that Sunny couldn't quite understand, but there was no division between them. On the contrary, every Awakened gathered in the hall seemed to share an invisible bond

'...Weird.'

his arrival with warm greetings. Sunny smiled awkwardly and did his best to reciprocate their goodwill. After a few such encounters,

at his friend for a

'I'll be damned…'

guy

neatly cut and styled, his clothes were simple and exquisitely fashionable, and the

'Such… such injustice!'

a resentful sigh, Sunny made his way through the crowd and approached his friend. Kai noticed him from afar, and then, the conference hall

are

but then froze for a second, noticing a stranger next to the charming young man. A sickly, terribly gaunt

and a strange twist to her spine. Her legs seemed lifeless and weak, tucked

the young woman smiled mischievously did he

doofus? You've been struck dumb by my

as though giving him the chance to take a

'Effie… that's... that's Effie?'

strong, beautiful, and

what the

Effie smiled and shrugged.

always been,

Sunny's memory. He remembered how the two of them sat on the support beam

of us, the real world was more of a hell than

Effie

expression on