The Chained Isles were a monument to violently broken physics.
Massive, jagged landmasses floated in an endless abyss, tethered together by colossal iron chains , the sky was an oppressive, bruised expanse, the winds howled like dying monsters, and the very air felt heavy with the lingering malice of the Dream Realm. To traverse the gaps between the islands was to invite death. To fall meant plunging into the Sky Below, a fiery oblivion from which nothing returned.
For most Awakened, traveling here was a grueling, terrifying ordeal of creeping along rust-slicked chains while dodging flying Nightmare Creatures. Avoiding the crushing was a bother too.
For Sunny, it currently involved hitching a ride in the shadow of a very stubborn girl.
High above the abyss, Cielle cut through the howling winds. Her massive wings beat in a steady, powerful rhythm, catching the violent updrafts and turning them into momentum. She was a striking streak of pristine white against the dreary, rusted backdrop of the Isles.
From the outside, it looked like the angel was flying alone.
But clinging to the dark, her shifting shadow cast by the wings against her back, Sunny was safely tucked away in the deprivation of the shadows.
It was a brilliant, overpowered exploit of their combined abilities. Using Shadow Step, Sunny could merge into any shadow. By sinking into the shadow of Cielle's wings, which were just large enough for him, he effectively gained the ability of flight without needing to expend the massive essence required to sustain a flying Memory. He was weightless, perfectly hidden from the terrifying avian monsters that patrolled the skies, and able to conserve his strength.
He did spend the essence required to maintain shadow step, though it was a much lighter load compared to his usual methods, plus he was a monster with two cores.
It was a flawless tactical maneuver. There was only one glaring problem with it: the pilot.
Cielle's wings suddenly faltered. The steady, rhythmic beating hitched, and she dropped twenty feet in a matter of seconds. The shadow Sunny was hiding inside warped and shrank as she lost altitude, forcing him to expend a sharp burst of his own essence just to anchor himself.
'Damn it' Sunny thought, feeling the strain which almost made him come out of the shadow. ' She's running on fumes.'
"Land!" Sunny poked his head out of the shadows "Next island, dead ahead! Put us down!"
Cielle didn't argue. She banked sharply to the left, her wings stiffening as she went into a steep glide. They hurtled toward a small, moss-covered crag floating at the edge of a massive island cluster. She flared her wings at the very last second, the backdraft kicking up a cloud of dust, and hit the stone with a heavy, ungraceful thud. She dropped to one knee, her wings sagging instantly to the ground, the pristine feathers stained with dirt.
The moment the shadow of her wings hit the solid rock, the darkness rippled and expanded. Sunny stepped up out of the two-dimensional plane, materializing into three dimensions.
He immediately rounded on her, his face pale with lingering adrenaline.
"You dropped fifty feet!" Sunny yelled over the howling wind, his heart hammering in his chest. "Your essence is completely bottomed out! Why didn't you say anything?!"
Cielle stayed on one knee for a moment, breathing heavily, before slowly pushing herself up. She looked at him, her green eyes slightly glassy with exhaustion but otherwise completely calm. "I could have made it another mile. The updraft was favorable."
"Your wings literally stopped moving!" Sunny argued, gesturing wildly at the abyss they had just crossed. "If you passed out over the gap, we both would have dropped into the Sky Below! Why didn't you tell me you were exhausted?!"
"You didn't ask," Cielle stated simply.
Sunny stared at her, his jaw working as he tried to formulate a response to that sheer, unadulterated lunacy. "I shouldn't have to ask! It's your essence pool! You are supposed to communicate your limits to me!"
Cielle tilted her head, genuinely perplexed by his sudden anger. "You said we needed to reach the next island," she said, her tone perfectly even despite her ragged breathing. "I could still move my wings. There was no reason to stop early and force us to land somewhere unsafe. I didn't want to complain and slow you down."
Sunny clamped his mouth shut. The anger completely vanished, replaced by a sudden, chilling realization.
He stared at the girl standing in front of him. She was covered in sweat, her essence completely drained, yet she hadn't uttered a single word of complaint. She would have literally flown until her soul collapsed and sent them both plummeting into the abyss, just to avoid being a "bother."
'She doesn't have a normal self-preservation instinct!' Sunny realized with a heavy, sinking feeling in his gut.
He thought back to the horrific, methodical silver scars he had accidentally seen crisscrossing her back the night before. He still had no idea where she came from or what had happened to her , but looking at her now, the pieces clicked together in a terrifying way. Whatever her past was, it had completely broken her understanding of her own limits. She didn't view her pain or exhaustion as something worth mentioning.
'If I don't monitor her,' Sunny thought, a cold sweat pricking the back of his neck, she would quietly work herself to death just because I asked her to do something.'
Sunny let out a long, slow breath, rubbing his temples. The lingering memory of her casually stealing candied fruit from him this morning felt like a lifetime ago. Right now, he just felt a profound, terrifying sense of responsibility.
"Okay," Sunny said, his voice much softer, dropping the hostility entirely. "New rule. We are a team. That means I need to know exactly what condition you are in. You have to tell me when your essence drops below thirty percent. It's not complaining, Cielle. It's basic communication. Understand?"
Cielle nodded slowly "Okay. I will tell you."
"Good. Sit down. Eat a ration."
Sunny turned away to secure the perimeter. He silently summoned Saint. The towering stone knight stepped out of his shadow, her ruby eyes sweeping the desolate island. Sunny gave her a silent command to watch the surroundings. Saint took up a post near the edge of the cliff, their silent, lethal sentinel.
Cielle had plopped down on a relatively clean patch of stone, entirely unbothered by their surroundings. She pulled a dried ration bar from her pouch and began to eat it, well pick on it at least.
Sunny watched her from the corner of his eye. He was still paranoid. If she wouldn't tell him when she was running on empty, he needed to know exactly how deep her reserves were. He needed to see the state of her soul.
With a sigh, Sunny changed his eyes to look deeper into her soul, Instantly, the world vanished. The drab, rusted colors of the Chained Isles were replaced by a complex tapestry of glowing strings. The physical world became translucent, overlaid with the roaring currents of essence that flowed through the Dream Realm.
Sunny turned his gaze toward Cielle. He looked past her physical body, past the flesh and bone, peering directly into her soul center to look at her Awakened core. He expected to see a single, brightly burning sphere of light, the hallmark of an Awakened human.
Instead, he went completely, entirely still.
Through his altered eyes, Cielle's soul did not hold a single sphere. It was blinding, violently radiant, yet….
Two.
There were two distinct, perfectly formed soul cores burning inside her center, orbiting each other in a flawless, harmonic weave of terrifying power. Thick, luminous threads of essence connected them, feeding into the massive, ethereal constructs of the copied wings resting on her back.
Sunny stopped breathing.
His brain completely stalled out. Human beings only had one core. They evolved by saturating that one core with soul shards. The only way a human could possess multiple cores was if their Aspect was of the absolute highest, most mythical tier in existence.
He knew this, because he had multiple cores. Nephis had multiple cores.
Divine Aspects. The rarest, most dangerous, world-breaking anomalies the Spell could ever produce. Everyone who had one was a monster destined to either conquer the world or destroy it.
Sunny's hands started shaking. The drab, rusted reality of the Chained Isles snapped back into view.
Cielle was still sitting on the rock, chewing the last piece of her ration bar. She noticed him staring and paused, wiping a crumb from her cheek. "Is there a Nightmare Creature behind me?"
"You..." Sunny rasped, his voice completely hollow. He took a step toward her, his eyes wide with absolute, horrified disbelief. "Your soul."
Cielle blinked. "What about it?"
"What..." Sunny rasped, his voice completely hollow. He took a step toward her. "What is the Rank of your Aspect?"
Cielle swallowed her food. She looked at him, mildly confused by the sudden intensity of his question, but answered with her usual blunt honesty. "Divine."
Sunny stopped breathing. His brain completely stalled out. He had known the moment he saw the two spheres of light inside her soul. But seeing it and hearing her say it out loud with zero inflection were two very entirely different things.
"You have two soul cores!" Sunny whispered, running a hand through his dark hair as he started pacing a tight, panicked circle in front of her.
"Yes," Cielle agreed, taking a sip from her canteen. "I have to collect a lot of fragments though…. It's annoying."
Sunny stopped pacing. He stared at her, feeling like reality was fracturing around him. "Inefficient?" Sunny's voice cracked, pitching upward. "Cielle, do you have any idea what that means? Do you understand the sheer impossibility of our existence? There are maybe three people in the entire world with a Divine Aspect! If the Great Clans find out what you are, they won't just let you go ! They will hunt you down and put a collar on your neck!"
Cielle capped her canteen and set it down. She looked up at Sunny, her green eyes completely flat, utterly devoid of the awe, terror, or arrogance that such power usually brought. She didn't care about the Great Clans. She didn't care about politics.
"Yeah," Cielle said, her voice deadpan and chillingly calm. "I have a Divine Aspect. So what?"