---
The silence inside the temple was absolute.
Not empty.
Just... final.
Rias and Akeno rested near the entrance, their heads low, wings folded tight to their backs. The temple had sealed behind them without a sound. Not like stone grinding or mechanisms moving — it was more like a door they had never noticed simply stopped existing.
Sunny walked alone into the inner chamber.
The mural waited there.
It wasn't art. It was truth.
An image of him — older, cloaked in layered shadows that burned like black flame, his face hollowed out, eyes missing, yet still… smiling.
He stared at it.
And for once, he felt small.
His hand rose slowly.
The moment his fingers brushed the blackened wall, the world unraveled.
A soundless pull.
Memory — or something like it — swallowed him.
---
He stood in a burning world.
Not fire. Not heat.
Destruction.
The sky cracked with red lightning. Shadows screamed across the ground. Corpses littered the hills — not human. Not beast. Things he recognized from previous Nightmares. Things that shouldn't have existed together.
But what gripped him more than the chaos — was the figure at the center of it.
Himself.
Older.
Taller.
Wrapped in layered armor of living darkness, shadows twining over his limbs like muscle. He moved like gravity obeyed him. Each step fractured the land.
He unleashed Shadow Legion — and it came as a flood. Creatures, soldiers, beasts — all twisted by him. Not enslaved.
Willing.
They obeyed because they belonged to him.
And then the vision ended — not with victory, but with him turning back.
Walking into the Dream.
Willingly.
The image faded.
And Sunny collapsed to one knee, gasping.
He felt no pain.
But something in him had changed.
---
Back in the main chamber, Rias opened her eyes.
Something pulsed in the walls.
She was no longer in the temple.
She was in the garden outside the Gremory estate.
Everything was vivid. Soft wind, warm light. Akeno laughed nearby. Issei grinned, arm slung around Asia. Kiba was practicing swordplay with Gasper.
And she was happy.
Whole.
This wasn't memory. This was future.
Akeno appeared beside her. They smiled. Their wings shimmered in the light.
A voice said, "This is what you want."
They turned — and Sunny stood there.
But he was not the Sunny they knew.
His eyes were gone. His aura bled shadows. He looked tired.
And in his hand — a blade of dark light.
Issei turned.
And Sunny killed him.
Just one stroke.
Effortless.
Blood bloomed.
Rias screamed.
Akeno lunged.
And then —
The world shattered.
They woke gasping, back in the temple.
Akeno clutched her chest. Rias stared in horror.
"It wasn't real," she whispered.
Sunny said nothing.
But in the center of the room, the floor had opened.
A new staircase.
No blood. No symbols.
Just descent.
And waiting, deeper still — whatever truth the Dream still refused to say aloud.