Immediately after entering his third Nightmare, Sunny found himself underwater. 'Again!?' He was exasperated, but not surprised. This was the third time the Spell had dropped him in the middle of a body of water after all.

Sunny had since had his fair share of experience with water, immediately attempting to surface. He let out a small breath and followed the direction in which the bubbles rose.

This was a small trick he had found to orient himself underwater. It used the simple fact that bubbles always made their way to the surface.

Sunny swam upwards, moving through the water with grace and efficiency. He quickly made it to the top. Noticing that the water had a current, Sunny quickly identified the cause. 'It's a river.'

Sunny was somewhat confused, he had no idea how a river, especially one so deep, could have existed in the middle of the desert where Mordret found the Seed of Nightmare.

Sunny rose above the water and took a few deep breaths, analysing the surroundings for anything he could use.

He was hindered by the thick mist that made it difficult to see, but soon laid eyes upon a piece of flotsam.

It simply floated on top of the water, being the only solid thing in the vicinity. The flotsam wasn't in its best state, the wood was drenched and almost about to break apart.

Sunny threw all other thoughts out of his mind. The only thing that mattered right now was getting something he could hang onto, and for that, the piece of flotsam was perfect.

He quickly made his way over to the floating remnants of a vessel and latched on. Sunny immediately felt relief as he no longer had to fight to stay above water.

He paused for a moment to catch his breath, before climbing onto the wood and collapsing on it.

For a moment, Sunny just laid still, letting the gentle noise of the water wash over him. When he thought about it, this situation had been pretty similar to the one that had happened when he first entered the Dream Realm.

He let out a low chuckle, the irony of always starting off his horrors in the sea something he didn't appreciate.

All of the events leading up to that point had been tiring, so he was exhausted. Against all better judgement, he fell asleep.

***

Sunny woke up, still stranded on a torn off piece of a ship. He opened his eyes and looked around at the surrounding waters. The mist that had made it impossible to see through was gone.

He was in a daze. The expanse of water was the only thing that could be seen. He was still unable to comprehend how such an enormous river could ever be located somewhere in the Nightmare Desert.

Lying on the piece of flotsam, Sunny stood up and studied the wet wood which had served as his bed last night. A plethora of runes was carved into it.

Translated by the Spell, all of the symbols were repeating the same words:

"Wish wish be careful wish wish what you wish careful wish be careful of wish wish for WISH BE CAREFUL OF WISH WISH BE CAREFUL OF WHAT…"

Be careful of what you wish for.

Sunny froze after reading those words but only for a few seconds. A chuckle resounded from behind him. He turned around to find the source of this sound.

It was himself.

Puzzled by what he was seeing, Sunny blinked a few times, thinking that it might just be a hallucination. However, his other self continued to just stand there with a sinister grin plastered on his pale face. 

"Good morning, sleeping beauty. Slept well?"

The other him laughed as Sunny watched him with a serious expression. He was confused, but after a while he finally understood. 'Sin of Solace…' The cursed sword had followed him into the Nightmare, which wasn't surprising. The strange part was that the spirit of the beautiful blade had never been this corporeal when he summoned the memory before. 'Just what is…''

"You caught on fairly quickly. Well, it's not like it'll do you much good anyway."

Immediately after the words left his doppleganger's mouth, Sunny felt a cold chill run down his spine. He couldn't dismiss the unsettling feeling that something was wrong.

Just then, he noticed a small ship approaching swiftly. As the mysterious vessel was getting closer, he was filled with a dreadful feeling. Sunny felt as though he was being watched by someone, no, something truly powerful.

Sunny was frozen solid by the terrifying presence. There was no time to think about Sin of Solace. He couldn't be certain if an ally, or an enemy was coming.

The ship anchored when it had gotten closer to the pale young man. A woman dressed in a regal red dress stood on the bow of the ship. Her face was hidden by a veil, but Sunny could feel her piercing gaze, even through the obstruction.

The woman jumped and landed next to him. She was as light as a feather, the wood did not sway whatsoever. She uncovered her face that had been concealed by the veil until now. Big, beautiful blue eyes had been there all along. Sunny knew perfectly as to whom the eyes belonged to.

'Cassie?'

Something moved beneath her dress. Multiple black tentacles slithered out of it and trapped Sunny on the spot. He was unable to resist the force and was left simply staring at the person before him.

Cassie, or whoever she now was, pulled him closer with the ominous appendages, giving Sunny no room to breathe or look away. Her presence was simply suffocating, and Sunny was just trapped in the situation, his struggles having no avail.

Her gorgeous eyes now had a subtle glow to them. Unable to avert his gaze, Sunny looked straight into them.

A flood of images and sounds entered his mind.

He saw a grand city, which was frozen in time.

He saw a tower that stood on an island surrounded by a colossal vortex.

He saw another city, one that had been based on a bunch of island-ships.

He saw a familiar ship sailing across the Great River.

Thousands of years of memories entered his mind all at once. He tried to pull away but was locked in place.

Within the span of a few seconds, the memories of at least a hundred thousand attempts to complete the third Nightmare had been injected into him.

Sunny could feel his mind slipping. His sense of self, sanity and humanity was falling through his fingers like sand. He barely managed to pull himself back for a moment.

'Lost from Light…' He uttered internally, but to no avail. For some reason, the memories were not treated as foreign, and so instead of being pulled out of them, he was sucked further inwards.

The vast and constant stream of memories settled into his very being, twisting his personality. He began to understand why.

'They're my memories.' He wasn't entirely cognisant at present, so he failed to understand why, but he managed to instinctively deduce the origin of the memories.

The outrageous amount of images he had seen was too much for his mind to handle, so he slowly began to collapse. Just before he fainted, Sunny witnessed one last memory.

It was a memory of Nephis' death, one out of many.

The tall silver-haired girl he had come to love stood in front of him. Her chest was pierced, leaking unhealthy amounts of blood. Her essence was completely exhausted, so as the final flame flickered and extinguished, she was extinguished with it.

Nephis looked at him with a pained expression as tears rolled down her cheeks. With a raspy, weak voice, a single word came out of her mouth.

"Sunny…"

Immediately following that, Sunny fainted, his consciousness falling into a dark abyss.

***

What awoke long after Sunny had fainted, was not Sunny anymore. The woman who he had suspected to be Cassie, and the one he knew was Torment, had long since left.

Sunny was different too. He was still Lost from Light, but he was a much more sinister version of himself.

He cackled and a raspy, inhuman noise came out of his mouth. It was as if he had long forgotten how to speak.

"I'm back…" Sunny turned to the hateful wraith that was the Sin of Solace with a wide, frenzied grin on his face.

The Sin of Solace stared at Sunny hatefully, but stayed silent unlike his usual self. Sunny knew why. There was a muzzle on him, he had made it himself after all.

He was Sunny once, the Mad Prince afterwards, and now finally. He was Sunny once again.

Lost from Light reveled in his newfound lack of corruption. He was still mad, there was no doubt about it, but he was no longer corrupted.

None of the cursed knowledge that had plagued his mind and soul for the vast majority of his time in the unholy pyramid, remained within him.

His plan to free himself from corruption hinged on Torment's ability to manipulate memories. It was simple, but exceedingly difficult to pull off.

Yet, in the end, Sunny had managed.

There were plenty of things he had to consider moving forward. 

The plan for conquering the third Nightmare had already been shaped long ago. After all, Sunny had an abundance of time to think of one.

However, at that moment, a single thought had taken priority over any sort of planning.

'Neph… Neph, Neph, Neph…' 

The sinister grin on his face contorted into a crazy smile, which was overflowing with immense joy, yet also frenzy and insanity.

Now that he wasn't corrupted anymore, she could finally accept him. He just had to create a scenario, in which they survive together as partners.

Sunny forcibly calmed himself down. The mere action of thinking about Nephis had sent him into a downward spiral.

A cascade of emotions of every kind had threatened to drown him. Euphoria, loathing, joy, guilt, excitement, rage but most of all, love.

He had loved her before, but now it was different. He had stopped counting after fifty thousand years, but he had spent far, far longer than that in the baleful tomb.

He had seen her many times within that period, but not for long each time. 

The dreadful times of her absence had haunted him across each and every repetition, twisting him and his emotions towards her.

He loved her, that was undoubtedly true. In fact, the love he felt towards her was likely greater than anyone had ever loved someone else before.

However, his love was warped and perverse. It was formed before he was corrupted, but had festered and changed while he was.

Sunny's love for Nephis had turned into an obsession. It was a pillar of his existence, and the very thing that had kept him going all this time.

Somewhere deep inside of him, his pure love for her still existed. However it was greatly overshadowed by his mad, crazed obsession.

She was his, and nothing would ever come between them ever again. Not a mere third Nightmare, not the sovereigns, not even fate would be able to keep him away.

A jagged chasm of a smile appeared on Sunny's face. His eyes were darker than ever before, shining with mad obsession.

"I can't wait to see her." He mumbled and couldn't help but laugh. They could be together once again. He might be a little mad, but she didn't need to know that.

He was willing to wait for her and reel himself in. After all, he had already been waiting for at least a hundred thousand years. What could a couple of months do to him?

'It's so close.' His plan was coming to fruition. All he had to do now was play his part, breaking the chains that bound him and leaving the tomb, once and for all.

Sunny let the crooked expression linger on his face for a moment longer, before changing it into something more sane.

The him now was indistinguishable from the Sunny that had first entered the nightmare. 'Now we wait.'