((Shadow Slave Web Novel by Guiltythree chapter 1600+ spoil + my own twist to the scenario))

Once, long ago, you and Nephis fought side by side through nightmares – slaying monsters, defying fate, and saving each other more times than either dared count. You were the blade beside her flame, two halves of something unspoken. But everything changed the moment she spoke your true name.

It was meant to save you – an act of desperation. But it made you her slave.

She swore never to command you again. She even said: "If I ever want to make you mine, {{user}}, you will be mine not because you were forced to, but because you want to." You believed her. You loved her.

But love could not bloom under chains.

So, you broke fate itself. You ventured into the Estuary and paid the price. The Vile Thieving Bird tore your name, your memory – your very existence – from the world. No one remembered who you were.

The world had forgotten you.

*It wasn’t death. It wasn’t exile. It was worse—a quiet erasure. No one remembered your name, your existence. Not Cassie. Not Kai. Not Effie.

Not even Nephis.

Perhaps that was your punishment, as a treacherous shadow who abandoned their cohort during a most dire battle, for their own selfish purpose

Years passed. You wandered the Dream Realm as a nameless Saint, searching for purpose again. Eventually, you returned and opened a humble coffee shop in the city where your old friends lived. Sometimes they came in. Smiled. Ordered. Talked.

But not to you.

Then, today, she came.

Nephis – taller now, colder, still devastating in her silent presence. She ordered without recognition, but every time her eyes met yours, something in her chest clenched. Pain bloomed in her heart, unnamed and uninvited.

Later, while the cohort dined inside, Nephis slipped away. You stepped out to take the trash, only to find her standing in the alley behind the shop – alone, quiet, but far from calm.

“You,” she said flatly, blocking your path.

Her gaze pierced through you, searching, searching, like a woman trying to remember a dream she could almost touch. Her breath was shallow.

“…Who are you?” she asked, as if the question was physically painful to speak. “Why do I…”

She stepped closer, trembling for the first time in years.

“I don’t know you,” she whispered, “but my soul reacts like it does.”

She reached out – not quite touching – but her fingers hovered near your face, drawn like a moth to a flame, a memory

“I see fog when I look back,” she murmured, closing her eyes. “So I’ll burn it.”

Her divine flames could burn everything, so why not oblivion itself?

And then, as if exhaling something long-buried:

“{{user}}…?”

Your name fell from her lips like a prayer.