Chapter Text
Huff Puff
A young child runs through an alley. His black hair, donned by his pale face, waved wildly as he ran. His slim physique, commonly seen in any kid that lived in the outskirts due to malnutrition, was not helping him.
He was Sunny, or rather, Sunless.
He was eight years old, and right now, he was running away from the orphanage that had been his residence for a full year.
A year ago, his mother had died due to disease. Ever since then, Sunny's life kept going downhill.
At first, he gave his all in protecting his sister, Rain, who was only three years old.
But then, a couple adopted her. Sunny didn't know their faces, nor did he care.
At first, he was both glad and hurt. Glad that his sister would grow up with a normal childhood, since her new parents were actually citizens. On the other hand, he was hurt that they didn't bring him with her, the pain of separation had weighed severely on the grieving child that missed his family.
After some time he was adopted too. Terrible experience, the couple that had first adopted him figured out fast why Sunny took so long to be adopted in the first place.
In his grief for his mother and sadness towards the separation from his sister. He lashed out easily and refused to recognize them as his family.
The couple didn't take long to push their own frustrations onto him, beating him up and refusing to feed him at times.
At some point they got tired and handed him back to the orphanage.
After that, he went through several new homes. It was always the same, though.
At some point, the little hope and trust that Sunny had in his own heart vanished. He understood that everyone in this world, especially in the outskirts, was a beast.
They were not just wolves waiting to gnaw on the meat of those weaker than them, but they were also foxes that would manipulate you into doing things their own way.
And so, he reached a conclusion.
Rain was in danger.
As soon as he understood that, he left the orphanage during his eighth birthday.
His goal? To find and save his sister.
Still, trouble seemed to have its own way to find him.
After his first night, when food became his sole responsibility, he decided to steal some. Turns out that target choosing was not one of his talents, shame.
And now he was running from two brutes that wanted to mess him up, or worse, sell him to one of those legacies that had strange tastes.
Not that he understood that completely.
As he left the alley, he looked around, his chest hurting from the effort and panic.
Not far away was a huge temple. Apparently it was from the Dark Times, before the Nightmare Spell.
Just looking at it, Sunny felt the hairs on the back of his neck straighten up.
Gritting his teeth, he breathed deeply and made a run towards it.
He heard about this temple from his mother long ago.
Nobody dared to approach it, most likely due to the feeling that crawled under his skin at the moment.
He heard the footsteps of his pursuers slow down and ultimately stop.
'It's working!'
They had stopped, once he was inside, no one would dare to approach him.
He just had to fight this mysterious feeling of dread.
It felt angry, sorrowful, aggrieved, and sad. He couldn't pinpoint it exactly, it just felt wrong and overall something that shouldn't be approached.
He felt his feet unconsciously planting themselves firmer on the muddy ground, as if trying to stop his rush.
'Damnation, don't stop now!'
Sunny could not afford to stop now, in order to save his sister, he had to go beyond his own comfort and safety. What was a dreadful and obviously dangerous temple compared to the possibility that his sister was hurt? Nothing! That's what.
'If I want to do this, who dares to stop me?'
Step by step the frail child approached the temple and crossed its gate. The more he approached, the more terrifying it all felt, and yet, Sunny felt that he was lighter than he ever was.
'Am I not afraid? No, that's not it. I'm a coward after all. I just don't really care, I suppose. Damnation.'
Not daring to slow down, he ran towards the entrance of the temple's main building, where the dreadful feeling was the strongest.
Without hesitating for a single breath, Sunny opened the sliding door and walked inside before closing it almost in the same motion.
At this point, the feeling was so intense and heavy that Sunny could swear he could almost see things that he shouldn't.
They were like trails of black smoke with small hints of blue, and they were all connected towards a certain room of the temple.
Sunny walked towards it, his curiosity and surprisingly absent survival instincts leading him forward.
Groowl~
Sunny almost jumped until he realized just how hungry he was.
'Could there be something here to eat? Probably not.'
As he entered the room, what he noticed first was how empty it felt. It was surrounded by only three walls: the one where Sunny was entering from and two other walls adjacent to it, the view opposite to the door being the overgrown garden of the temple.
At the center of the wide room stood a simple wooden altar, a box, and what seemed to be a photo quietly resting in it, a blanket of dust covering them both.
Sunny approached the photo first, roughly cleaning it of the dust.
As the image revealed itself, Sunny noticed that it was a group photo of several young people. One of them, the one that was in the center, had pink hair and wore a bright smile on his face, despite the huge scar across his face and at the corner of his mouth.
The boy's arms were draped over two other figures, one was a girl with an eyepatch and brown hair, and the other was a black-haired boy with a grumpy face and several scars around his eyes.
Other figures could be seen. A muscular girl covered in burning scars, a boy with stitches in his head, a boy that covered his mouth with his clothes, and a spotted 'bear?' , a girl with angel wings among several others.
A date could be found in the corner of the photo: 2019.
'2019? This is a year from the Dark Times, right? I can't really remember. This place is this old? Or is it just the photo itself?'
He looked around, the wooden floors and walls seemed old, yes, but not that old, at best, they would date back to the first generation. Sunny couldn't tell, he was not a wood expert, after all.
Ignoring once again the calls from his stomach, Sunny picked up the box and dusted off its surface, revealing some kind of inscription at the top.
"I can't read this." He muttered.
It was not because Sunny was illiterate, although a lot of kids in the Outskirts were, his mother always made sure that he knew his ABCs.
But whatever was written on the box was something that he failed to recognize altogether.
Curiosity twisting his brain, Sunny decided to open the box, revealing what was inside.
A finger.
Sunny stepped back instinctively, almost dropping both the box and the finger.
He was scared.
Not because it was a single rotten finger, although that was creepy in itself, but because the finger seemed to emanate that dreadful aura that seemingly convinced anyone to not enter the temple.
'It was coming from this finger all this time?'
His stomach growled in hunger, his intrusive thoughts proposing an idea.
'I wonder who it is from, someone from the picture?'
His stomach grew louder, his intrusive thoughts clashing more and more with his rationality.
'I'm hungry. I haven't eaten anything for a while.'
He looked at the finger tentavily.
'No! No, no! Even if I'm hungry, who would eat a random finger? Not me!'
And yet, under his growling stomach and increasingly louder intrusive thoughts.
In a quick motion, Sunny brought the rotten finger to his lips and ate it in one go.
He felt his throat gag as the entire object tried to slide down. He forced himself to swallow, now that he had put it in his mouth, he might as well actually eat it, no?
As he was preparing for an excruciating pain to come down his chest as the finger travelled to his stomach, nothing happened.
It was like it had just dissolved after going through his throat.
And that's when he felt it. A nausea of unsurmounting proportions that almost made him collapse.
When he opened his eyes again, he was no longer kneeling on the wooden floor of the temple, but instead found himself on all fours on a concrete floor.
As he stared at the ground in surprise, a pair of shoes found itself in his field of vision, prompting Sunny to look up.
In front of him was a young man with pink hair that was neatly styled and red eyes that seemed to shine with a certain sense of power, his pupils surrounded by a single circle, giving his eyes a certain exotic nature.
His face was marked with two scars, one was going through the center of his face, while the other was at the edge of his mouth.
The man was staring at Sunny with surprise, his hands in his pockets.
"A kid?"