Cassie POV
the past few days had been excruciating for her, not because of living in the outer settlements from the much better living conditions of the bright castle, no it was because every passing day meant that dreadful day was coming closer.
it had been some time since she had the vision of the dying angel of light being devoured by the abyssal shadows, she didn't need to be a genius to figure out the meaning behind the vision, no, because in the course of her journey with Nephis and Sunny, and hearing about their abilities it was all too obvious.
the angel represented Nephis while the abyssal shadows swallowing represented sunny, its meaning was simple, sunny and nephis is going to fight and sunny is going to kill neph…
this vision would not have not bothered her so much, in fact when she partially deciphered its meaning, she didn't bother giving it any thought, she couldn't care less about what happened to others, none of them ever came to help her when she needed it most, to her everyone except 'him' had abandoned her, so she had no reason to worry.
of course this was just her being selfish and spiteful.
but as they traveled together, slowly she started hesitate, she didn't know much about neph and sunny but from the little they shared and from their behavior, she could surmise that they weren't bad people, but they weren't good people either, each of them were desperately trying to survive. when your weak and can barely survive, you cant spare any attention to others, that can only be done by the strong.
as time passed, she started to feel guilt, she didn't know what to do with the information, she couldn't even tell why she got the vision, it was then as if reading her mind, 'he' had guessed what was plaguing her mind, it has always been like this whenever she needed him most, he would conveniently appear and resolve her worries.
she had shared her thoughts of the dream she got, and surprisingly 'he' had come to the same conclusion as her, however he didn't tell her what to do, except he told her to observe then choose if she wanted to do something about it. this of course extinguished her guilt but had left her in a confused state with no sense of which direction she should go.
despite 'his' vague advice, she didn't let herself be swallowed by confusion, she knew she had to do something, otherwise she wouldn't have gotten the vision, and so she had to choose, it was obvious that neph would die and sunny would come out victorious, she had gotten close to both neph and sunny and often times she found it hard to believe that those two would be at each others necks, training together, sharing stories, and despite the nightmarish environment they managed to joke around every now and then albeit it was awkward.
Eventually, she couldn't come up with anything. Both of them were incredibly strong—one came from a legendary legacy clan, and the other was the most tenacious person she had ever met. But she was just an ordinary girl. She had no lineage, no remarkable strength like the other two. Once again, she found herself turning to 'him' for help. And again, 'he' simply told her to be patient, to not rush things. Then, almost as an afterthought, he offered a vague piece of advice: "The hardest choices require the strongest wills."
It sounded… profound. But the way he said it made her wonder for a moment if those words had really been his. but despite the vague which didn't seem to help, she still decided to trust his words, she had decided to trust him with all her life, she was eternally grateful to him, and so she made sure to remember his advice.
and in one faithful night during their journey, she had received another revaluation, the last deciding factor, in the dream she had seen sunny and another person in what seemed like a makeshift tent, when she saw another human other then cohort, she was elated, it meant that the direction they are going is the right one and that they would soon reach civilization, but the vision didn't end, it kept going, she listened to their conversation.
then the world seemed to freeze, the person named Harper had asked a question, the question was if sunny had a true name, as far as she knew sunny did not have a true name, after all getting a true name as a sleeper was almost unheard of, 'him' and neph are exceptions, but if another one were to have a true name as a sleeper… her thoughts were disrupted when out of no where sunny pulled out a dagger and stabbed Harper, with her hands covering her mouth, she couldn't even think because of shock, she had just witnessed a murder, just then sunny spoke aloud his true name and with that the vision ended.
the scene had left her speechless, she had learned many things from this vision but none of it gave her solace, first of all sunny has a true name, "lost from light", it didn't take a genius to know that this true name is special, so much so that sunny went as far as committing murder to hide it, then a chilling shiver ran down her spine, she already know of 2 people who got a true name as a sleeper, and if she had asked the same question of curiosity, what would have happened? would he have pulled out a dagger and killed me?
No! she instantly shook of the thought, she always had a knack for identifying good and bad people, while sunny was a very good person, he wasn't a bad person either that was proved by how he interacted with her, she had no doubt that he was sincere when he talked to her, almost like an older brother, so she naturally refused to believe that sunny would do something without reason, it could have been an enemy who was planning to harm him and he had to act fast.
after convincing herself that the murder was justified, she knew she couldn't hide it forever, sunny had a true name, and it was most likely his weakness, this revelation weight heavily on her, by now she already had a good idea of sunny's character, in all honesty she was afraid.
it took quite some time to calm down, and analyze what she had learned, with the new found knowledge she saw sunny in a new light, every word he said was the truth, to confirm her findings she asked him things as a jest and as she had expected, he spoke the truth, it was then she confirmed, sunny's flaw.
Sunny could not lie.
she didn't feel any sense of achievement knowing this, instead she felt guilt, Sunny was going to all lengths to hide his true and his flaw, she would have wanted to build trust and let him tell her on his own, she had breeched his privacy and had learned of something she had no right to.