Fate's Slave - Shadow Slave X Honkai Star Rail

"Yeesh! These guys are real chompers!"

The voice echoed across the underground cavern with enough casual annoyance that it felt deeply offensive to the atmosphere.

The battlefield above had looked like the end of a world. Down here, beneath layers of ancient stone and frozen ruin, things somehow felt even stranger. The underground lake that had once existed in quiet darkness had been violently transformed by collateral damage from battles far above its pay grade. Sections of the cavern ceiling had collapsed, exposing jagged stone and allowing pale shafts of distorted light to bleed down from fractures in the world above. The lake itself had partially frozen over, a fractured mirror of black water and pale ice where Cocolia’s influence had spread before she had launched herself upward into war.

At the very edge of that half-frozen lake sat Sunny.

He was seated on a broken slab of stone like a man enjoying a peaceful afternoon rather than someone who had recently detonated an ancient war-machine and personally murdered a Corrupted Saint, while slaying a Great Devil who perfectly countered his Aspect a few moments before. His posture was relaxed in that deeply suspicious way it always was when he was either genuinely calm or seconds away from making someone’s life significantly worse.

In his hands was a fishing rod made entirely of shadows.

It was not an actual fishing rod, of course. The line dark and slightly translucent, the hook looking more like a sharpened fang than something designed for fishing. It was held together by hopes and dreams, since... well, Sunny didn’t know much about fishing rods.

Around his neck, Serpent rested in miniature form, coiled like an unusually judgmental necklace. Meanwhile, Decay’s Oath hung around his neck like an actual necklace, the silver pendant of a snake with moth wings and a snowflake crest on its head glimmering.

Silently, directly into his mind, Serpent transmitted:

"...I could do better."

Sunny patted the little snake on the head with the same energy one might use to humor a child insisting they could absolutely defeat a God in single combat.

"I’m sure you would, lil’ guy."

The line jerked.

Sunny grinned and pulled upward, reeling in something that immediately began thrashing like it had been personally insulted by the concept of being caught. Serpent replied with dignified offense:

"My lord, I am only so little because you summoned me in this state."

"Sure, sure."

Sunny gave the rod another pull, dragging the catch closer through the icy water.

Then he raised his voice and shouted across the cavern.

"Hey, Seele! Check this out! We got fish down here! Uh... really freaky fish. Like if a spider fucked a trout. Alien fish!"

There was silence behind him.

Then there was the very distinct feeling of being stared at by someone reconsidering every life choice that had led them to knowing him.

Seele stood several meters away near the edge of the cavern path, motionless.

She looked like she had walked out of a massacre because, technically, she had.

Blood stained her clothes in layered shades — some hers, some Bronya’s, some Veliona’s. The distinction was pretty irrelevant. Her outfit had been torn badly during the fighting, exposing parts of her shoulder, midriff, and side where jagged wounds had long since sealed into pale scars that would never disappear.

One scar crossed over her left eye, sharp and permanent.

Another ran diagonally across her shoulder, and one split across her abdomen like someone had tried to split her in half and only partially succeeded.

In her hand rested a scythe.

Calling it a weapon felt insufficient.

It was made of flesh and crimson bone, its curved form resembling the image of death as interpreted by something deeply unwell. Veins pulsed subtly along the shaft. Several crimson eyes were embedded across its surface, blinking at irregular intervals like they were thinking private thoughts. Occasionally, one of them would turn and stare at Sunny with a familiarity that made his instincts mildly uncomfortable.

Because yes.

It was alive.

In a way.

Sunny glanced at it, then at her.

Seele stared at him for several long seconds, lips pressed together tightly enough to hurt. Whatever she had intended to say first died somewhere behind her teeth.

Instead, what came out was quiet.

"Are... are you okay?"

Sunny hummed thoughtfully as he turned to look at her.

That was when she saw his face properly.

Or rather, what was left of it.

The right side had been ruined.

His eye was gone — no poetic way to phrase it. Just gone. The surrounding flesh was mangled from heat, force, and shrapnel, though Blood Weave had prevented the damage from becoming as grotesque as it should have been. It looked wrong in a way that made the human mind reject it before accepting it.

Sunny, naturally, seemed entirely unbothered.

"I’m just fine. My eye got a little fucked up, but it’ll heal in a week or three."

Seele moved before thinking.

One second she was standing there.

The next she had crossed the distance between them and grabbed his face with both hands.

Sunny blinked — well, half-blinked.

Her fingers were colder than he expected.

She stared at the ruined eye with something too sharp to call fear and too soft to call anger. Her breathing was shallow. For a moment, she looked like she wanted to say something and couldn’t.

Then her fingers brushed lightly across the wound.

Reality reversed.

There was no flashy light, no dramatic surge of power. It simply... rewound.

The ruined flesh pulled itself together. Torn skin sealed. Damaged nerves rewove themselves. The empty socket reversed its own history, restoring structure and sight in seconds as though the injury had simply been rejected by time itself.

Depth returned. Symmetry returned. His brain, which had already reluctantly accepted being one-eyed for the foreseeable future, needed a moment to process the update.

He looked at her.

Then grinned like the entire experience had been a mildly entertaining inconvenience.

"Thanks. That’s pretty convenient..."

His gaze shifted toward the scar over her left eye.

"Can’t use it on yourself?"

Seele stepped back almost immediately, like she had only just realized what she had done.

Her hand lingered in the air for half a second before she pulled it away and looked anywhere except directly at him.

She sat down beside him on the stone ledge with more force than necessary, placing the fleshy scythe beside her.

"Vel... Veliona did it, so I can’t completely heal it."

She touched the scar near her eye unconsciously.

"It’ll be there for the rest of my life."

Sunny sighed, not dramatically, just with the genuine disappointment of someone learning a mildly useful trick had unfortunate restrictions.

"That’s too bad."

Then, because he was Sunny:

"Wanna try?"

He held the shadow fishing rod toward her.

Seele stared at it.

Then at him.

Then back at the rod.

Her brow furrowed slowly, like her brain was trying to determine whether she was being mocked, manipulated, or simply forced to coexist with an idiot.

"What... what are you even doing?"

She gestured sharply around them.

"After all that, you’re just... having a good ol’ time?!"

Sunny looked at her for a moment.

Then he slowly pulled the rod back toward himself and cast it again into the dark water.

"Pretty much."

The line disappeared beneath the surface.

He leaned back slightly.

"Where did you put the bodies?"

Seele scowled immediately.

"I left them there. I was going to find you first, but here you are."

Sunny yawned.

"Well, you should probably go back and get them. The world rearranged itself pretty hard in that fight."

He paused.

His gaze shifted toward the strange scythe lying beside her.

Its crimson eyes were still watching him.

Not aggressively.

Just... knowingly.

Like it had met him before in a dream and decided not to elaborate.

Sunny smiled faintly.

"You know, Seele..."

He tapped the rod lightly against the ice.

"These fish had nothing. They still have nothing. I’m betting they looked nothing like this before the Eternal Freeze... if that’s how evolution works. I’m not too sure."

Something moved beneath the water.

He watched the ripples spread.

"In any case, they survived on a planet that would want them dead."

He reeled slowly.

"Fish don’t care if their species, their parents, their siblings, or even their children die. They exist for the sole purpose of existing."

He shrugged.

"It’s a bit lame, actually."

Seele stared at him silently.

Sunny continued, voice quieter now, though no less detached.

"But what can you do? People die all the time. There’s not much of a point in getting hung up on it. The dead are meant to be Remembered, not obsessed over."

He gave the line another pull.

"That’s an easy way to piss them off."

Seele’s expression shifted.

At first it looked like confusion.

Then hurt.

Then something much worse.

"What are you getting at?"

Sunny answered without hesitation.

"You guys are all going to die eventually, so it is what it is."

He spoke with the same casual certainty one might use discussing weather.

"I like you guys, but I don’t want to like you too much. That’s just damnation."

He looked out across the frozen lake.

"I killed what I wanted to kill, with a little bonus on top, so I just moved on. As long as I’ve gotten my vengeance, the dead can rest in peace for all I care."

Something in Seele’s chest twisted.

For one terrible moment, she genuinely thought this had to be someone else.

Not metaphorically.

Literally.

A creature wearing Sunny’s face.

Because the person sitting beside her — the sarcastic bastard who annoyed her on purpose, who protected people while pretending not to care, who always looked like he was one bad decision away from becoming everyone’s problem — could not possibly be this.

Could he?

Her mind rejected it.

Then slowly, painfully, it didn’t.

Because maybe this wasn’t new.

Maybe this was clarity.

Maybe she had fallen for the shape of him and ignored the architecture underneath.

Maybe every joke, every deflection, every cruel little truth had been exactly that.

He never lied. She only lied to herself.

The image of the Sunny she loved began to distort.

No.

It became clearer.

And that clarity hurt more.

Her voice came out small.

"Who... who did this to you?"

Sunny blinked, genuinely perplexed.

"What? The eye?"

He pointed vaguely at his face.

"Well, it was myself, technically. I kind of set off a nuke, if you saw that—"

She shook her head sharply and stood.

"No."

Her fingers tightened around the shaft of her scythe.

"Why can’t you care about them — about me..."

The words stopped there.

Because saying more would make them real.

She breathed once.

Then shook her head again.

"Never mind. I get it."

Her voice was flat now.

"Go fuck yourself, Sunny."

With one motion, she raised the scythe. With two sharp swings, space ripped apart.

The blade cut through the structure of reality itself, leaving behind a rift that looked less like a portal and more like existence having a very bad opinion.

Sunny stared at it.

He could not tell what he was looking at. Not because it was hidden, but because his brain refused to categorize it into anything useful.

Seele stepped toward it without looking back.

Then paused.

For one brief second, Sunny thought she might say something else.

She didn’t.

The rift closed.

Silence returned to the cavern.

Sunny sat there for a while, staring at the place where space had decided to stop behaving.

Then he looked down at the water.

Then at Serpent.

Then back at the water.

"...What’s her deal?"

He waited a beat, before putting on a cheeky smile.

"Women, am I right?"

Serpent slowly lifted its tiny head and stared up at him with all the judgment a miniature gift from a dead God could possibly contain.

There was a pause.

Then, with complete sincerity, it asked:

"My lord, I... do not know what I am."

Sunny frowned.

Serpent continued.

"Am I a ’he,’ or a ’she?’ Or am I simply an ’it?’"

Sunny tilted his head.

For once, he actually considered the question.

The fishing line drifted quietly in the black water.

The underground lake breathed in silence around them.

Eventually, he answered.

"I think..."

He scratched the side of his face thoughtfully.

"That’s for you to decide."

Serpent was quiet for a moment.

Then:

"I am asking for your preference."

Sunny stared straight ahead.

His expression flattened with the slow resignation of a man realizing the Universe specifically enjoyed assigning him conversations he was deeply unqualified for.

He sighed.

"Oh, brother..."