Things had to move swiftly after Sunny's disturbing discovery.
It had already been known, of course, that the Dream Realm was slowly consuming the waking world — but as it turned out, it wasn't as slow as they had believed. The timeline of the apocalypse had moved forward, which meant they did not have a lot of time left.
Not decades... mere years.
And those years were not going to be peaceful, either. On the contrary, the situation was going to turn worse and worse, until it finally reached a terrifying culmination.
There were several reasons why things were so dire.
The most obvious reason was that the boundary between the realms was broken, and Nightmare Creatures could pass freely between them. The carcass Sunny had found on the shore proved that both the Black Millipedes and the Barrow Wraiths had already made their way to Earth — and something as trivial as an ocean was not going to stop them from reaching the remaining Quadrants.
More abominations from the Burned Forest were sure to follow, as well.
That alone was a chilling crisis. Out in the Dream Realm, these two tribes of Nightmare Creatures were powerful, but manageable foes. Sunny had already defeated the Black Millipedes once, and while the Barrow Wraiths were giving him trouble on the Forgotten Shore, he was still holding them back.
But the situation was entirely different now that they could cross over to Earth freely. Neither Sunny nor Nephis could truly unleash their powers on Earth. Even if they held themselves back, though, the waking world was going to banish them back to the Dream Realm after only a few hours — a day or two, at most.
Their enemy, meanwhile, was both numerous and powerful. There were countless Corrupted members of the Black Millipede tribe, ruled by six Great Tyrants. That force alone was enough to threaten every human on the planet.
The Barrow Wraiths seemed just as powerful... worse than that, Sunny did not know a lot about them. They were a complete mystery, and all he knew about these ferocious abominations was that they used weapons made from flint and had come from the barrows near the border of the Burned Forest.
Sunny did have his theories, of course. He still remembered the story of how Rime, the Demon of Repose, created the seasons.
In one version of the myth he glimpsed, a vicious cold chained the primordial forest, forcing the ancient people who had lived there in peace and harmony to abandon the blessed garden of Heart God. In another version, Heart God's forest was a terrifying hell instead, and it was Rime herself who had summoned the deadly cold to cull it.
No matter what version of the myth Sunny believed, it seemed like the Heart Realm had been the cradle of all living beings once, at the dawn of time. Later, the inhabitants of the forest, including the first humans, had to flee it due to a mysterious calamity, spreading across all other realms.
Sunny suspected that the Barrow Wraiths were the remnants of those primordial humans. The barrows had most likely been built soon after they fled the Heart Realm, albeit he did not know what exactly they had buried and left behind there.
The waking world was in danger. The southern regions of the Eastern Quadrant had already been devastated by the Skinwalker, so even if the Nightmare Creatures pouring through the breach in the realm boundary reached it, the damage was not going to be immediate.
The southern regions of the Western Quadrant, though, were immediately vulnerable.
However, it was the remaining human settlements in South America that were the closest to Antarctica. So, they were in the greatest danger.
That wasn't all, either.
Far more dangerous than the Black Millipedes and the Barrow Wraiths was the breach in the realm boundary itself. Sunny had traveled all the way to Erebus Field before finally feeling the repelling force of the War Realm — and that distance was increasing swiftly.
Which meant that more of the waking world would soon become indistinguishable from the Dream Realm. Who knew? Perhaps there were already other swathes of Earth fused with the terrifying world of the Forgotten God.
And that... that put everything at risk.
As far as Sunny knew, there were at least two Nightmare Creatures above the Great Rank in the waking world. One was hidden somewhere in America, while the other dwelled on the Moon.
Considering how swiftly the number and the potency of Nightmare Gates were ramping up, there were going to be more very soon.
Any one of those creatures could wipe out all of humanity that still populated Earth in a matter of days, if not hours.
So why had they not done that yet?
It was because the War Realm was suppressing them the same way it was suppressing the human Sovereigns — more so, really, considering that these fallen deities were of higher Ranks than the Supremes.
These powerful abominations were chained to the vicinity of the Nightmare Gates that had brought them to the waking world, unable to leave. That was why Earth was still in one piece and capable of sustaining human life.
However, what was going to happen once the realm boundary began to crumble?
The fallen deities would be free to go anywhere and descend upon the Quadrants in all their profane glory, turning all of Earth into a desolate wasteland.
Not only that, but they would be able to cross back into the Dream Realm to devour the Citadel Cities where humanity was seeking shelter as well.
There was no time to waste...
There was so much to do.
As soon as Sunny brought the news of his discovery back to Bastion, the gears of the Human Domain went into overdrive.
But even then, he knew...
That they were not going to escape this crisis without incurring heavy losses.
For now, things still seemed stable...
That did not last long, though.
