/Author's note: This piece of text was extracted from the DeviantArt version of the story with no edits other than the same revisions made. That's why there are dates which differ from what this place shows for this story./

It's official now. Swordswoman of Shadows duology is no more. I simply cannot continue it anymore, I have no interest nor passion in it. The final chapter took half a year to make as it was written on literally every Sunday since the submission of chapter 13 on July 30th. With prologue included, 15 chapters have been released since the beginning in May 2015, nearly three years ago. It's time to let it die.

"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to." -Kylo Ren, The Last Jedi

Cassandra left the Lyoko Warriors in ignorance about her nightmares. What would have happened in the future if her journey would have continued?

At some point, the Dark Williams clone would have revealed himself to all the Lyoko Warriors, forcing Cassandra to admit her nightmares. At the same time, she would have revealed her nightmare powers which X.A.N.A. has utilized to make her life hell on Lyoko. She would have had to face the Dark William on her own while he would have held the real William over the edge with his black smoke, causing her to take William's sword and utilize her friend's powers through it just like she unnoticeably used Ulrich's Supersprint in chapter 14 against the Xanafied William. This would've made her wonder what was wrong with her and Jeremy finding out she had some sort of codes in her giving her those powers and a link between the clone they had fought against.

Here's part of the attack where the Dark William is revealed, written initially as Chapter 14 but then discarded and put to rest until a later chapter where to use the stuff I already wrote:

Chapter ?: The Dark One from The Nightmares

Cassandra felt it deep inside her. The attack was near. This would change everything.

The Dark William was on the move.
"Come asap. X.A.N.A. has sent brute force. Be prepared for a big fight," Cassandra said. Everything looked darker than normally, and her sword was spiky again.

She took a deep breath and jumped out of the activated tower. There were no monsters there yet, so she rushed to the Arena to meet the others. The Dark William was somewhere out there and they needed all the help they could get.
"What's the brute force you're talking about, Cass?" William asked as they met.
"It's that attacker," Cassandra answered and looked at him and Ulrich. "Prepare your swords, the three of us will fight him sword-to-sword. The others can attack from a distance him when he's occupied with at least one of us."
"Is it wise to put half of our strength on one enemy?" Ulrich asked.
"Yes, because this enemy is as deadly as us. We need to get rid of him fast or he'll beat us all one by one," Cassandra answered. "Let's go, time to find the key. Stay sharp, all of you." She turned and led the group onwards, spikifying saber ready to strike at any and every threat which would appear in front of it – and her.

Aelita stayed next to Odd and Yumi, behind the three sword-users. She was afraid of the attacker who had nearly devirtualized her the last time he had appeared. Cassandra's attitude did not help at all.

Cassandra cried out, smashing her saber at Creepers as if it was a machete. The monsters died, their creepy moans breaking the pressing silence.
Where are you, you fucker? Cassandra wondered, looking around. No smoke, only the darkening room. The room was silent aside from the noises the Lyoko Warriors made.
"Hurry, you don't have much time. X.A.N.A.'s on the move, and it seems he's trying to destroy the area with a hurricane," Jeremy said.
"Let's go," Ulrich said, rushing ahead of everyone. All of a sudden, something struck him from the front in the corridor, causing the samurai to devirtualize. The others stopped and prepared to battle whatever was coming from there. Cassandra heard a familiar voice, but it was going away from them.
"What was that?" Odd asked.
"I don't know, I couldn't identify it," Jeremy said. He turned to look at his friend, who came from the scanners. "Ulrich, are you ok?"
"It just appeared out of nowhere. All I saw was a huge sword and then I was in a scanner. I didn't see it coming," Ulrich said.
"What a coward. He's trying to take us out by surprise," Cassandra growled, her sword's spikes intensifying with anger. She felt like running after the attacker to get rid of him, but she had to keep herself under control.

Sometime after being Xanafied in chapter 14, William would start having nightmares. Here's the first one, extracted from my Writer+ app where the plans have rested for ages:

William was in the Celestial Dome. He was walking towards Cassandra's back, watching her hair sway in the wind of Lyoko.
"Cass? What did you want to talk about?" William asked. Cassandra turned while her head suddenly disappeared, revealing behind it the face most similar to William: his own. Cassandra's figure disintegrated in front of a William that had a black and red suit with X.A.N.A.'s symbol all over it, but the real William, frozen still by shock, could barely identify anything as the black-suited William came at him, his face filling his view.

William gasped as he sat up, tangled in his sweat-drenched blanket. As his sight sharpened into revealing the furniture of his room, he understood that the all-too-real-feeling event had been a nightmare.
"Oh man..." Willian tried to wipe away the sweat from his forehead but it was useless because he was completely covered in it. There was nothing to wipe the sweat away to.
"I guess I have to take a shower," he muttered to himself, checking the time – it was about 1 AM.

In the morning at the cafeteria:
"Good morning, William!" Aelita greeted cheerfully the black-haired boy who only muttered a weak "hello" as a response.
"You haven't slept well?" Odd asked.
"How did you guess that?" Willian asked.
"You look just like Einstein does when he has been up all night. Look at the example of what he may look like those times," Odd noted and pointed his thumb at the tired Jeremy who had dark circles and an open laptop.
"Okay," William muttered and returned back to stirring his cocoa with a spoon.
"What's wrong? Did you see a nightmare?" Ulrich asked teasingly and a bit gloatingly. William looked right into his eyes; the brown-haired boy had chosen to sit opposite to him.
"Actually yes. I didn't get much sleep after that," he replied calmly. "I guess changing the sheets after sweating during that nightmare activated my brains too much."
"What happened in that nightmare?" Aelita asked, worried.
"Not much..." William said and explained the nightmare's contents shortly. He had no idea that Cassandra was listening to it via Jeremy's laptop.

After this, the nightmare would recur only with the setting changing.

"Again? I wonder if that means something," Yumi said.
"You know, the nightmares started after you got Xanafied by the Scyphozoa the first time on Lyoko. And you saw dreams of what never came to be again after Returning to the Past before you became a Lyoko Warrior. Maybe those are linked," Ulrich suggested.
"So you suggest that the other William is a Xanafied version of me?" William asked.
"Yes," was the sudden answer coming from Jeremy's laptop. Cassandra opened up a window there to see the others. "William, we need to talk. After school."
"Where on Lyoko?" William could not help remembering the nightmares.
"Actually I'd like to come there, to Earth. It'd do me good to breathe real fresh air," Cassandra said. "What do you say?"
"If you can get here, then I say it's great!" William said, now more excited than he sounded through his tiredness.
"Then I'll see you at the factory after school." Cassandra closed the window.

After this, Cassandra would be materialized, go for a walk with William and discuss her own nightmares and the threats X.A.N.A. has made. Then she would return to Lyoko, unwilling to stay on Earth because it's not safe for her because her parents could find her there.

Time would pass since these incidents, X.A.N.A. would threaten William more while Cassandra would keep combatting against the Dark William and discuss her past with William and the others, leading to the moment when the two would have revealed how they got together, how Cassandra started to heal as she learned to deal with her emotions and how, as an announcement of their relationship, William put all the love letters he had written for her all around the school, getting expelled. Cassandra did not tell him not to do that, which she has been shown to regret in Shadows of Past. This incident led Cassandra's parents finding out about the relationship and taking their girl from Riverain even though William had already left to Kadic and start abusing her again from which X.A.N.A. saved her.

Some time would pass. Then the story would end with this scene:
Cassandra has a strong nightmare and won't wake up despite being called. The others go to her after saving the Heart of Lyoko and William wakes her up by taking her sword from her hands, causing her to scream while waking up "Don't kill me!" Confused and scared, Cassandra tells others to leave, but William stays. Cassandra then breaks down on him, tells him that she is so scared and that she wishes she was not as bad a person as she was, but good and kind just like William. She says that despite of how nasty she's been to him, when she has needed someone, even told everyone to leave, William has always been there for her. She thanks him. William realizes how he got past her shield in the first place: she broke down on him in Riverain. Flashback. Cassandra starts to show more trust and closeness to him, and thus the return to Earth can begin.

In Shadows of Future, Cassandra enrolls at Kadic, joining William and Yumi's class. The fight against X.A.N.A. continues. William may or may not end up Xanafied like in Code Lyoko's Season 4, but even if he did end up Xanafied, he would be welcomed back happily after getting freed no matter why he had gotten caught by the Scyphozoa. In the meantime, Franz Hopper would still evade their grasp, hidden from X.A.N.A. in the network. Cassandra would re-establish contact with Riverain's swordplay club and be in correspondence with them, hoping to get to visit them at some point.

While searching for a way to counter her nightmare powers, Cassandra would end up realizing that the Dark William who has tormented her in her dreams and as clones on Lyoko is in fact one being which resides among her powers inside her. X.A.N.A. had used the nightmares to materialize him from time to time without her noticing. She would start to befriend this Dark William, realizing that he's human and only partly evil by X.A.N.A. With human interaction, the Dark William would become her ally.

However, at some point Cassandra's little sister, Amani, would appear and try to assassinate William with a bow and an arrow under the orders of her parents who are trying to do anything to hurt anyone who's ruined their elder daughter. Cassandra is gone to them, but they are still trying to do anything to make anyone they can suffer for it. Amani would get noticed by Cassandra whom the nightmare powers let see that Amani aims at William's heart and then step between her friend and the deadly arrow, getting hit into the shoulder. Amani would then recognize her sister when the other Lyoko Warriors would cry her name and run away. Cassandra would chase her and get hit by a car and thus lose her, ending up into a hospital where she would clash with her parents, alerted by Amani. The fateful encounter would endanger her and William's lives as, despite of being armed with a sabre she's held onto for long, the parents grab them both and threaten to kill them. The situation would end well, though, as Riverain's PE teacher, mister Bouchard, would appear in the scene, having come to the hospital after hearing of the incident at Kadic on the news. The abusive parents would be arrested and Amani would be sent to a mental health hospital to recover from the heavy mental traumas she held, while Cassandra would stay at Kadic to fight against X.A.N.A. even though she could have returned to Riverain then. She would explain her choice to stay with her friends being there, even though she had wanted to return to the swordplay club. Later on, she would testify against her parents and gets them away from her life, while mister Bouchard, knowing the girl's potential as a fencer, would offer to act as her guardian even though she studies away from him as Cassandra has no close relatives. Cassandra would take this offer gladly, avoiding more legal problems due to no longer having her parents available.

More time would pass. The battle against X.A.N.A. continues in the Digital Sea where the Lyoko Warriors keep trying to find Franz Hopper and destroy X.A.N.A.'s replicas. It's a possibility that mister Bouchard would bring the swordplay club on a camp close to Kadic at some point, allowing Cassandra and William to meet their old school friends such as Mathieu, and practice their sword skills – although unknown to them all is that the two do it all the time on Lyoko, causing their prowess to be a cause of surprise to their fellows – especially William's new skill level would surprise their peer as he could beat Mathieu (who made the mistake of underestimating him) and hold his own against Cassandra, whose tricks he had learned. Of course, X.A.N.A. would not waste a chance to attack, and targets the camp, leading Cassandra and William to find out that mister Bouchard knows X.A.N.A. and that he helped Hopper with Project Carthage in the past and later the initial creation of Lyoko from afar. After hearing about what had happened to his old friend and his daughter and Franz's secret project, mister Bouchard would offer his help to the Lyoko Warriors and becomes a distant helper to Jeremy and they and Franz try to figure out a way to destroy X.A.N.A. Cassandra would stay in contact with the swordplay club and keeps practicing in her free time, having been disappointed in Jim's poor attempt of having a swordplay lesson at PE earlier – with the swords' tips getting protected by wooden bottle caps, it's not good to even try to get any tutoring even though Jim has claimed he was good at fencing in his youth. Cassandra believes none of that talk.

Time passes on again and finally X.A.N.A. gets destroyed. Franz would be materialized after William saves his life from the Mantas at the Celestial Dome during the time of X.A.N.A.s destruction (episode 94), and he reclaims the Hermitage, starting to build his life from scratch under the identity of Franz Stones, Aelita's father from Canada. Cassandra would bid farewell sadly to her nightmare powers and the Dark William as they disappear with X.A.N.A.

The school year would come to an end. Cassandra would announce that she transfers to Riverain now that the school year is over; with X.A.N.A. gone, nothing no longer keeps her there as William no longer loves her. Yumi has gotten closer to Ulrich but William has not given up, and Cassandra does not expect him to either. She also knows herself; she would only hurt William if she got together with him again. No, it was time to move on. She would leave to Riverain, restart at the swordplay club and later progresses to become a professional fencer, guided by mister Bouchard, all while staying in touch with her Lyoko Warriors friends.

The story would end with an epilogue years after the end of the battle against X.A.N.A. William would be in a happy relationship while Cassandra would have become a renowned swordswoman and stayed single. What William does not know is that the nightmares never truly disappeared with X.A.N.A., only became dormant when the link to the AI broke down. The powers Cassandra has were not made by X.A.N.A., only utilized by it. An encounter on a street between Cassandra and William (and his girlfriend?) would lead him to finding it out in some way; the most popular idea has been that a robber attacks Cassandra from behind and puts a knife on her throat. Calmly Cassandra would tell the robber that they are making a mistake as she is not alone; her bodyguard is there. After the warnings, a man would appear behind the robber and causes his attention to shift enough to let Cassandra get away and let her bodyguard take care of the robber. This would lead to William finding out about the companion Cassandra never told him about: The Dark William who surfaced after graduating from Riverain.

Cassandra would tell William about how she freaked out the instant she saw the Dark William in her apartment at a time she was sure she was not imagining things and how she ran straight to a psychologist, getting herself tested only to find out there was nothing wrong with her psychologically nor neurologically, causing her to seek therapy as the visions kept happening. She started to interact with the Dark William, who now calls himself Damien, and as time went on and Cassandra re-found her powers, she managed to make him visible to others, ending the therapy there; she was not ill. Damien is real and so are her powers, leading Cassandra to go and search for answers for them from religion, mythology, superstition, cults, you name it. Getting answers from farfetched to close but not believable, Cassandra ended her search and concentrated on improving her control over the powers and Damien's physical form.

William would be shocked, unable to understand why Cassandra never told him. Cassandra would explain that she did not want to worry him especially when she started to learn to live with it. William would not trust Damien, but he has no choice but accept his existence. There is no way he can be obliterated.

The two friends would part ways again, promising to keep in touch and meet again sometime and that's where the story ends.

This is the known part of this story I had ready in my mind and some notes. Now that I've told it, I will most likely never return to this. It's over and I doubt I'll never get the spark of inspiration to retake Cassandra's character and continue with it.

If there is someone out there who would like to write this story to its end on my behalf, please let me know and we'll discuss it. I'd be glad to give this to the hands of a writer who has more passion for this story than I do.

/Code Lyoko (c) Moonscoop, Cassandra Delorien, Riverain and the rest of its original characters (c) Me/