Fate's Slave - Shadow Slave X Honkai Star Rail

The truth gnawed at Sunny the longer he thought about it.

Seele and Veliona... separated. That shouldn’t have been possible. From everything he knew, they were two souls bound to the same vessel, forever sharing the same body. That was her Flaw. A curse so deep it was etched into the very law of her existence. And yet here she was, sitting on the broken stone at the edge of the chain-bound isle, staring out at the endless night with her one good eye — apart, flesh and bone, not hidden inside Seele’s skin.

That was wrong. More than wrong. It was... unnatural.

He shifted his weight, massive talons gouging trenches in the pale stone. His Devil body felt too large, too heavy for this quiet place. Even kneeling, he loomed over her. She didn’t flinch.

Sunny rubbed his face with one clawed hand.

”...Separated. How the hell does that even happen?”

Veliona didn’t answer. She simply hugged her knees tighter, glaring into the dark void between the floating isles as though daring it to answer for her.

Sunny’s mind churned. In this Nightmare, there were supposed to be seven. Seven souls dragged into the past, thrown against some trial none of them understood. He had accounted for five: himself, March, Dan Heng, Seele, and Sparkle. But the Spell didn’t lie — that left two more. Two unknown piece on the board.

For the longest time, he had assumed Veliona was folded into Seele like usual. But if they had been forced apart somehow...

His frown deepened.

”...You’re the sixth.”

Veliona tilted her head, finally glancing back at him. Her expression didn’t change, but she didn’t deny it either.

One of the two people who shouldn’t have been able to enter the Nightmare. One of the mysteries that had been haunting him since he first opened his eyes in this cursed body. That explained her presence. Her, at least.

But not the other.

’Don’t tell me one of the others also has some kind of alter ego...’

Sunny’s thoughts lingered on that seventh figure, still faceless. Someone else, somewhere out there on the chains, stalking through the ruins of the past. Ally? Enemy? Or just dead already? He couldn’t say. The uncertainty burned at him worse than the Devil’s talons digging into his palms.

Veliona shifted, drawing him back. Her voice was flat, stripped of mockery for once.

”Don’t look at me like that. I’m not Seele. Haven’t been since the moment I opened my eyes here. Wherever she is... it’s not with me.”

The words fell like stones into the silence.

Seele was gone.

...Or not gone, exactly, but scattered. Somewhere else on these damned chains. Maybe alive, maybe not.

Sunny exhaled, his breath steaming like smoke from a furnace. His gaze drifted past Veliona, toward the chains that stretched into the distance, vanishing into the eternal gloom. Dozens of floating fragments swayed in the abyss, their ancient ruins glowing faintly in the void. Somewhere out there, the others might still be fighting to survive. Somewhere, Seele might be waiting.

Or lying cold.

The thought sat in his stomach like a stone.

Veliona said nothing more. She seemed content to sit in her ragged skin, quiet, unreadable. But Sunny had learned one more piece of the puzzle: the impossible had already happened once in this Nightmare. That meant nothing was certain, not even the things he thought were carved into the nature of their Flaws.

He rose, staring at the cleanly dissected slab of stone that Veliona passed to him. A scrap of stone with jagged handwriting carved into it — a desperate message left behind in the modern human tongue.

”Someone rescue me! They’re driving me crazy at the Temple of Chalice!”

March.

It had been the only trace Veliona discovered when she reached the rendezvous point. No Dan Heng. No Sparkle. No Seele. Just that pitiful cry for help scrawled like graffiti.

Sunny read it again in his mind, the words scratching at him like splinters.

March was alive when she wrote it. Alive, but trapped. Surrounded, maybe. And still irritatingly herself, if the melodramatic complaint was anything to go by. He could almost hear her voice in the words, shrill and exasperated.

The thought made his chest tighten.

He let out a bitter chuckle that sounded more like a growl in the Devil’s throat.

”Driving her crazy, huh? Figures.”

Veliona glanced at him, but said nothing.

Sunny lowered himself back to the stone, elbows on his knees, claws dangling. The chains creaked in the windless void, carrying the weight of a thousand ancient isles. The sound pressed in on him, heavy and endless.

So far, the Nightmare had given him nothing but dead ends. Now, finally, he had two threads: Veliona, separated from Seele, and March’s desperate little message. Neither of them made sense. Both of them demanded answers.

And somewhere out there was still that seventh shadow, the unknown intruder walking the same broken paths.

Sunny scowled into the dark.

This Nightmare was already too crowded.