Shadow Slave

The moment Sunny’s essence touched the black wooden surface of the divine Memory, Weaver’s Mask suddenly reached into his very soul and hungrily drank more… and then more, and more, and more.

In a fraction of a second, all of his reserve of shadow essence was sucked dry, with only a tiny bit of it remaining… almost as if these pitiful drops were not even worth being consumed by the mask.

And even then, all it could achieve was activate the [???] enchantment for just a single moment.

…That single moment, however, was enough to almost drive Sunny insane.

Suddenly, a horrifying pain pierced his eyes and his mind, akin to the suffering he had experienced after consuming the Drop of Ichor, only so much worse.

Infinitely worse.

As he shrieked, all traces of intelligence disappearing from his voice, the world he saw changed.

Suddenly, all Sunny could see was an endless, beautiful eternity of twisting threads. Those threads transfixed everything in existence, connecting every living being and every object, every thought and every concept, every dream and every nightmare, stretching infinitely into every direction, as well as into the past, the present, and the future.

These were the Strings of Fate.

They were just like the threads of light that the Spell was woven of, but while the magnificent and inconceivably complex pattern that Sunny had seen twice in the empty void between dream and reality composed the function of the Spell, what he glimpsed right now connected… everything.

All of the universe as it had existed, was existing, and was going to exist.

…Much worse, when observing the weave of the Spell, Sunny could only sense and guess at its meaning. But the terrifying enchantment of Weaver’s Mask not only allowed him to see the tapestry of Fate, but also forced the understanding of it onto him.

The knowledge of everything, everywhere, all at once…

Of course, such knowledge was too much for any human to endure. Just the tiniest, infinitesimal amount of it was enough to instantly destroy any living being… except, maybe, for a god.

…Or a daemon.

As blood streamed out of Sunny’s nose, eyes, and mouth, and a silent scream died on his lips, he instinctively did the only thing that could save him from being obliterated by the sight of the Strings of Fate — he dissipated into the shadows.

This was, perhaps, the reason why his eyes did not turn into smoldering embers and his head did not just explode right there on the spot. Shadows had no eyes and no skulls, after all.

However…

Falling into the embrace of darkness, Sunny realized with cold horror that Weaver’s Mask, somehow, was still resting on his face. When he turned into a shadow, it had turned into one, too. His vision shifted from that of a human to the colorless sight of a shadow, but he could still see the eternity of Strings of Fate.

There were especially many of them near him. The infinite threads were tightly wrapped around his body, as well as around his soul, encompassing and piercing it… it looked almost as if he was strung on them like a small marionette.

And among those threads, two shone much brighter than the rest.

One was made out of pure white flame and stretched far away into the distance, leading north, toward the Hollow Mountains.

The other was made out of beautiful golden light, and led… down.

Down and away from both the Shipwreck Island and the Twisted Rock, diving into the Tear and disappearing into the boundless darkness of the Sky Below.

…Although it seemed as though eons had passed, in reality, it was no more than a fraction of a second.

Sunny’s head did not explode because he had turned into a shadow, but his mind was still on the verge of utter, irrevocable destruction. A fraction more, and it was going to be wiped out from existence by the divine knowledge of Fate.

‘But what… what can I do… the mask is a shadow now…’

His thoughts were scattered and weak. And yet, he fought through the shock and managed to remember an important detail.

He could dismiss the Memory.

But that… would be too slow. Even if it took only a second, there would be nothing left of him by the end of it.

A wave of desperation rose from the depths of his heart.

And then, the shadow essence that Weaver’s Mask had absorbed finally ran out.

Instantly, the enchantment deactivated, and the ruthless worlds of endless threads disappeared with it. Sunny could only see what all humans… and shadows… were meant to be able to see.

A piece of dark stone soaring into the sky as the merciless grinder of the Crushing was slowly breaking it apart.

Sunny sensed hazily that there was something urgent about the situation, but he was… was not entirely there.

Although the terrible visage of the Strings of Fate was gone, his mind was scattered and empty. He couldn’t really lose conscience while in the form of a shadow, but not being able to think or even recognize the existence of his self was very close to it.

Soon, however, he started to slowly gather the pieces of his wounded, shattered mind back together. He was in dire danger, after all…

The entire Twisted Rock was shaking and rumbling as it rose higher and higher into the Sky Above. Wide cracks appeared on its surface, growing larger with each second. The blackened bones had already been turned into dust, and now, the only thing standing above the stone was the ramshackle, lop-sided, dead treasure chest.

The corpse of the Mordant Mimic, strangely, seemed to be much more sturdy than the ascending island itself. It was still in one piece, at least, and almost whole.

‘…I need to come up with a plan.’

As this thought formed in Sunny’s mind, he suddenly came to his senses… and realized several things.

One of them was what he had to do.

The other was that the pitiful drops of shadow essence left in his soul cores were about to evaporate, which meant that he would not be able to remain in the form of a shadow for much longer.

The third one was that he still had not retrieved the golden coins from inside the chest.

…Now, whether he lived or died depended on one thing — whether he would be forced out of the shadows and turned into a bloody puddle first, or whether the Twisted Rock would fall apart first.

Which would it be?

‘Well… I might as well try, right?’

Flowing through the shadow cast by the treasure chest, he dismissed the Broken Oath. A tiny amount of shadow essence, from which the Memories were created, returned to his soul. Hiding on the surface of the dead Mimic, Sunny dismissed the Blood Blossom and the Puppeteer’s Shroud, too.

Finally, he dismissed Weaver’s Mask, which brought him much more essence than the previous three Memories combined… even if, in the grand scheme of things, that amount was still rather insignificant.

Still, if it could gift him even one second more, it was worth it.

Circulating his essence through the coils of the Soul Serpent to slow down its expenditure and enhance the speed of its regeneration, Sunny hid on the treasure chest and waited for his fate to be decided.

After something that felt like an eternity, when the Twisted Rock had soared so high above the Chained Isles that the Crushing started turning smaller pieces of stone into fine dust, the island finally shuddered… and cracked open.

One of the rifts that opened in the blackened stone was directly beneath Sunny and the dead Mimic. The whole section of the isle suddenly broke off, separating from it in a rain of rock shards. Sunny caught a glimpse of petrified bones encased in the solidified stone… and then the chest he was hiding on floated up.

For a few seconds, all of it — the remaining core of the island, the sea of stone debris, and the dead Mimic — continued to rise higher and higher. Larger pieces of rock were crushed into smaller ones, and then turned into dust. A deafening thunder filled the air.

But then, as if an invisible switch had been turned, the mysterious force that had kept the Twisted Rock floating between two skies for thousands of years was no more.

Suddenly, everything that was too heavy to be carried away by wind slowed in its ascent, froze in the air for a few moments, and fell down.

The cracked treasure chest tumbled down, too, falling toward the Sky Below. Sunny, who was still just a shadow adhered on its side, saw the world spin around.

The last drops of his shadow essence were about to disappear.

…But that was fine. They would last him long enough to reach the altitude where the Crushing wasn’t immediately lethal anymore.

When it finally happened, Sunny suddenly appeared on the surface of the chest and held onto it for dear life. The pressure of the Crushing first threw him against the wood hard enough to break a few ribs, then tried to rip him away.

But Sunny would not let go.

His damned coins were in that damned chest!

Together, he and the dead Mimic fell lower and lower, until, finally, the Crushing weakened enough to allow Sunny to move.

Summoning the Dark Wing, he commanded it to turn into a blur and changed the direction of their fall.

However, he was not trying to move toward the distant silhouette of the Shipwreck Island out of desperation.

Instead, he was guiding the chest in the opposite direction, aiming it into the vast empty expanse of the Tear.