Shadow Slave

Sunny had been Fated, and Cassie had been able to know the future.

Sunny had wanted to be free, and Cassie had wanted to change fate.

So, she gave him a choice, and by making that choice, Sunny became a weapon against fate...

He became Fateless.

However, even knowing all that, Sunny had never expected that their act of defiance would be so effective.

‘Gods. We were mere Masters back then...’ How could two Masters have damaged the great tapestry of fate so thoroughly? After all, neither the gods nor the daemons had managed to escape their fate.

‘How?’

Sunny reeled, unable to comprehend what he was seeing.

But then, slowly, a hint of understanding formed in his rattled mind. Maybe, it was precisely because Sunny had been a mere Ascended that he managed to achieve something that the gods and the daemons... even Weaver... had failed to achieve.

He exhaled slowly, regarding the breathtaking sight of broken Strings of Fate. Countless unlikely things had to have happened for him to be cut from their great tapestry. Some of it had been arranged by Weaver, some had resulted from Cassie’s meticulous manipulation, and some had been the result of his own efforts. The Vile Thieving Bird — an inconceivable being whom both the gods and the Creatures of the Void had hated, but were unable to eradicate — played its part, as well.

There were several steps one needed to take to vandalize the great tapestry of fate. First, someone had to be torn from its fabric, becoming fateless. That alone was already almost impossible to achieve... but not entirely impossible. The Vile Thieving Bird could steal someone’s fate, after all, and if it could, then Weaver — the Demon of Fate — could have probably managed something similar, as well.

Second, the being vanquished from fate had to be someone significant enough for their absence to affect the entire vast tapestry. They had to be someone whose actions echoed across all of existence, reaching its every distant corner, and whose fate was therefore innately intertwined with the fates of everyone and everything.

Lastly, that being... had to be weak enough for their fate to be taken away from them. And there lay the paradox.

A weak being would not be significant enough for the absence to disrupt all of fate, and the fate of a powerful being could not be stolen.

So, destroying fate was impossible.

Or rather... it had been impossible, before. Sunny was not powerful enough to affect all of existence. While he had done quite well for himself by modern standards, climbing to the throne of Supremacy, the great figures of ancient times easily dwarfed him. Compared to the gods and the daemons, he was not even an ant... he was like a speck of dust.

For now, at least.

Sunny had not been significant enough — however, he had been Fated. The Strings of Fate — a staggering amount of them — had been wrapped around him tightly. His life had been a nexus on the tapestry of fate, and once that nexus was cut, numerous the rest would have come undone.

However, that by itself would not have been enough, either. After all, he knew that there had been other Fated individuals before him, like the Nine — his personal influence, while widespread, was not that great.

But influence... was a relative thing. If Sunny had lived during the end of the Golden Age and the horrors of the Doom War, with all the giants moving in the darkness around him, his influence on the world would have been limited. What change could Sunny have affected when the gods and the daemons were there, deciding the fate of existence according to their whims?

A thousand of his actions, or lack thereof, would not have accounted for one thousandth of a single feat performed by any of the great deities.

But all of them were gone now.

The gods were dead, and the daemons had fallen.

In the vacuum left by their passing, at the end of times, with only a single human realm left standing in the sea of Corruption... Sunny, as one of the few Supremes of the Age of Nightmare Spell — and poised to become a Spirit — had a profound influence. There was simply no one greater than him, and therefore, his actions echoed across all of existence. The impact of his choices was universal.

Sunny was both significant enough to affect everything now that there was no one more powerful, and weak enough for his fate to be stolen.

So what would happen if someone like him was suddenly torn from the fabric of fate? The great tapestry of fate...

Would unravel.

Since the choices Sunny made influenced everything, it would unravel utterly and completely — losing the support of a nexus... an anchor, perhaps... the Strings of Fate would come undone, causing every other String that touched them to lose purchase, too. The chain reaction would result in a cascade failure, causing unimaginable damage and havoc. He was a single variable that broke the system, introducing chaos to a predetermined flow of events. ŕΑƝöВΕṥ

Faced with the inconceivable chaos of unraveling fate, Sunny completely forgot the reason he had activated [Where is my eye?], to begin with.

‘There’s more to it as well, isn’t there?’

The future was uncertain and insubstantial, brimming with an infinite number of possibilities — both hopeful and harrowing, more sorrowful and vile than anything he could ever imagine.

No wonder the oracles and diviners had lost their ability to predict it.

The damage had already been done, and fate had already come undone.

Now, even if Sunny regained his own, the consequences of his absence would remain. Once torn, the great tapestry could not be mended.

‘H—how’s that... for significance?’ Sunny and Cassie had managed to do something that no one had accomplished before...

They had changed fate.

Or at least created the possibility of fate having been changed, in the end.

That did not seem like something that two mortals could have done... without help. ‘Weaver... was that a part of their plan, as well?’

Faced with the infinity of the torn Strings of Fate, Sunny could not help but suspect that the Demon of Fate had a hand in their unraveling.

Sunny and Cassie had achieved something both harrowing and incredible, but even if their effort was uniquely astonishing — in all of history — that did not mean that theirs was the only contribution.

What they accomplished was only possible because of what those before them had achieved.

Still... Sunny groaned, slowly coming undone under the pressure of beholding fate himself.

None of it would mean anything unless they actually managed to create a benign future, now that any future had become a possibility.

And for that, he had to concentrate on the task at hand.

‘Focus...’