Shadow Slave

In the void chamber of the Palace — what used to be the void chamber — Sunny let out a silent scream as the vast space around him was slowly turning into a narrow metal coffin.

It felt like the fabric of reality itself was coming undone around him as the shadows, the light, and the world itself were being drawn into the impenetrable black maw of the Gate of Shadow.

The star that used to burn in the center of the chamber was barely giving off any light by now, having turned into an luminous sphere of liquid flame. With every moment, it was growing dimmer and dimmer.

The chamber itself, meanwhile, had long lost its spherical shape. Its walls bent inward in jagged mounds of folded metal, coming closer and closer together.

He was still clinging to a black chain, holding to it with all his Supreme strength. However, the smaller the void chamber grew, the closer he came to the halo of flowing light that surrounded the Shadow Lantern.

Sunny had no faith in the strength of the chain, either, even though he had manifested it himself.

‘D—damnation...’

Throwing a tense look at the terrifying black rift of the Gate of Shadow, Sunny gritted his teeth.

In truth, he did not have to fear the Shadow Lantern. He could simply let go of the chain and fall into its Gate, traveling to the Shadow Realm with the rest of the shadows — in fact, that would even be beneficial to him.

It was going to take a bit of time for the Shadow Realm to destroy all these orphaned shadows, so in the meantime, he could draw more of them into his soul and establish a new contingent within the Shadow Legion.

But there were two reasons why Sunny was stubbornly refusing to let go.

One of them was the shadow of Nightwalker that he was holding in one of his four hands. He was still hellbent on bringing the legendary hero of the First Generation back from the dead, and the shadow was most likely Nightwalker’s ticket home. So, Sunny refused to sacrifice him to the final mercy of the Shadow Realm.

The second reason was the subtle, but familiar sensations he started to feel once the walls of the void chamber started to cave.

It was the feeling of his blood responding to something that was hidden nearby.

Sunny could not be sure, but he was quite confident that the fragment of Weaver’s lineage was somewhere here, in the crumbling chamber.

The problem was that he could see no obvious place where the fragment would be hidden. After all, the void chamber was simply a hollow sphere of metal with smooth walls... unless Weaver had placed a piece of his lineage into one of the shadows, there was seemingly nowhere here to hide it.

‘Damn daemon! That damn daemon!” Struggling against the irresistible pull of the Gate of Shadow, Sunny strained his muscles and grasped the black chain with two more of his found hands. Then, muttering silent curses, he arduously pulled him up its length.

The walls continued to collapse as he did. ‘Hold there, buddy...’

The shadow of Nightwalker dangled from his fourth hand, seemingly indifferent to what was happening around it. The Gate of Shadow was drawing it into the darkness nonetheless, so Sunny had to endure twice the attraction.

Sunny climbed the chain slowly, reached the deformed mess of metal that used to be smooth once, and sank all his claws into it. The Shadowspawn form was perfect for hanging from the ceiling, so he managed to brace himself against it and hold on.

‘Must hold...”

The void chamber used to be vast, but now, the formless chaos of its bent walls was drawing close to each other. The ancient metal seemed to be rippling and flowing like a current as it was drawn closer and closer to the Shadow Lantern, losing integrity in the process.

Sunny could already feel weaknesses in the metal — jagged rifts that led into the depths of the Palace, away from the collapsing chamber.

He was not ready to try to escape into one of those rifts yet.

..It was growing darker around him.

Soon enough, the entire Palace was quaking. Feeling its death throes and observing the deluge of rain outside its breaking walls, Sunny came to a curious conclusion.

He realized that the shadows imprisoned in the void chamber were not only how the Demon of Repose had made living beings immortal, but also the source of power that fueled the sorcery of the Eternal City.

The shadows fueled the star, somehow, and the star powered the sorcery of Repose. Now that the shadows were escaping into the Realm of Death, though, the star was weakening. And as it weakened, so did the Eternal City...

All parts of it, including the protective dome that kept the Stormsea at bay.

‘That’s... problematic:

There was no telling what kind of dreadful devastation would befell the Eternal City once at leat a small part of its dome failed completely.

The fierce star burning in its heart seemed on the verge of being extinguished by then. Its radiant radiance dimmed so much that Sunny could actually look at it without being blinded.

Which he did, searching for something with fervent intensity.

‘Don’t tell me...’

And there, previously obscured by the blinding light and currents of incinerating stellar flame, Sunny saw a black dot that was not supposed to exist.

He stared at it for a few seconds, stunned. ‘Weaver, that bastard...’

Had the nebulous daemon hidden a part of the forbidden lineage in the heart of a damn star?!

Sunny knew that he was probably not supposed to be surprised, let alone appalled, but nevertheless, he was.

He was certain that the small object hovering in the very heart of the dying star was the fragment of Weaver’s Lineage.

So... now, all he had to do was grab it without turning to ash and escape this place in one piece.