Shadow Slave

A cold blade pierced Cassie’s heart.

Cassie did not even register the pain, since her mind was already drowning in agony. Instead, she only felt disbelief — disbelief that she was dying, and that Rain had killed her.

It did not make sense.

Cassie simply could not believe that her life was over. At the same time, it made no sense that Rain would be the one to stab her to death — the young woman was incapable of taking a life, after all.

Not to mention that she had no reason to.

‘Right!’

Cassie concentrated, her battered mind focusing into a sharp point.

The feeling of cold steel piercing her heart was a message from the future. It was a prophecy of what she would experience in less than a second, given to her by her Awakened Ability.

Which meant that she had not been delivered the fatal wound yet.

‘Right, Rain has become a thrall of Asterion.’

Why had Cassie not realized it sooner? Rain’s Ascension had coincided with the attack on the Ivory Island, becoming a perfect tool to distract Cassie at the worst possible moment. The Night Garden even arrived under the cover of the stormcloud that Rain’s Ascension had summoned — damning evidence that the two events were connected.

It was painfully obvious, so how was it that Cassie had not noticed the connection?

‘My mind is compromised.’

It must have happened just before she erased the marks from the souls of the Fire Keepers. Asterion had subtly influenced her thoughts, directing them away from connecting Rain to him… as well as cutting her own connection with Effie and Kai, thus leaving herself completely isolated.

Luckily, that seemed to be the extent of how he had managed to manipulate her.

Cassie moved her body slightly, causing Rain’s dagger to miss her heart by a few centimeters. She grabbed the young woman’s wrist with one hand, and used the other to pull down her blindfold.

But it was strange…

How had Rain been able to attempt to kill her?

That just went to show how insidious the Dreamspawn and his powers were. Rain’s Flaw prevented her from being able to kill, but it was subjective. The universe was not going to intervene and prevent her from delivering Cassie a lethal wound — rather, Rain’s hand would refuse to move as long as she believed that moving it would directly endanger the life of a living being.

Stabbing a person in the heart was obviously an act of murder. But if Rain earnestly believed otherwise, her Flaw would not stop her from pushing a dagger between someone’s ribs.

So, all Asterion had to do to circumvent Rain’s Flaw was to twist her mind enough to make her believe that Cassie wouldn’t die from being stabbed in the heart.

Which meant that he had made a complete mess of Rain’s perception of reality.

‘That bastard…’

Rain tried to twist her stiletto in Cassie’s chest, but Cassie was holding her wrist tightly.

She might have been a woman of slight build, and suffering both from a blinding pain and two other debilitating Epithets… but she was still a Saint. And a Saint could easily deal with a Master in a contest of physical strength.

Taking half a step forward, Cassie grabbed Rain by the throat and pulled her closer.

“Look here, Rain… I don’t have time for this…”

Activating her Transcendent Ability, she delved into Rain’s memories.

Hot blood flowed down her face, the gaping wound where her eye had been pulsing with dizzying torment.

In Rain’s memories, Cassie saw the young woman spending peaceful days in the Ivory Tower. However, despite how peaceful everything seemed, Rain was no fool — even without news reaching the flying island, she knew that something terrible was transpiring in the world, from context clues.

She felt frustrated at being too weak and too insignificant to help. She also felt anxious and uncertain, afraid of being left behind by her friends and companions.

That was the insecurity Asterion had used to enthrall Rain.

Once the plague slithered into the cracks on her confidence, it spread like a malignant tumor, slowly consuming everything around.

In the end, it was Asterion who had pushed Rain to attempt the faster, riskier method of becoming Ascended.

And, of course, he was the one who had commanded her to stab Song of the Fallen in the heart.

‘So he is not trying to keep me alive anymore so that I could be devoured later. I wonder what changed.’

Beyond the window, massive boarding hooks shot from the deck of the Night Garden, sailing across the sky to sink into the soil of the Ivory Island. There was no way for them to break the sphere of the Crushing and achieve that, and yet, they did, connecting the two together.

As Cassie roughly purged the memories from Rain’s entranced head, a somber thought entered her own mind.

‘Nightwalker.’

The Crushing was supposed to repel everything away from the Ivory Island, shaped into a sphere around it. The boarding hooks did not breach that annihilating shield — instead, they bypassed it entirely.

That was because Nightwalker was somewhere there, on the deck of the Night Garden, twisting space with the power of his Aspect. He had molded space in such a way that the boarding hooks could pass through the shield of Crushing without ever touching it.

Which meant…

Which meant that if Cassie did not hurry, she would have to meet the legendary Saint face-to-face.

A quiet groan escaped from her lips as the three sources of pain — the pain in her chest, the torment of the Epithet, and the agony of using her Transcendent Ability- were too difficult to endure.

But she did endure it, continuing to erase Rain’s memories.

‘I need to hurry… my time is running out.’

Cassie inhaled deeply.

She lost track of time for a while. When all memories of succumbing to Asterion were finally gone from Rain’s mind, she let the young woman go and watched her softly fall to the floor.

‘Since the boarding hooks are secured, the boarding party will arrive next.’

Cassie was planning to be far away by the Ivory Tower by the time it did.