Shadow Slave

The first thing Sunny saw when he opened his eyes was blinding light.

Disoriented, he hissed and covered them with a hand, immediately casting his shadow sense outward to know if they were in danger.

There was no danger… at least there didn’t seem to be. He sensed the unfathomable depths of the lake, the rocky shore, and the frightening mouth of the tunnel somewhere behind him.

He also felt the shadow of Nephis, sitting motionlessly on the shore, facing the water. The next thing Sunny sensed was the smell. The world smelled of soot and ash, the air permeated by scorching heat.

After the deadly cold of the lightless depths of the Tomb of Ariel, the heat was like a blessing.

Sunny heard Ananke gasp as his eyes slowly adjusted to the light. Eventually, he was able to look around properly.

Sunny’s expression became incredulous.

‘Well… I’ll be damned.’

There, in the sky above him — or rather on the roof of the boundless cavern they had found themselves in — six radiant suns were clumsily embedded into the black rock, emanating a beautiful radiance.

‘So the damn bird did steal them, after all.’

The Vile Thieving Bird seemed to have stolen the suns out of the sky… to decorate its nest.

In quite a gaudy manner, no less.

Sunny did not know what to make of the fact that there had been no sinister purpose to the disappearance of the suns… they simply caught the eye of the crazy bird, so it took them. Being proven wrong did not feel great, but at least the Thieving Bird had not fed them to its vile spawn, making it evolve into a more horrible abomination.

The fate of the seventh, shattered sun was still a mystery, but the other six were now accounted for.

Ananke was staring at the sun with a distant expression, as if overcome by memories of when they shone above the Great River, and life was bright instead of cold and shrouded in darkness.

Sunny, meanwhile, lowered his gaze to look at Nephis… and frowned.

It was only then that he finally noticed the source of the burned smell.

The world around them — as far as the eye could see — was a scorched wasteland of ash and volcanic glass. The mouth of the tunnel behind them was like a melted candle. The entire stone shore seemed to have been turned to molten lava, then cooled off in a mess of bizarre patterns. The waters of the lake were scalding hot, vast clouds of steam drifting on the wind far in the distance.

And Nephis…

He could not see her face due to the fact that she was sitting with her back to them, but his heart fell when he noticed that her hair seemed longer than it had been before. It was also in disarray and covered in ash, losing its usual silver sheen.

‘What happened?’

Moving quickly, Sunny reached Nephis and bent over to look at her face.

It was smeared in ash, as well, expressionless. She was staring into the distance, her grey eyes void of their usual white sparks. Her eyes seemed different, somehow. The dark pools of her pupils seemed deeper… much deeper. So deep, in fact, that he felt a hint of instinctual fear that all humans felt in front of unfathomable depths.

When his shadow fell on her, Nephis shifted faintly. Her eyes slowly focused, and she looked at Sunny.

Finally, the familiar white sparks ignited in their depths, chasing the deep, frightening darkness away.

“Sunny.”

Her voice was listless.

At first glance, Neph’s condition felt similar to how she was after overusing her Aspect, but no… this had been caused by something else. Something different. Something that had happened to her while Sunny and Ananke were sealed inside the Ark Amulet.

“Neph, what happened? Did you encounter the Thieving Bird? Its spawn?”

Nephis remained silent for a few seconds, her usual countenance gradually returning. In the end, she shook her head.

“No. I don’t quite… I did not encounter the Thieving Bird, no.”

Sunny let out a relieved sigh. Ananke had regained her composure and approached them by then, as well, looking at Nephis with concern.

“Then what happened?”

Nephis lingered with the answer, then turned her head slightly to look at the melted entrance to the tunnel.

Her silence stretched, but eventually, she inhaled deeply and seemed to shake off her strange condition.

“You were right. That tunnel… the runes inscribed on its walls… they would have Corrupted anyone but me.”

She paused for a second, then added with a sigh.

“But I did not escape it entirely unscathed, either.”

Sunny blinked a few times.

How could that be? Her [Longing] Ability clearly made her immune to the Corruption of the Void. Which meant…

His eyes widened a little.

“Your Aspect Legacy?”

She nodded.

“Yes. My Aspect Legacy is divided into seven branches, as you know. I have already unsealed three of them: the Knowledge of Fire, the Knowledge of Passion, and the Knowledge of Destruction. However, I had also made advances in understanding a fourth.”

Nephis was quiet for a second, and then added in an even tone:

“The Knowledge of Corruption.”

She took a deep breath.

“I should have known that reading Ariel’s writings about the Void would leave a mark on me. Mortals… are not meant to know the True Names of beings that dwell in the Void. The Creatures of Chaos.”

Sunny studied her carefully.

Chaos. It was a familiar word, one that people used to describe anything that seemed like a mess. A state of disorder. But its original meaning was quite different — it simply meant absence. Emptiness.

Void.

The ancient people of the War Realm used it to describe the first thing to ever exist — a deep, dark, empty abyss that had been there before anything else, and was therefore the progenitor of everything.

So, in that sense, Chaos was synonymous with the Void.

And Nephis read the runes describing the Void — and the harrowing beings that dwelled in it — that the Demon of Dread had left on the walls of the Estuary to be free of that knowledge.

Sunny had assumed that she would remain unaffected because of the [Longing], but while Nephis did not become infected with the Corruption, she did not escape unscathed either.

A faint, hesitant smile twisted her lips.

“I was arrogant, Sunny. I didn’t know… but now, I do. I have eaten the fruit of the fourth branch, the Knowledge of Corruption. And I tasted the Knowledge of the Void, as well.”

Her eyes trembled.

Sunny remained silent for a short while, then asked tentatively:

“Isn’t it a good thing? You unsealed the fourth boon of your Aspect Legacy and made strides in unsealing the fifth. More than that, the Corrupted are our enemies. Now you know the adversary better than you ever did before… and so, you will be able to destroy the enemy better than you ever could.”

Especially considering that Nephis had already mastered the Knowledge of Destruction and possessed the Blessing to boot.

Nephis stirred.

“Yes. Yes, you are right. Of course…”

She remained quiet for a while, looking at the lake.

Sunny could be wrong, but Neph’s eyes seemed to look… haunted.

Finally, unable to stay silent anymore, he asked:

“So, what was it that you learned about the Corruption? About the Void?”

Sunny was full of curiosity, naturally, even if he knew better than to ask… knowing too much was how the Defilement had been born, after all.

Nephis turned and glanced up at him, a hint of surprise appearing on her face.

She studied him for a few long moments, then slowly shook her head.

“No, Sunny. I will never speak about what I learned in that tunnel. Never. I won’t share that terrible knowledge with anyone… not even you. Until the day I die.”

She fell silent, and then added quietly:

“I wish I could forget.”

But she couldn’t. Not even Cassie could erase these memories from her mind, because she would have to experience them first — and unlike Nephis, Cassie was not immune to the Corruption.

The echo of Neph’s quiet voice spread across the lake like a whisper, and somewhere beneath its surface, the runes left on the water by Ariel shimmered with ethereal light.

Sunny sighed.

The three of them passed the boundary that had doomed Aletheia of the Nine and eventually turned her into First Seeker, at least.

That was already something.