Shadow Slave: Foreign shadow

It happened all at once. Two quarters of the night had already slipped past the horizon.

​The Black Mountain stood watch over the battlefield, silent and immovable, while beyond its jagged peaks, an unfathomable void seemed to swallow the world. The wind howled with a biting chill, and the embers of the campfires—once a defiant orange—had been choked out, leaving only a suffocating, pitch-black veil over the battle. The warmth had surrendered to the biting cold brought by the wind, only the gold and silver of the distant stars dared to pierce the absolute darkness of the night. On the front lines, men and monsters tore into one another—screeching iron met roaring fangs, blood mingled with blood, and the once-pristine snow had become a canvas of vivid, grisly hues.

​Another quarter had just passed.

​It was then that a new cry of death pierced the meridian of the already frenzied night.

​From the absolute darkness, seven new abominations emerged. Their figures were caught in the pale, sickly light of the moon as if they had been birthed from the shadows in that very instant. Each possessed four eyes, white as milk, glowing in the gloom. Their maws hung partially agape, revealing teeth as sharp as razors, while a viscous saliva dripped from their fangs like cooling lava. They were covered in sickly, dark-yellow fur, supported by two squat legs and four arms. The upper pair were long, ending in horrific bone-claws; the lower pair were shorter, tipped with fingers that looked unsettlingly human.

​Awakened Devils.

​In the center of their crescent formation loomed another being. This one stood four meters tall, its fur a richer, more regal gold than that of its subjects. Its spine was inhumanly hunched forward, and it stared with five eyes—five luminous, white points of light, far too beautiful to belong to such a nightmare.

​An Awakened Tyrant. The Mountain King.

​Waiting to welcome this new horde was a monster of a different kind—a beast wearing a human skin.

Goliath turned his head. Behind him lay only a path paved with the blood and viscera of his fallen foes, stretching back into an impenetrable darkness.

​”Tsk!” he snorted, ”I suppose I’ll have to do this without the cover.”

​Turning his gaze back toward the enemy general, his lips curled upward in a grin of pure, manic enthusiasm. He spun his greatsword, shaking off the encrusted gore, and leveled the point toward the sky.

​”Glory.”

​He spoke the word like a prayer and hurled himself back into the struggle.

​Further down the line, Auro and the remnants of the legion found themselves facing another horde of Awakened Devils, their white eyes multiplying in the dark like a spreading plague.

​So, the final act of the battle of the black mountain began.

***

Meanwhile, on the jagged periphery of the battlefield, a young man moved through the abyss, swift and solitary. The mountain’s frozen bite turned every breath into fire within his lungs, while beads of sweat crystallized into needles of ice against his pale skin.

The shadows veiled his paces upon his wake. His body, light as a feather, did not even mar the layer of snow beneath his feet. Such was his nature as a Shadowspawn.

Suddenly, his stride faltered. Sunny stared into the void stretching endlessly before him. His eyes of pure onyx, capable of piercing even the most ancient shadows, saw the path to the summit of the Black Mountain as clearly as if it were bathed in the midday sun.

There, the Temple of a long-forgotten God awaited.

There, his Nightmare would finally reach its end.

​Turning his back, Sunny watched the slaughter between men and monsters rage on, bloody and merciless. The two fronts were annihilating one another in the dark; there was no longer any practical need for him to take part.

Sunny glanced down at the [Deplorable Dagger] gripped in his right hand. The blade had drunk its fill of blood tonight.

---

Memory: [Deplorable Dagger].

Memory Rank: Awakened.

Memory Tier: I.

Memory Type: Weapon.

Memory Enchantments: [Treacherous].

Memory Description: [There is no glory in pursuing an endless struggle. Only those who seek life beyond War truly live up to the name of War.]

---

​Salvation lay a single step ahead; ruin lay a hundred paces behind. The path was open, safe. It was over.

​Yet, his heart wavered.

But why? Why did the choice to flee now feel so... wrong?

> the cynical voice of the Jiminy Cricket mocked. >

​Sunny snorted, a smirk of madness filled his dry lips. ’Then, I suppose I’ve learned nothing at all. Because here I am, taking the downward path once again.’

​Sunny took a single step forward.

As he drown himself back into the struggle, behind him, the shadows followed his wake. Pitch-black snakes coiling around his shade like a blessing.

Sunny held no master plan. No default strategy. He had only one mandate: survive. Yet, right now, the fire burning inside him overshadowed even the mightiest of the star. A demon of spite who refuse to left without keeping his promises.

***

Something was fundamentally wrong.

​Seven more Awakened Devils had surged into the fray, tearing into the remnants of the legion. One of them had just collapsed at the hero’s feet, stone-dead. And yet, it had not fallen by the edge of his blade.

​Auro of the Nine stared at the four-armed corpse before him in utter disbelief. Around him, the shrieks of men and the guttural roars of beasts collided in the furnace of the night.

​The hero looked around, consumed by a gnawing sense of helplessness. The shadows themselves seemed to mock the incredulity and paranoia etching his noble features.

’​How is this possible?’ Auro asked himself, ’How can a mere human—even one favored by Shadow—strike down an aberration that even the Awakened among our ranks fail to hold at bay alone?’

​Was the boy a vessel for some deity? Did he belong to a domain hostile to the Nine? Or...

​Questions spun aimlessly in the hero’s mind, finding no sanctuary.

​Instinct snapped him back. Auro lunged, his sword flashing to parry a jagged claw lunging from the abyss to his left. He rolled backward, narrowly avoiding being crushed by the sheer mass of his new assailant. Springing to his feet, Auro charged forward, a battle cry swelling in his lungs.

​There was no room for respite; the battle was far from over.

***

​CLANG

​A massive slab of iron swept in a wide horizontal arc, slicing through the night in its entirety. Ravenous maws and feral claws lunged toward the Champion of War, but they met only cold, unyielding steel. A second strike came from behind, shredding the crimson fabric of his mantle.

With a thunderous headbutt, Goliath sent one attacker sprawling several yards away; with a vicious lash of his greatsword, he severed the long, skeletal bone-claw of an Awakened Devil.

​His flank was wide open. The Mountain King did not miss the opening.

​A cold shiver pricked the back of Goliath’s neck.

​The Champion of War spun a hundred and eighty degrees, his blade snapping up to parry a shard of metal aimed at his throat. The strike connected with a sharp ring against the flat of his greatsword, but before his eyes could lock onto the silhouette of the weapon, it dissolved into a flurry of golden sparks.

​Immediately, a powerful backhand from the enemy general sent Goliath hurtling through the air, throwing him several meters back.

​The giant scrambled to rise, but his right knee buckled. He collapsed back into the frozen snow, now a slush of blood and viscera.

​”You! You little...” he snarled. This was the seventh time that mongrel had struck from the shadows—the coward. Three strikes had already found their mark, scoring his right leg and left flank. Each wound felt as though it were unstringing his muscles.

​The enemy general charged again, closing the gap in a few thundering strides, propelled by the combined power of its massive legs and four grasping arms.

​Goliath met the charge. His boots shattered the frozen earth as he heaved his greatsword upward, the blade tearing through the soil and sending tons of snow geysering into the air.

​He was too slow.

​The Mountain King had more than enough time to sidestep the descending cleave and lash out, its claws raking across Goliath’s ribs.

Goliath twisted, barely catching the blow on his steel at the last possible second. The impact forced him back once more, his feet carving deep trenches into the crimson snow.

​His muscles were betraying him. And the night pressed on.

***

​[You have slain...]

[You have slain...]

​”Again!”

​Sunny moved through the collision of monsters and soldiers as if possessed—a phantom at work in the deepening gloom. Striking from the periphery of vision, he watched his enemies collapse one after another.

​[You have slain...]

[You have slain...]

[You have slain...]

​His muscles screamed for mercy; his fresh wounds burned and bled, but adrenaline had long since seized the helm. His heart hammered against his ribs like a relentless, overclocked engine.

​Against Dormant adversaries, any discarded blade or shattered spear scavenged from the mud was enough. But when an Awakened—creature or man—loomed before him, the enchantment of the [Deplorable Dagger] did the heavy lifting.

​[Treacherous] Enchantment Description: ”When this blade tastes flesh, it shall wither the enemy’s strength piece by piece, stripping away the will to fight until only the void remains.”

​[You have slain...]

[You have slain...]

[You have slain...]

[You have slain...]

[You have slain...]

”And give me a Memory, you piece of—”

Sunny never stayed still. A strike to the spine, a sprint into the dark, a momentary retreat. The enemies fell in a rhythmic, bloody cadence. They had reached the final verses of the battle.

***

Time flowed on, relentless and indifferent, much like the blood that now saturated the earth. One by one, the stars began to fade, flickering out in perfect cadence with the lives being extinguished like candles in a gale.

​Steel clashed against steel, fangs sank deep into yielding flesh, and death danced to the rhythm of breaking souls—until, at last, only silence remained.

​Auro moved through a blur of silver and iron, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Suddenly, his blade met only thin air. He spun, searching the gloom, but found no one left to strike. Was he the last man standing? Where had everyone gone? Where were the Corrupted? And his men… where were his men?

​The questions echoed in the void of the mountain pass, unanswered.

​Then, without warning, a new color bled into the horizon. The pale, hesitant light of the sun began to reclaim the world, returning a warmth the night had long since forgotten. But as the dawn stripped away the safety of the shadows, the sight that greeted Auro made him stagger, his knees hitting the gore-stained snow.

Dawn had finally come, but the nightmare wasn’t over.

The shadows suddenly rose, almost in eager to swallow the world on its wake.

In the distance, a silhouette stood, covering the fragile, golden rays of the rising sun.

The boy did not just obscure the dawn, he devour it—plunging the mountain pass back into an artificial eclipse.