Shadow Slave

’What to do, what to do...’

Clinging to the crumbling shell of the void chamber, Sunny peered at the vaguely noticeable item hidden in the heart of the dying star. The world was coming undone around him as the hungry maw of the Shadow Realm devoured it. The integrity of the imploding chamber had been compromised a long time ago, allowing air to rush in - because of that, he could hear once more.

What surrounded him was a deafening, penetrating, dreadful hiss that was low and loud enough to sound like a fierce roar. It was as if he heard the otherworldly voice of the Shadow Realm itself... and since the Shadow Realm was the corpse of the God of Death, Sunny wondered if that was what his voice had sounded like, as well.

The metal was groaning as it was torn and pulled apart.

What Sunny remembered while looking at the dying star of the Eternal City was not the Shadow Realm and its cold expanse, though. He remembered the conflagration of divine flames burning in the endless expanse of the Sky Below, and the pain he had suffered after being burned by them. Was he going to burn once more today? ’Even if I am... let’s do it, I guess:

Gritting his teeth, he summoned a pair of black wings and then let go of the chain. Immediately, the pull of the Gate of Shadow grasped him like an inescapable vice. Sunny found himself plummeting down — or perhaps up — with awful speed, barely able to control the direction of his fall... or ascension.

As he drew closer to the dying star, terrible heat washed over him.

Then, the heat became unbearable.

And then, it became impossible.

”Argh!”

Sunny regretted inhaling, because his lungs were instantly seared.

His wings caught fire first, black feathers igniting and turning to ash a moment later. The Jade Mantle withstood the stellar radiance for a while, but then, incandescent cracks slowly spread across its surface.

The outward layers of the stonelike metal began to melt.

The shadow of Nightwalker grew smaller, shielded from the blinding light by the towering figure of the Shadowspawn.

..And it all hurt like hell, naturally.

’Ah, damn it! I miss Antarctica!”

Sunny wanted to be buried in ice.

He wanted to go on a snowy expedition with Silent Stalker again.

Instead, nearing the ferocious white orb of the dying star, he gritted his teeth and spread his burning wings to fight the pull of the Gate of Shadow. His fall slowed, even if only for a moment.

But that moment was enough for Sunny to steel himself... and plunge his arm into the stellar flame.

The stonelike metal of the Jade Mantle finally melted.

His flesh melted, too.

However, even with his bones showing through the blackened flesh, Sunny still willed himself to grasp the fragment of Weaver’s lineage hidden in the core of the dying star.

He tore it out and wasted a split second to look at what it was.

’A... scroll?’

It was an elegant scroll made of fine spider silk.

There was no time to study it yet, though. Sunny only needed to confirm that this was, indeed, the fragment of Weaver’s lineage he had come here to find. And judging by how his blood responded to it, it was.

’I’ll read it later.’

He would unfold the scroll when the Palace was not crumbling around him, when a Great Titan was not breathing down his neck, and when an army of wraiths was not besieging his Shadow Legion.

Even if a small, irrational, and exceedingly curious part of him kept screaming to read the scroll right now.

’That’s all the initial goals of the expedition achieved.’

Sunny allowed himself to feel a brief moment of satisfaction.

He had come to the Eternal City to repair the Night Garden, recover Storm God’s lineage,

find the sixth piece of Weaver’s lineage, and loot some treasure.

He had done all that. Now, only one goal remained one he had discovered after arriving at his destination.

Get Nightwalker out of the Eternal City.

’About that...’

Sunny released his form, tuning into a vast and shapeless shadow. That made him more susceptible to the pull of the Gate of Shadow, but it also made him far greater, size-wise —so much so that he brushed against the collapsing walls of the void chamber.

Powerful tendrils of darkness pierced the jagged metal near one of the rifts in it and pulled him toward it. Sunny had to exert all of his titanic strength, but that helped him avoid the event horizon of the Gate of Shadow and reach the distant wall.

There, he built the Onyx Serpent Shell around himself and the shadow of Nighwalker. Pushing his prodigious body into the rift in the wall of the void chamber, Sunny slithered away from its crumbling expanse and burrowed into the maze of tears created in the frame of the Palace like a worm burrowing into an apple.

The twisting, irregular tunnels moved and changed form, closing and opening as he rushed through them. The molten surface o! the Jade Mantle sent rivers of sparks flying as it scraped against the jagged edges of torn metal.

It only took him a dozen moments to reach what had been the Seal Chamber of the collapsing Palace once the great hall where the Flesh of Kanakht had been imprisoned.

It had changed a lot since Sunny left it.

The floor of the vast chamber caved, and the pit was oddly deformed. Nightwalke1 was hanging from its edge, trying to get away from the hills of mold below - black clouds of spores made the air hazy, and something that seemed like sunlight was pouring from somewhere, illuminating the nightmarish scene with pale light.

When Nightwalker saw the head of a giant Serpent rise from the darkness of the pit, his eyes widened.

”What the...”

He did not finish the sentence, though. Because Sunny opened his maw without ever slowing down...

And swallowed him.