The Broken Halo

Sunless looked at her soul for a few more seconds, then her gaze moved to the damaged parts of the symbiosis between her soul and the roots of the withered tree.

Several of the roots connected to her soul had been burned black and cracked apart.

They looked charred, but at the same time, they looked more like something that had erased parts of their existence.

The damage left by the Chaos Flames was wrong in a way Sunless hated and was wary of.

The pale ring around her soul had blackened in some places, and small fractures had appeared on its surface.

Even the dark sphere at the center was unstable. Tiny wisps of shadow peeled away from it and dissolved into the surrounding air.

The moment Sunless looked at it properly, her expression became even darker.

”What is that black flame for it to be able to damage my soul without touching it directly.”

Her voice was low, cold, curious, but most importantly... full of hatred.

She looked toward the Herald’s corpse again, and for some seconds, she said nothing.

Then her remaining eye narrowed.

The roots that had been burned had not only hurt her soul. They had interrupted the balance of this place. Even the golden light that was leaking from the Herald’s corpse seemed dimmer where the damaged roots had once fed.

”Damn that bastard. Damn that bitch.”

Sunless gritted her teeth in anger, and her shadow half twitched violently.

She held her head and groaned in annoyance and pain.

The Eternal Mind Maze was still affecting her, though not as strongly as before.

At the edge of her perception, corridors seemed to appear and vanish. Some roots looked like walls. Nearly a dozen paths would suddenly appear in her sight, making it seem like the roots had become those paths.

And for a split second, she almost felt as though the Herald’s corpse was looking directly at her from inside the maze.

Sunless clenched her teeth.

”The Mad Scientist. That mad demon. How did Blackmoon obtain his technique? How is Blackmoon able to use that mad demon’s technique?”

”And what sort of mental energy does he have? If I was not a Demon King and if the difference between our powers was not so vast, I would be suffering a lot from his mental energy.”

”It gives me more chills than even that bitch that’s inside of him.”

The words came out in a whisper because the exhaustion was beginning to get to her.

She exhaled slowly, then she forced herself to move.

Each step she took felt heavy. Not because of the dimension, but because of the state of her body.

Her half-shadow side was unstable, and the dark golden traces left by Lilith still burned at the severed edge where flesh became shadow. The pain was not as unbearable as before, but it remained deep and poisonous.

She stopped before a thick cluster of roots.

These roots were broader than an average man’s torso and pale black in color. They pulsed faintly, and when Sunless approached, they reacted to her presence.

One root curled downward.

Then another.

Then a dozen more.

They moved around her like obedient serpents, slow and somewhat disturbing to look at.

Sunless lifted her hand, and the roots brushed against her fingers.

”I need to heal.” She said softly and weakly.

The roots responded.

They rose around her body and began to wrap around her.

One curled around her legs, then another coiled around her waist.

Several moved around her shoulders and back.

Others wrapped around the shadow half of her body, pressing themselves gently against the unstable darkness and feeding it with a strange energy.

The roots were forming a shell.

A cocoon.

A protective chamber meant to suspend her body and nourish it while she recovered.

As they curled around her, thin streams of black and silver energy flowed from the roots into her injuries. The burning pain at the edge of her severed body lessened slightly, causing her expression to become one of relief and peace.

The fractures on the pale ring around her soul also began to heal.

Sunless closed her eye for a moment, and for the first time since the battle, some of the tension in her body eased.

She was slowly falling into a deep slumber, and her mind drifted toward Blackmoon.

For a brief moment, she thought of the things she was going to do to Blackmoon and Lilith.

If she could speed up the process of her healing so that it would take no more than a day.

No.

An hour.

She would.

Then she would look for Simon and give him a slow and painful death.

Then she would find a way to remove Lilith from Simon’s body, and her treatment would be way worse than Simon’s.

As she had these thoughts, the roots were about to close completely around her, but her eye snapped open and her expression drastically changed.

She felt something.

A presence.

It was not the presence of True Night.

It was not the presence of the Herald’s corpse.

And neither was it the whispers of the broken lantern.

No.

This was different and... familiar at the same time.

Sunless frowned deeply, and her eye looked around. She couldn’t move her body easily because of the roots, so she could only rely on how far her eye could see and her sensory abilities.

However, she saw nothing, causing her frown to deepen.

With a thought, the roots around her paused and slowly unwound themselves, allowing her to turn her head.

’There should be nobody here. Who else can enter this place aside from me? Or without my permission?’

Just as she has this thought, she turned her head, then she finally saw the source of the presence.

Far in the distance, beyond the hanging roots and beneath the enormous corpse of the Herald, a faint figure was standing in the midst of it all.

It was only a silhouette.

A woman-shaped outline standing where there should have been nothing.

Yet despite the distance, Sunless could feel that the figure was looking at her.

The figure was looking at her body, at her soul, at the damages done by Simon... at everything.

Sunless’ remaining eye narrowed, and for the first time since entering this place, a different emotion flickered in her gaze.

Wariness.

”...Truth Seeker.”