Shadow Slave

Sleeping in his own bed felt really great.

Sunny had had many beds throughout the years. He had one in his temporary room at the Academy, one in the bedroom of his house, the luxurious sleeping pod he had purchased after becoming an Awakened, a flimsy cot in the Sanctuary of Noctis, and even the wide sleeping shelf at the back of the Rhino, among others.

But out of all of them, this bed of pale polished wood, which had once belonged to the priestess of the ruined cathedral, held a special place in his heart.

Perhaps because this dark chamber was the first place he had considered home, and this bed was the first he had considered his.

Even though the time Sunny had spent living alone in the Dark City was one of the bleakest pages of his life, he remembered it with a special fondness.

Waking up pleasantly refreshed, he smiled, yawned, and climbed out of the bed.

Looking around the spacious chamber, Sunny remembered his days here. Things had been so simple back then...

He walked around for a while, briefly touching various pieces of furniture, and then stopped in front of a bare wall. There, countless scratches had been left by the tip of the Prowling Thorn, counting the days he had spent here.

Below them, the word "Sunless" was carved in the stone with two runes.

A sad smile appeared on Sunny's face.

Back then, he had wanted to leave proof of him having lived, struggled, and suffered in the Dark City on this stone wall. A mark of his existence.

Who knew that the mark he had left would become meaningless one day? His own actions made it so that nobody could remember him, even if he scratched his name into the stone a thousand times.

Sunny chuckled, then outstretched a hand and used his nail to leave one more scratch on the wall.

He had spent another day here, after all.

Then, he looked around, studying the interior of the dark chamber.

The thought of leaving it all behind once again made him sad.

But then...

Did he really have to leave it?

Slowly, a dark grin twisted his lips.

'Why don't I take it all with me? What a great idea!‘

He needed to decorate the Marvelous Mimic, anyway.

Summoning the Shadow, he commanded it to turn into an enormous wardrobe and opened its doors wide, paying no attention to the rows of terrifying fangs hidden behind them.

Inside was the cold darkness of the vast dimensional storage.

"Shall we start?"

Smiling happily, Sunny went about loading the beautiful furniture made of pale polished wood into the Mimic. The bedJ the desk, the intricate lectern...

He (lid n‘t even spare the garbs and vestments of the young priestess, which Effie had once mocked him about. These beautiful clothes were made from fine fabric and masterfully tailored... more than that, they had remained in pristine condition despite thousands of years of neglect. Sunny would be mad to leave behind something like that.

By the time he was done, the spacious chamber was entirely barren, as if robbed by an extremely greedy thief. The greedy thief in question, meanwhile, looked at the intricately engraved stone walls, feeling regretful that he couldn't take the engravings with him. Eventually, he sighed and shook his head.

Closing the doors of the Marvelous Mimic, he dismissed the Shadow and left the living quarters.

By the time Sunny returned to the great hall, the smile had disappeared from his face.

He glanced at the statue of the nameless goddess one more time.

The description of the Nameless Sun, the Memory Nephis had received after slaying the Terror of the Crimson Spire, surfaced in his mind.

[For a long time, the Nameless Sun suffered in solitude, longing for all the things that were lost. Only when she lost that longing, too, was the Crimson Terror of the Forgotten Shore finally born.]

...Wasn‘t he a bit like her?

Alone and forgotten, even his name erased from the world.

He was even a Terror, too.

If he survived long enough... would a day come when Sunny turned into a Nightmare Creature, as well? What was it that he had not lost yet that kept his soul from blooming with the flowers of Corruption?

As his gaze darkened, Sunny looked away from the statue and headed for the inner sanctum of the ruined cathedral.

Finding the hidden passage, he allowed it to take him to a winding staircase and descended underground. Deeper and deeper still, until he reached a large chamber carved into the bedrock.

There, a massive door forged from the same metal that the armor of the Black Knight had been forged from stood Open, and two strange torches burned on the wall.

Sunny hissed and shielded his eyes. After days spent in absolute darkness, the pale light of the ghostly torches seemed blinding.

Beyond the open door... was the solitary cell where he had found Weaver's Mask.

And the forbidden runes left on its floor by the corpse that had worn it.

Sunny had come to the Dark City to read these runes.

Taking a deep breath, Sunny steeled his heart and walked forward.

The first time around, he had left his shadows behind, concerned that the light of the strange torches would harm them. But now, he knew that the underground cell was designed to keep someone in, not prevent others from coming inside. The runic circle had long been broken, anyway, and the sorcery protecting this place did not function anymore.

Entering the cell, Sunny studied his surroundings for a few moments... not that there was a lot to study. There was only the broken runic circle, the dust that the mysterious corpse had turned into, and the words left on the floor.

Sunny smiled darkly, then turned his attention to the forbidden runes he had not been able to read before.

These ones were different from the script Nether had used, and much easier to translate. However, when Sunny read them, his expression darkened.

'What?‘

He didn‘t quite understand...

The runes read: [Thus spoke Weaver

"They will open the Gates"

And they did

Calling forth doom and destruction upon us

Now, in the ruins

Gods lay dead

And the daemons have fallen

The Forgotten One comes

Wide awake

To consume them].

The rest were ineligible.

Sunny shivered.

'No, wait...‘

What did it mean? They had opened the Gates? Who had opened them, and which Gates? Not... not the Gates of the Void, surely?

That was impossible. If the Gates had already been opened, and the Forgotten God had already escaped from the Void, wide awake, then there would have been no existence left. Everything would have been consumed by Corruption.

But it wasn't... yet. Which meant that he was still asleep, seeing nightmares.

And yet, the runes clearly stated that someone had indeed unleashed the God of Corruption. Not only that, but Weaver had even foretold that they would.

'Gods lay dead, and the daemons have fallen...‘

Was that the answer to the question that had been tormenting Sunny? The question of who had won the Doom War?

According to these runes...

No one had? Both sides had been annihilated?

How could that be?

Had it been mutual destruction, or had someone killed them all? If neither side had won, then who had?

Suddenly, a chill ran down Sunny's spine.

He looked down, at the familiar string of runes written in a different script from the rest of them.

"Hail Weaver, Demon of Fate. Firstborn of the Forgotten God."

He suddenly had an ominous feeling.

Everyone assumed that there had been two sides in the war between the gods and the daemons... but was that really true? After all, there had been one deity that had refused to participate, standing in opposition to both the gods and the daemons.

The Demon of Fate.

So, if both sides had been annihilated... then wouldn't it mean that there was only Weaver left?

Sunny suddenly remembered the description of Bone Weave...

[When children of the Forgotten God rebelled against the gods, Weaver was the only one to refuse the call of war. Despised and hunted by both sides, they disappeared. No one knew where Weaver went and what they did... until it was too late.]

Until it was too late.

Unnerved, Sunny took a deep breath.

'...What the hell did Weaver do?’

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