Shadow Slave

Somewhat surprised, Sunny struggled to open his eyes. As his vision slowly focused, he saw Neph's pale face looming above him. Her short silver hair was wet, sticking close to her skin.

She was standing on her knees beside his broken body, caressing his face with her hands. In her eyes, there was a strange expression.

It was as though she was frightened, but resigned to something.

Her pupils were wide and dark.

'Wh—what?'

Greeting her teeth, Nephis moved her hands to his collapsed chest and pressed them lightly against it, causing a pulse of pain to radiate through Sunny's body.

Then, a soft, radiant brilliance suddenly ignited beneath the skin of her palms, reflecting in her grey eyes like two dancing white sparks.

Almost immediately, Changing Star's face contorted in a grimace of excruciating agony, and she let out a terrible, muffled scream.

Her skin became white as a sheet of paper, and as she bit her lower lip, drops of blood soon rolled to her chin.

As the radiance grew in intensity, Nephis shut her eyes tightly, tears streaming down her tortured, bloodless face.

Sunny, on the contrary, felt like he was in heaven. All pain disappeared from his body, replaced by gentle, all-encompassing warmth. He felt as though he was being cleansed by something pure and sacred.

By a white, pristine, purifying flame.

Under the influence of the flame, his dying body began to repair itself. His shattered bones were reassembled from the shards. His torn flesh regenerated and became whole again. His collapsed lungs and damaged heart were brought back to life and rejuvenated, instantly turning strong and healthy.

Suddenly, he could breathe again.

As his chest moved, drawing in a new breath, Nephis flinched away with a harrowing moan. The white radiance beneath her skin dimmed and disappeared, letting the darkness return to its rightful place.

Crawling away a few steps, Changing Star stopped, standing on her knees and hands, and violently vomited. Her whole body was shivering uncontrollably, as though on the verge of a seizure.

As the shivers died down, she slowly lowered herself to the ground and lay there motionlessly, catching the raindrops with her mouth.

Sunny, meanwhile, raised his hands and carefully explored his body.

To his surprise, nothing really hurt. It was as though he was never wounded in the first place, let alone almost died.

With the help of Nephis and her mysterious Aspect Ability, he was completely healed.

It was a miracle.

***

Sunny, Nephis and Cassie huddled together for warmth and slept as though

anything were to happen, the shadow would probably alarm them in

They were

rest of the night went

one was in a hurry to make any plans or suggest leaving the cliffs. They just gathered some meat from the dead carapace centurion and the scavengers, collected the two soul shards

turned out, they were right. Not long after the group left the place of the battle, a dark spot appeared in the sky. Soon, it became larger and approached the cliffs, landing near the corpse of the centurion

like it. The creature was massive in size, easily weighing twice as much as the carapace monster. Its body was white as a corpse and muscular, like that of a lion. It had two mighty paws in the back

enormous wings. Its

satisfied, it grabbed a few scavenger carcasses with its paws and rose back into the air, creating a small hurricane with each flap of its

the cliffs and flew back the

It was moving west.

the black dot as it disappeared into the distance,

you think

After

"I have no idea."

and went about his business. He still had to perform his

meat and had a delicious, hefty breakfast. Then, stuffed, the three of them lied down

two scavengers at once, running away and barely surviving the sudden flood, climbing tall cliffs in the middle of a

needed to sort himself out. Truth be told, he was

not his traumatic near-death experience, although it had a lot to do with it. The thing was that, after the unexpected epiphany he had while trying to fight against the deathly mind fog, Sunny

he gained never

of his being. He felt as though his very way of thinking and perceiving the

and act without hesitation. Many things that previously seemed obscure and frightening suddenly became

an underlying order to the world that wasn't there before. That inner understanding gave him an advantage that was hard to

of his body at the end of the First Nightmare. He felt that he had made a big leap in his combat ability and overall power, even though it wasn't tied to the

Sunny wondered if this was how Nephis

Mastery of the body, mastery of the

from being a master. But it

***

the

there, her feet dangling over the edge. She was looking west, lost

girl and followed her gaze, trying to guess what she was

he failed. Changing Star was hard to

incredibly embarrassed. Finally, he

my life

him

"I did."

find the correct words. In the end, he