Shadow Slave

Depicted on the ancient engravings, a beautiful land was bathed in sunlight. Lush forests, glistening rivers, and fields of flowers surrounded human cities built of stone. From what Sunny could tell, this was the Forgotten Shore before the mysterious and terrifying curse had turned it into the desolate hell it was today.

In the next mural, the beautiful land rested under the sky that was full of stars. Suddenly, one of them fell to the ground, causing a wave of destruction to wash over the human cities. When people approached the center of the crater left behind by the falling star…

Sunny almost stumbled when he saw the next engraving. In it, a naked human figure was standing at the bottom of the crater, wreathed in light. The inhabitants of the stone cities were surrounding the radiant figure, dressed in archaic garments and armor.

The figure seemed beautiful and pure, as though untouched by the imperfections of the mundane world. What made Sunny lose his composure was not its beauty and not how eerily familiar the soft radiance emanated by its skin was, but...

Its face.

On it, three eyes were burning with pure, incandescent light. Two were just like that of a human, with the third one situated above the other ones, right in the middle of the creature's forehead.

…Just like that of the terrible skull that the walking colossus had shattered with his stone hammer in the middle of a raging storm.

'...What does it mean? What is this thing?'

To Sunny's dismay, the next engraving was heavily damaged. He couldn't discern anything of what was depicted on it.

However, the one after that was in almost perfect condition.

On it, the radiant figure was kneeling on the ground, its chest pierced by the spear of the tallest human among the inhabitants of the beautiful land. What flowed from the terrible wound, however, was not blood, but an endless flood of pure darkness.

why did they attack it?

an answer, Sunny walked forward and soon reached the next mural. He saw darkness devouring the humans gathered around the fatally wounded creature and spread. Soon,

then, it devoured the entire

all-consuming

glimpse at the origin of the terrible disaster that had destroyed this land and turned it into a hellish

over. Walking further into the ancient mine, Sunny learned

the world, it reached the skies. The stars were either devoured by it or fell down, turning the sky into a terrible, lightless

The starless void.

the darkness to devour them. The best and the brightest of

then, humans themselves started

point, Sunny felt a cold shiver running down

affected by the tragic disaster that had befallen

all seemed

been the same, but the end result was eerily similar to what was happening in the

to attack settlements and devour humans. The champions who had taken charge of defending their kind from the abominable

the same as the Nightmare Spell spreading like a plague across the globe, the Nightmare Creatures coming through the Gates, the Awakened rising to fight against them, and

Forgotten Shore was already over. Eventually, the curse had destroyed it.

and mighty. They were capable of building cities that stood for thousands of years and fighting against the most terrifying monsters on equal footing. And yet,

the real world turn into a desolate hell like the Forgotten Shore too, one