Shadow Slave

'So this is how it is.'

Sunny stared at the last image of the mosaic, a dark and resentful expression frozen on his face.

Depicted in the center of the mural, a sun fueled by blood shone on the mountains formed by dead bodies. Tens of thousands of people had been slaughtered to create it, and thousands more must have been butchered later on to keep it burning in the indifferent sky.

The first sacrifices had died willingly, lured into submission by their fanatical rulers. What about those who came after? Somehow, Sunny doubted it.

And for what? How did it all end?

The seven seals had been broken, and the ancient civilization had been obliterated.

But the sun created and nurtured by it was not destroyed… just corrupted. It still rose in the morning and fell beyond the horizon after the dusk, illuminating the desolate hell of its own creation.

As long as its vessel, the Terror of the Crimson Spire, existed at the center of the Labyrinth, it would continue to shine in the cold grey skies. And as long as it did, the darkness that had escaped its underground prison and turned into the cursed sea was going to continue coming and going, scared of its light.

'Great. The two deserve each other…'

He didn't know why the all-consuming darkness had become a literal sea of impenetrably black water, but had a guess or two. Either hundreds of years spent locked away behind the seals had affected it that way, or the artificial sun had.

The Terror had been changed by the curse, so why couldn't the curse be changed by the Terror in return?

'Why wasn't that sun extinguished, though?'

There was no one alive on the Forgotten Shore to make sacrifices to the Spire anymore, but Sunny suspected that there was a reason for why the crimson coral seemed to grow either out of or toward bones. If he was right, the whole Labyrinth was a giant maw with which the Terror absorbed the soul essence of every creature that bled on the coral before it died.

It was all a part of its body.

fact, colossal living creatures. It was just that

struggle of a handful of tiny humans was nothing

…Or was it?

Suddenly, he frowned.

her plan? How did the Shard Memories come

Crimson Terror. The number of the Sleepers being sent to the Forgotten Shore each year was too eerily similar

the power of the Blood Sun, and that was not Neph's goal. If anything, she meant to destroy it once and

did

seven heroes and their cursed land he knew. And most importantly, those that came directly from the

while,

but the

part of the description that the Spell

His eyes widened.

legacy of the seven heroes lived on even after their deaths. But now, he suddenly realized that the truth might

of the Shard Memories was right in front of him this whole time. In

The Azure Blade.

he whispered, a sudden understanding dawning on him like

remained… and only steel remembered.

such

disposal from the very start of it

was not the memory of it that remained…

Shards were that

all makes so

then, what was their purpose and why was Nephis so motivated to find each

guess, too. Cassie had basically told him,