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 the

beings, the struggle of a handful of

…Or was it?

Suddenly, he frowned.

plan? How did the Shard Memories come into all

Star was preparing a mass sacrifice of her own, a hecatomb to appease the Crimson Terror. The number of the Sleepers being sent to the Forgotten Shore each year was too eerily similar to the number of sacrifices made to the Crimson Spire by the inhabitants

quickly dismissed that thought. After all, the sacrifices were meant to renew the power of the Blood Sun, and that was not Neph's goal. If anything, she meant to destroy it once and for all to gain entry to

did it

cursed

a while, he

names and their faces, but the memory of

second part of the description that the Spell had given

His eyes widened.

seven heroes lived on

understanding the secret of the Shard Memories was right in front of him this whole time. In fact,

The Azure Blade.

only steel remembers," he whispered, a sudden understanding dawning

of the defiant oath remained… and only steel

am such

from the very start of it all. The heroes were long gone, but their terrible oath was

not the memory of it that remained… but

Shards were

makes

and why was Nephis so motivated to find

Cassie had