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.

dark sea were, in fact, colossal living creatures. It was just

struggle

…Or was it?

Suddenly, he frowned.

and her plan? How did the Shard Memories come

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 of the Dark City to be a

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

what did it all

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

a while,

faces, but the memory of the

the description that the Spell

His eyes widened.

he thought that this sentence simply meant that the legacy of the seven heroes lived on even after their deaths.

key to understanding the secret of the Shard Memories was right in front of him this whole time. In fact, it came from the first Memory he had ever gotten on the

The Azure Blade.

this forgotten shore, only steel remembers," he whispered, a sudden understanding

the defiant oath remained… and only

am such a

start of it all. The heroes were long gone, but their terrible oath was still here, preserved

the memory of it that remained… but

were

course. It all makes so

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

to guess, too. Cassie had basically told him, all those months