Shadow Slave

In the next week or so, things moved with terrible speed.

Nephis became the ruler of the Bright Castle without any type of glorious ceremony or impassioned speech. No one questioned her authority, anyway, as though it was a simple fact of life.

In a sense, it was.

Sunny found it interesting, however, that she didn't take her seat on the white throne of the ancient citadel once. Even when there was a need for a large gathering, Changing Star sat on the last step of the stairs leading to the throne. As if making a point to show that the Bright Castle did not belong to her… or, perhaps, that she did not belong to the Bright Castle.

At first, he was sure that Nephis was going to push people to march on the Crimson Spire immediately, but she didn't even mention it. When he confronted her about her plans, she simply said that they were going to wait until the winter solstice came before making any decisions.

It was just a few days away, anyway. In the meantime, everyone who was left alive had a lot to do.

There were just five hundred people in the Dark City now. In less than a month, the human population of the Forgotten Shore had been reduced by half. The outer settlement remained completely abandoned, but even then, there were barely enough people to maintain and guard the Bright Castle.

Nevertheless, they persevered.

The halls and corridors of the ancient citadel were cleaned of blood and corpses. The Nightmare Creatures that had found their way inside were methodically hunted down and eliminated. The breaches in the defensive lines they had created were located and repaired.

the walls and protecting the stronghold from outside threats. The hunting parties resumed their expeditions into the ruins, with hunters from the outer settlement and the Castle joining forces under the leadership of Effie and Gemma. Once again, there was

who had died in the turmoil of the bloody struggle for the throne, not to mention the invisible scars left on the souls of those who had survived,

the reason

Dark City were now able to not only hunt more Nightmare Creatures and with less risk, but also challenge Fallen rulers of the cursed ruins. Not every one of these terrifying creatures could be killed without paying too terrible a price, of course. But after so many years on the Forgotten Shore,

become if not the apex species in

killing Fallen abominations, Nephis was achieving several goals simultaneously. She was steadily accumulating an arsenal of Memories to arm every person in the Castle. Some of those Memories were even of the Ascended Rank, and the number of such powerful armaments

of soul shards, which were then

it appeared as though now, it was the Bright

respect and adoration people felt

that through these hunts, she was training her people to fight together as a cohesive force and

were applying their mastery and craft to close any gaps in how the humans

as working to supply Gunlaug's Host with gear and equipment, now their only job was to create things people were going to need in

was as though they were

about, too. These things were requested from them by Nephis

that, the

was hard to believe that he had survived here for so long. That any of them had. But it also seemed as though one year was not