Shadow Slave

Blissfully oblivious to the storm his visit to the Dreamscape was causing back in the real world, Sunny opened his eyes on the Altar Island of the Sanctuary.

Because of how much time he had spent fruitlessly searching for worthy opponents on the Colosseum, he arrived on the Chained Isles much later than he usually would. The sunset was still a few hours away, and the sky was clear and bright. He was welcomed by the familiar murmur of flowing water, the rustling of leaves, and a cool breeze.

Sunny flinched slightly and threw a resentful glance at the deep pool of clean water surrounding the small piece of land on which the altar and the ancient tree stood.

During his first visit to the Sanctuary, Saint Tyris herself had brought him here from the real world. Both of them had appeared near the altar… there had been a small problem, though. Sunny had materialized a bit further than people usually did, and as the result, plunged straight into the pool instead of landing on solid ground.

Not a big setback. However, in a moment of disorientation, he almost had a heart attack. Falling into water reminded him of his first minutes on the Forgotten Shore just too much. For a second, he had thought that he was back in that godforsaken place…

Ever since that day, Sunny never ended up in the water instead of on the soil of the Altar Island again, but the scare that first time had given him was still fresh in his memory.

'Not today!'

With a triumphant smirk, he left the white altar behind and headed toward the ring of tall menhirs.

that it was day, the Sanctuary looked more populated. Groups of Awakened rested on the grass of the park, some discussing upcoming ventures into the wilderness, some simply killing time until they were able to

the Gateway immediately after appearing in the Dream Realm. Perhaps because the soul wasn't able to withstand traveling between worlds too often, perhaps because the Spell did not wish for

had to wait was slightly different from person to person, but in general, it was somewhere around ten hours. During these hours, those Awakened who did not wish to risk their lives in the wild expanses of the

the obvious demand to keep watch on the walls and fight off attacking Nightmare Creatures, mundane tasks like cleaning and preparing food

— some were small, some large enough to house thousands upon thousands of the Awakened. The population of the three Great Citadels was even higher, with hundreds of thousands of

had been assigned a role of an advanced scout — in exchange for his reports about the things he noticed during his expeditions and the movements of Nightmare Creatures across the Isles, he was

happy

somewhat friendly terms with, entered the interior of the Sanctuary, then headed to his room. Now

credits… oh, and to properly study the ancient

now, Sunny really wanted to satiate his

he fished out the soul shards off its bottom and unceremoniously threw them into the pack. The

golden coin glinting between a few curios that Sunny had collected in the past two months, he hesitated for a

'All set…'

time to

over to a big, sun-washed rock, and sat down on it. Taking out the soul shards, he placed them on its surface and waited patiently, pretending to