Shadow Slave

Sunny stared at the ground, confused.

'What just happened?'

Why did the Spell call that thing and Ascended Reflection? What was a Reflection? And why was it Ascended instead of Fallen?

How could a Nightmare Creature be Ascended?

He frowned.

'...Was it not a Nightmare Creature? How is that possible?'

The apparition was definitely not a human, so what else could it be if not one of the Dream Realm's abominations?

And one more thing…

The Spell did not say that his shadow had grown stronger, did it?

To make sure, Sunny checked the number of his shadow fragments. Just as he had suspected, it didn't change. He even dove into the Soul Sea, and saw that there was no new shadow among the rows of the creatures he had slain.

'This is very, very strange.'

What the hell had he just killed?

With a deep frown on his face, Sunny bent down and cautiously picked up the jagged mirror shard that the apparition had left behind. No matter how he looked at it, the shard resembled a perfectly mundane piece of glass, with a thin layer of silver painted over its reverse side. The only strange thing about it was that no matter how Sunny turned the shard, it refused to reflect anything except for an impenetrable veil of darkness.

There was also an inscription on its reverse.

that the inscription was not made with runes… instead, what he saw were the familiar letters of the human

one word written on the

"Beastie"

is that supposed

the Mirror Beast was so strange that for a time, Sunny even forgot about the burning pain in his

Eventually, he whispered:

"...An Echo?"

would not reward him with any shadow fragments, just like what

not an Echo. It was too independent, sentient, and had too much... individuality to be a simple copy of a dead Nightmare Creature. Not to mention that it had been ruling the Reckoning

however, a type of being that

dark look at the remains of a

strange Reflection resembled a

incredibly powerful, then. If so, where were they? What had happened to them, and why was their

There were no answers.

a theory, anyway. Sunny

his new Memory would

was about to summon the runes, but a sudden pulse of pain reminded him that he was, in fact, still wounded. With a hiss, Sunny clutched at

after the fight with Mirror Beast.

reserve of shadow essence to step through the shadows and appear near the rocky hill in the center of the island.

a narrow stone ledge that led behind the waterfall, Sunny checked that the cave was empty, and then entered its

***

very big, but due to its location and hidden nature, there was no better shelter on the entire island. Rather happy with this discovery, Sunny groaned and lowered himself to the

outside, he dismissed the Puppeteer's Shroud, then opened his pack and took out a small box containing several thin needles and a span of

the needles with a deadpan expression, Sunny

'I hate this part.'

of Blood Weave, Sunny could recover from most injuries much faster than any mundane human, or even one of his peers, would be able to. However, if he wanted to be able to

the threaded one of the needles, gritted his teeth, and began suturing the edges of the long cut on his side together. The process was not very pleasant, to say the least, so the