Shadow Slave

The Twisted Rock soared higher and higher into the sky, and as it did, a terrible crushing force assaulted the two living beings that were pressed into its surface, separated only by a dozen meters of dark stone.

The large adamantine chest did not look too good. The wood was slowly losing its color, the strips of metal reinforcing it showed growing patches of rust. It seemed as though the creature was struck by some terrible disease. In a sense, it was… after all, the Broken Oath was currently destroying its soul bit by little bit.

Sunny did not look that much better, though.

He was laying on the hard stone, looking at the merciless skies, struggling to breathe and endure the pain. His armor was soaked in blood, and his broken arm was pressed tightly against his chest. His face was deathly pale, almost the same color as the tall and majestic Ivory Tower that floated high above the world, shrouded in the whitest of clouds.

Every breath was a torture.

Sunny knew that he was not going to bleed to death because of the Blood Weave, but the wounds still needed to be tended to. His broken bones, especially, were in need of attention. This Crushing was turning out to be tragically long, though, not giving him the chance to do so.

Well, that was not a surprise.

The single chain connecting the Twisted Rock to the rest of the Isles was much longer than most, which meant that the small island was going to rise very, very high. Higher than Sunny had ever been in this strange and deadly land.

The Crushing was not only going to last longer, but would also be vastly more terrible than the few previous times he had experienced it. By now, the hours of hardship he had endured together with Master Roan several days ago seemed like a pleasant walk in the park.

Now, it seemed as though he was being slowly crushed under the weight of the entirety of heaven.

because he didn't have to hide his powers anymore, and could use all of his abilities without restraint. Unlike on the day he had met the dashing griffin rider, both shadows were now tightly wrapped around his body, augmenting its resilience threefold. For that reason, he had not turned into a puddle of bloody goo yet. Although it certainly felt as though he

unbearable, he could still escape into the shadows and either wait out the worst part of the Crushing or try to escape back to the heavenly chain before his shadow essence ran out. Since he had spent this whole time patiently circulating it through

for the damn chest fiend to finally die, as well as considering his options on how to transport the gold coins back to the

through the swarm of Chain Worms. The problem was confounded by the fact that Twisted Rock was going to be destroyed soon, which meant that he could not

Sunny was trying to endure as much of the Crushing as he could before

the burden of the Crushing became too overbearing, he had sent one of his

literally nothing on the Twisted Rock except for barren stone and ancient, blackened bones. The shadow explored

a look at the underside of the small isle, but it

was nothing on the island to cause his intuition to react so strongly. What was going

Crushing had become too terrible for him to endure without the help

here

attention. Glancing sideways, he noticed that a crack had appeared on the surface of the adamantine chest.

that even such a simple action was rather

going to be too

***

pool of black blood surrounding