Shadow Slave

The moment Sunny's essence touched the black wooden surface of the divine Memory, Weaver's Mask suddenly reached into his very soul and hungrily drank more… and then more, and more, and more.

In a fraction of a second, all of his reserve of shadow essence was sucked dry, with only a tiny bit of it remaining… almost as if these pitiful drops were not even worth being consumed by the mask.

And even then, all it could achieve was activate the [???] enchantment for just a single moment.

…That single moment, however, was enough to almost drive Sunny insane.

Suddenly, a horrifying pain pierced his eyes and his mind, akin to the suffering he had experienced after consuming the Drop of Ichor, only so much worse.

Infinitely worse.

As he shrieked, all traces of intelligence disappearing from his voice, the world he saw changed.

Suddenly, all Sunny could see was an endless, beautiful eternity of twisting threads. Those threads transfixed everything in existence, connecting every living being and every object, every thought and every concept, every dream and every nightmare, stretching infinitely into every direction, as well as into the past, the present, and the future.

These were the Strings of Fate.

They were just like the threads of light that the Spell was woven of, but while the magnificent and inconceivably complex pattern that Sunny had seen twice in the empty void between dream and reality composed the function of the Spell, what he glimpsed right now connected… everything.

All of the universe as it had existed, was existing, and was going to exist.

...Much worse, when observing the weave of the Spell, Sunny could only sense and guess at its meaning. But the terrifying enchantment of Weaver's Mask not only allowed him to see the tapestry of Fate, but also forced the understanding of it onto him.

The knowledge of everything, everywhere, all at once…

Of course, such knowledge was too much for any human to endure. Just the tiniest, infinitesimal amount of it was enough to instantly destroy any living being… except, maybe, for a god.

...Or a daemon.

As blood streamed out of Sunny's nose, eyes, and mouth, and a silent scream died on his lips, he instinctively did the only thing that could save him from being obliterated by the sight of the Strings of Fate — he dissipated into the shadows.

This was, perhaps, the reason why his eyes did not turn into smoldering embers and his head did not just explode right there on the spot. Shadows had no eyes and no skulls, after all.

However…

into a shadow, it had turned into one, too. His vision shifted from that of a human to the colorless

him. The infinite threads were tightly wrapped around his body, as well as around his soul, encompassing and piercing it… it

two shone much brighter than the

out of pure white flame and stretched far away into

made out of beautiful golden light, and led…

and the Twisted Rock, diving into the Tear and disappearing into the boundless darkness of the Sky

had passed, in reality, it was no more

of utter, irrevocable destruction. A fraction more, and it was going to

I do… the mask is a

were scattered and weak. And yet, he fought through the shock

could dismiss the

took only a second, there would be nothing left of

of desperation rose from the depths of his

shadow essence that Weaver's Mask had absorbed

threads disappeared with it. Sunny could only see

into the sky as the

that there was something urgent about the situation, but he was... was not

empty. He couldn't really lose conscience while in the form of a shadow, but not being able to think or even

the pieces of his wounded, shattered mind back together. He was in dire

and higher into the Sky Above. Wide cracks appeared on its surface, growing larger with each second. The blackened bones had already been turned into dust, and now,

Mordant Mimic, strangely, seemed to be much more sturdy than the ascending island itself. It was

to come

thought formed in Sunny's mind, he suddenly came to his

them was what he had

that the pitiful drops of shadow essence left in his soul cores were about to evaporate, which meant that

third one was that he still had not retrieved the golden coins

one thing — whether he would be forced out of the shadows and turned into a bloody puddle first,

Which would it be?

might as

of shadow essence, from which the Memories were created, returned