Shadow Slave

Sunny's bed trembled slightly, and he felt the wind blowing across the room. Still mostly asleep, he sighed and tried to pull the blanket higher. However, that damned thing was nowhere to be found.

'Where the hell is it…'

Reluctant to let go of sleep, he blindly searched for the blanket. Instead of finding it, though, Sunny suddenly felt his whole bed careen to the side. Startled, he opened his eyes… and saw nothing but darkness surrounding him.

'What the?! Oh… right.'

He wasn't in his small room in the Sanctuary. He was plummeting into a lightless abyss atop the corpse of a Fallen Devil, instead.

Sunny stared into the darkness for a bit.

Then, he yawned.

'Well. At least I slept well.'

Indeed, he was feeling rather refreshed. Most of his aches had either disappeared or grown milder, and even his wounded mind felt soothed. He felt rested, energized, and much better overall.

The only problem was, he was still falling into the endless void of the Sky Below.

Sunny scratched the back of his head, though about this predicament, then summoned the Endless Spring and drank some water. Then, he concentrated and tried to assess the situation.

situation was absolutely

by nothing, nothing had changed while he slept, and there was nothing

at the treasure chest beneath him. After a while, he

just next-level pettiness. Not only did I kill this poor bastard, I even went so far as to take

false stars shimmered

judged that he slept for about twelve hours. A bit longer than usual, but he was really exhausted after

very rough. But if he assumed them to be correct, that would mean that he had left the Sanctuary six days

take to reach the thing on the end of the golden String of Fate, but had to assume that

his house.

Would anyone miss him?

been as long as this one was going to be, they would

who went in and out of the Citadel. The most anyone was going to think about him would be when Cassie arrived from

she would just think that he was avoiding her, as he had

chest in boundless darkness, Sunny realized that no one was really going to care that he was gone. So many things had changed, but even more remained just

the beautiful glass bottle in his hand, Sunny remained motionless for a while, then dismissed it and knocked on the lid of

I have my coins,

***

aerial dance. Holding onto the rope connecting him to the dead Mimic with his one functioning hand, Sunny summoned the Dark Wing, then

with incredible speed, his body felt pleasantly light. Sunny thought about it for a while,

going to

or rather, the air moving past him as he fell through it — it