Shadow Slave

Surrounded by a radiant halo, Sunny plummeted into the darkness. His breath was ragged and hoarse, and his eyes were blinded by the piercing shine of the immolating ocean of white flames beneath him.

Fearing that his eyes would be permanently blinded by it, he closed them, which helped a little.

'Hot… it's so hot…'

He was drawing closer and closer to the remains of the divine inferno, and as he did, the stonelike metal of the Mantle of the Underworld was growing hotter and hotter. Soon, its outer layer turned bright red. Then, it started to melt.

'Damn!'

Sunny directed more of his remaining essence through the coils of the Soul Serpent, activating the [Living Stone] enchantment of the Underworld armor.

As the onyx melted and cracked, causing him excruciating pain, the Mantle began to repair itself. Before anything could fully breach the surface of the incandescent onyx, the damage was undone.

…For now, the enchanted armor could heal itself faster than it was being destroyed. In large part due to being augmented by both of his shadows, perhaps.

Sunny encountered another problem, though.

It was getting harder and harder to breathe… not even because the air was scalding and hot, but because there was not enough of it.

Fire fed on oxygen, after all.

Luckily, Sunny was no stranger to being deprived of it. What's more, thanks to the Blood Weave, he could get by without breathing for much longer than most Awakened… and he suspected that he would have to do just that very soon.

Hopefully, he would be able to reach the rift shortly after that.

And speaking of the rift…

He carefully opened his eyes a little and glanced into the blinding inferno beneath, trying to judge whether or not he was going to make it. For now, it seemed that he would easily pass the field of fire and enter the dark emptiness… but that was just an illusion.

Sunny had to factor in that his forward momentum was constantly growing weaker, which meant that his trajectory would become more and more vertical the longer he fell through the searing abyss.

or not he was going

raised the silver blade to his chest, threw a cursory glance at his warped reflection, and

the merciless light of the false stars, growing white-hot and incandescent. Sunny, however, found himself able to see once again. He even felt a little cooler,

by the

'Almost! I'm almost there!'

though he could reach out and touch them. No matter how hard Sunny tried, he couldn't draw in even a little bit of air into his lungs. The rift was

end, it turned out to

He only had to fly past one last cluster of conflagrations. However, his fall took him straight into

in his lungs. Moving at a terrible speed, he pierced right through one of the seething orbs and emerged from the other side of it, wreathed in white flame. A terrible pain enveloped his whole

was the similar kind of pain he had

'...shadows... my shadows!'

had been badly damaged by the divine fire. The armor itself

now — he dismissed the onyx armor. The Mantle of the Underworld

saw the Cruel Sight crack, the silver of its blade becoming dull and tarnished. Following

shadows around himself and circulated what little shadow essence he had left through

felt cool

the terrible pain

a

of him,

reached

***

everything hurts. Crap…

and the conflagrations of the divine flame. Of course, they were too close for him to feel

least

Sunny had hoped that somehow, miraculously, he would turn out to be immune to it. He was technically a shadow of a Sun God's descendant, after all. Why wouldn't he

master's indirect ancestor's domain,

but a divine one left behind by Shadow God himself.

out, the divine

'Argh!'

stars as possible. It was as though there was a tunnel of empty darkness torn through the very heart of the field of flames, and he was