Shadow Slave

That revelation had given Sunny a lot to think about.

The Demon of Hope… or Desire. A daemon whose power was most likely tied to souls and mind. What act could such a being have committed to cause Sun God to destroy their whole domain?

And what had happened to that being after?

Just as usual, there were no answers.

Sunny was slowly learning more and more, though. For now, the pieces of information he had earned were scattered and disconnected. But if he continued to slowly accumulate knowledge, one day, they were going to start clicking together. And then... what terrible and wondrous truths would he uncover?

Enough to make up for a lifetime of lies, perhaps.

…Apart from inscriptions dedicated to Weaver and the Ivory Tower, Sunny failed to translate anything else. He had, however, memorized every little detail of the unfamiliar runes describing the Hollow Mountains, Bastion, Ravenhear, a ship sailing on the Stormsea, and the mysterious pyramid to the east.

'I'll have to visit Teacher Julius when I'm back in the real world. He has to know something about this script, right?'

Thinking about the map, Sunny entered the rune hall, kept his eyes closed, and walked to the entrance to the stairwell leading to the sixth level of the Ebony Tower.

The last one.

When he entered the chamber of the stone arch, he sighed with relief. The pressure emanated by the terrifying runes was finally gone, leaving his mind at ease… the headache caused by them, however, was going to persist for a few more minutes.

Sunny sat down, leaned his back against the wall, and stared at the arch while waiting to fully recover.

six others. It was just one big hall, circular in shape, and almost completely empty. The

Ebony Tower. In fact, the arch didn't seem to have been built… instead, it was almost as if it had simply grown out of the floor, without any seam separating it from the black

was Sunny's only hope of

stared at it for a long time, thinking about how to make

had tried a lot of things to activate the arch, as well as studying

with Mordred, however, had

of things… but also of the practical sort. That he would have used whatever was at hand, going

and her kin had been

from nothing… a whole race of them, really. That did sound like something that only a god would

creation of Saint and her people his

how the gods

that was supposed to be in the purview of only the gods? Saints description, back when was an Echo, said that she and her kin were designed to bring peace, but were born into an endless

'Huh.'

the point. The point was that Saint was made out of stone. Sunny had always thought that it was an integral part of her design, a fundamental aspect of the vision her creator had for the living statues. To make them stronger,

witnessing the porcelain dolls and speaking with Mordret, Sunny was not so sure anymore. The broken dolls showed that the material from

was at hand… the

stone in the Hollow Mountains for its Prince to use in his experiments? There was

be right,

that it was, indeed,

at Saint and blinked

'...Lazy bastard!'

such unflattering terms. When nothing happened, he shook his head and returned to his