Shadow Slave

"Saint… come look at this…"

Sunny sat on the soft grass, enjoying the sunlight and the cool wind. He had not even known how much he missed them... missed everything, really. Looking back, it was hard to imagine that he had endured more than a month of utter nothingness without losing his mind. His experiences in the Dark City, it seemed, made him far more resilient.

...The shadow of the Ivory Tower was slowly moving closer as the evening approached, marking the passage of time. It was peaceful and quiet on the green meadow of the heavenly island.

Answering his call, the taciturn demon appeared nearby and stood silently, observing the magnificent white tower. Her ruby eyes, however, did not show any emotion.

He sighed.

"...Well, I think it's lovely."

The soaring island was not very large, so Sunny could more or less see its edge not too far away, surrounded by floating slates of shattered marble. There was a meadow on this side of it, a grove that rustles under the wind, and a graceful gazebo built of the same white material as the Ivory Tower itself. The stone arch inside of it was also white, and empty. The portal was gone.

Some distance away, connected to the gazebo by a stone path, stood the magnificent great pagoda that had once belonged to the Demon of Hope. If its copy in the Sky Below was somber and ominous, the original was the complete opposite. It was beautiful, graceful, and slightly surreal, as if too sublime to exist in the mortal realm.

…In a sense, it did not.

Something about the Ivory Tower made Sunny uneasy, however. He couldn't quite describe the feeling, but it was as though he simultaneously felt pulled toward it and threatened by it. The sensation did not come from his intuition, but more so from the deepest corners of his soul. It was rather strong.

And there was also something strange in the shape of the tower itself.

There was a weird thing that went around the base of it, circling the whole perimeter of the great pagoda and disappearing from view. That thing was almost of the same color, but slightly less pristine, and made out of long and weathered sections.

at it for a while, Sunny finally realized what

what remained of the tail of some giant, dead creature. He

I

toward the edge of the island. Saint followed, putting the blade

of the Chained Isles far below. From this high, they looked like pieces of a beautiful mosaic that someone had laid out on the backdrop of velvety darkness, with

picked up a rock from the ground and

fell for a hundred meters or so without meeting any resistance. Then, however, it suddenly

'...Curses.'

that the Crushing was still there. It's just that the Ivory Tower itself was not affected by it, as well as the island it

he going to

time with a resentful expression on his face, then turned around and walked deeper into the

lake, with streams of water flowing out of it and falling over the edge of the island. In the bright sunlight, it seemed as though the entire surface of the lake was shining with pure golden radiance. Sunny looked at his reflection in the water, then at an intricately engraved bench standing near it, cut from white

point from which the gate of the graceful tower

'Oh…'

of the Sky Below, with the main difference being the color and the absence

remains of a giant beast lying in front of them, its serpentine body wrapped around the tower, its massive skull resting right near the tall white doors. Each of the terrifying fangs of the great beast was as long as Sunny was tall, at least.

He shivered.

'Is that… a dragon?'

in front of Sunny were the weathered, snow-white bones of an actual dragon. The image of the mighty creature laying dead in

could have killed

Sunny lingered for a while, then headed toward the remains of the dragon. He was desperately hoping that the great

Sunny hesitated for a