Shadow Slave

It had taken Sunny a lot of time to understand what Mordret was doing, and why. But in the end, he had succeeded, and thus managed to predict what the elusive prince was going to do… or at least do it with a sufficient degree of certainty to stake his life on it in this desperate situation.

Just like everybody else, Sunny had been fooled at first. The initial revelation he had received had to do with the brutal murder of the two guards… it was then that he realized that Mordret was not as insane and perverse as everyone seemed to think.

Mordret's grotesque brutality was not the result of an irresistible, unhinged and sadistic compulsion. Instead, it was a cold and calculated strategy that the prince had employed to diminish his enemies, break their spirit, and make their souls susceptible to his attacks. He had weaponized terror itself, and made good use of it.

After all, people were most scared of that which was unknown. And what was more unknowable than the mind of a deranged, murderous madman?

After Sunny realized that there was such a possibility, the next step was both simple and hard to take. He had to take a good look at himself and admit that he himself had fallen victim to this tactic.

Mordret had gotten under his skin. Sunny was more resilient to deceit and manipulation than most, but he was also more vulnerable to the schemes of the Prince of Nothing. Their enmity was personal, and as such, involved powerful and destructive emotions. Humiliation, resentment… the sense of betrayal. Such emotions were the enemy of clarity.

Sunny had allowed his mind to be clouded by them, and through them, by fear.

So, he had to separate his emotions from his perception of the situation, knowing that some of them were a dire obstacle, and some were engineered by Mordret in order to obfuscate the truth.

Once he did, it was as though a veil had fallen from his eyes. Without it, several things became apparent.

The first one was that Mordret was not as terrifying as he wanted everyone to think. Sure, he was astonishingly powerful for an Awakened, and equally as lethal… enough so for Sunny to suspect that the prince possessed a divine Aspect.

If he and Nephis could, why not Mordret?

He didn't know how many soul cores Mordret possessed, but if his Aspect was indeed similar to theirs… there had been much more time for the former heir of Valor to accumulate soul fragments and grow stronger. This could also explain why his power level was so anomalous.

clearly not powerful enough to obliterate his jailers completely — otherwise, they

Cassie's help and a lot of luck. He also stood a chance

couldn't fight them all together… and neither could

an accident that the guards had been killed in the usual brutal and ghastly fashion, but the wounded sentinels simply had their throats cut. The murderous prince had not abandoned his barbarous ways on a whim… he simply

Just very, very good…

first one, after the two wounded sentinels had been killed and the crowd of their comrades was hungry for Sunny's

Sunny, separate him from the Lost, and possess his body… no, what the prince wanted was to separate the Lost from each other with Sunny's

he had no plans for Sunny's body.

understood Mordret's immediate goal,

the murderer was indeed

hiding inside Sunny, as the Lost suspected. Instead, he was hiding inside one

while. How could this be? After all, Pierce and Welthe weren't fools. They had a reason to be confident in their soldiers… and that reason was that none of

could he have possessed one

Sunny understood it after thinking about the sentinel who had brought food and water to their cage, then lost his mind and tore

…The eyes.

mirror

Sunny couldn't help but notice his own reflection in her beautiful eyes. Seeing his own

know it. Not by chance, but by design. The banished prince had purposefully kept this facet of his power hidden, only using the mirrors and mundane reflections to take vessels, thus creating a false impression that this was the only way he

a

and tried to deduce who among the Lost was the real murderer. He considered both Pierce and Welthe, then the

entertained the idea that Mordret had not chosen his victims randomly. He had the ability to kill people inside the stronghold, to

familiar face… the Lost who had an Aspect that allowed