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.

otherwise, they would have been already dead. In fact, Sunny suspected that the Prince of Nothing was in the exact

one of the Masters, maybe even both of them with Cassie's help and a

he couldn't fight them all together…

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 wasn't capable enough to do

Just very, very good…

thanks to the first one, after the two wounded sentinels had been killed and the crowd of their comrades

and possess his body… no, what the prince wanted was to separate the Lost from

didn't mean that he had no plans for Sunny's body. Only that he wasn't

Sunny understood Mordret's immediate goal, one last

the murderer

as the Lost suspected. Instead, he

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

possessed one of

about the sentinel who had brought food and water to

…The eyes.

mirror of the

but notice his own reflection in her beautiful eyes. Seeing his own

Every human in the Night Temple was a walking mirror — they just didn't know it. Not by chance, but by design. The banished prince had purposefully kept this facet of his power hidden, only

a devious

among the Lost was the real murderer. He considered both Pierce and Welthe, then the only wounded sentinel to survive — using him as a vessel was just insidious enough

entertained the idea that Mordret had not chosen his victims randomly. He had the ability to kill people inside the stronghold, to a much more terrifying effect… so why

the murdered guards had been a familiar face… the Lost who had an Aspect that allowed him to see the