Shadow Slave

Sunny woke up from a nightmare where he was a shadow that had lost the will to live, who woke up from a nightmare where he was a prince being drowned in a fiery tomb of molten steel, who woke up from a nightmare where he was an old man dying as he held the body of his murdered mother, who woke up from a nightmare where he was a mortal watching his world being destroyed by a god.

Soon enough, Sunny found himself tied to a stake, with fire spreading through the pile of tinder beneath his bare feet as a crowd of people whom he had considered friends and neighbors watched with demented glee. All he could do was struggle desperately against his bonds and pray that the smoke would smother him before the flames reached his flesh…

But his prayers were not answered.

Screaming from inside the fire, he died.

…It was time to face a new day.

Sunny fought desperately as sharp fangs tore his flesh apart, as he was being eaten alive. But no matter how much he struggled, it was of no use. The monster was just too strong, and mad, and cruel.

And then, he died.

It was time to face a new day again.

Sunny drowned, a heavy chain tied around his legs.

Sunny bled to death on a battlefield, suffering from terrible thirst and too weak to move, hungry crows tearing at his face with sharp beaks.

Sunny watched his entire family be executed before being hanged from the walls of a somber fortress.

Thrown into the boundless darkness of the Sky Below by his heartless mother, Sunny died of hunger, thirst, and fear, too tired to scream or cry.

Sunny was killed and turned into a wooden doll by a vengeful sorcerer, and then killed again after an eternity of silent servitude, the doll burning to ashes as it fell into an ocean of white flames.

His heart was pierced with an obsidian knife on an altar made of pure darkness.

His body was cleaved apart by the blade of a giant warrior in a red tattered robe while the jubilant crowd cheered from the stone seats of an ancient theater.

…It was time to face a new day again.

The nightmares never ended, bleeding into one another. Each time, Sunny woke up sure that the agony he had experienced was just a harrowing dream. But very soon, his waking life would turn into pure horror itself.

And then, he would die.

And then, it would be time to face a new day again.

humans and beasts. Their end was always the same. Everywhere he went, everywhere he fled, no matter who he was,

though everyone he met was

world was

slowly going mad,

he found that waking up was getting harder and harder. Sometimes, he failed to differentiate which of his lives was real, and which ones he had just dreamt of. Even though the horrors he had experienced seemed like a nightmare, their weight accumulated, slowly breaking his spirit apart. His faces changed, his memories changed, but one

The terror.

nightmare only to be

remained the same, as well. The pain in his chest, and the spheres of light that he saw from time to time burning

he watched as a brilliant colossus made of lustrous steel stepped

the iron

metal. The colossus brought his foot down, crushing Sunny,

Sunny died…

woke up

face

was

the terrifying sight of the steel giant advancing toward the trembling row of soldiers. Who would be

had been different and called by another name once, that they had been valiant and brave. Champions who protected the Kingdom of Hope from the beasts

didn't really believe

Sunny was alive, and as long as his father was alive, and his grandfather as well,

Hope, people didn't have to worry about the madness of the followers

they had their

grasp of the nightmare, Sunny massaged his aching chest and rose. Today, his lady was going to meet with the emissaries of the

does my heart so much

reached

***

"No!"

silk dress that was passed down to her from her mother, and for that reason a little bit too long for the girl's awkward figure, had nowhere else to

the very edge of

hooves were already ringing on the stones, growing

into the bottomless abyss, then turned

what… what should we

of maturity. Her eyes, usually so

hesitated, then drew his sword and turned his back to

be afraid, my lady. I'm

words, knowing full well that it was a lie. He was just one man… he was not even an Awakened.