Shadow Slave

Bloodied and crazed, Lost from Light dragged his body across a vast plane of weathered stone, his sword scraping on the black rocks. Behind him, the shattered remains of a warship were being consumed by fire, painting the darkness of the night with an angry orange glow.

…In front of him, some distance away, a beautiful black steed stood on shaky legs, red foam falling from his mouth. The eyes of the tenebrous beast shone with a dreadful crimson light, but behind the boundless fury and hate, a deep sense of exhaustion hid there, mixed with confusion, resentment, and pain.

Lost from Light grinned.

"What... what are you waiting for? Come here! Come and take me, wretch!"

The stallion breathed heavily, streams of searing steam escaping from his nostrils. He snorted with anger, then lunged forward, lowering his head to skewer the enemy with sharp horns. His steel hooves rang sonorously, causing swarms of red sparks to fly off the ancient stone, and his black mane waved in the wind like a stream of pure darkness.

They clashed beneath the empty night sky…

And then, Lost from Light died.

…Or so he thought.

Instead of dissolving into darkness and being reborn into a new nightmare, he fell to the ground, causing the whole world to shudder.

'What is this? Am I finally done for?'

He thought that he saw strange tears appear in the very fabric of reality...

And then, reality crumbled like a vast black veil. Everything around him — the stone island, the burning debris of the broken ship, even the lightless black sky — rippled and swayed, as a silk curtain that was being crumbled by an invisible, giant hand. A moment later, torn and broken, that curtain fell apart.

…It was a magnificent sight, to see a whole world disintegrating right before your eyes.

Some time later, Lost from Light found himself in a boundless darkness, surrounded by pure nothingness. His pain was no more… in fact, he didn't even seem to possess a body. Instead, he had turned into a formless shadow, with three orbs of black fire burning furiously in its depths.

Lost from Light laughed.

me… don't tell me that you ran out of nightmares, beast! Oh, what will you

response, something moved in front

there in the darkness, there was another shadow. But this one… this one was deeper,

full of

in the nothingness, the vast shadow suddenly surged forward,

And then…

from Light…

***

bed, clutching at his chest. His gauntlet scraped against the onyx metal of the Mantle of the Underworld, and in the next second, he fell onto the cold stone floor, looking around wildly, his eyes full of confusion and

am I?

and a graceful knight in black armor standing guard at the door. For

'...Saint? Soul Serpent?'

he remembered who

His pupils widened.

"I'm… awake."

each one more harrowing than the other. Some of them were already fading away, like dreams usually did… but some remained, almost as vivid and vibrant — and terrible — as when

and let out a stifled

of self grew fragile, the madness of his nightmare self clashing against his actual being. But then, the real him, the one that was an Awakened fighter instead of a nameless being locked inside a neverending wheel of torturous nightmares, won over and absorbed the other…

a proper

lot of attention to the chaotic

fell to the floor, he heard the painfully familiar sound... loud, threatening... drawing

ringing of steel hooves on cold

'How…what…'

disoriented and shell-shocked to gather his thoughts and

only one

horse was

door, while the Soul Serpent silently