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 that you ran out of nightmares, beast!

of a response, something moved in front of him… behind him… all around

was another shadow. But this one… this

full of malevolence and

in the nothingness, the vast shadow suddenly surged

And then…

Light…

***

the Underworld, and in the next second, he fell onto the cold

I?

a terrifying snake coiled in a corner, pale moonlight glistening on its stygian scales, and a graceful knight in black armor standing guard at the door. For a moment,

'...Saint? Soul Serpent?'

then, he remembered

His pupils widened.

"I'm… awake."

nightmares drowned his mind, 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

let

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

was a

to pay a lot of attention to the chaotic and, without a doubt, dire process of

heard the painfully familiar sound... loud,

ringing of steel hooves on cold

'How…what…'

to gather his thoughts

one

horse was

at the door, while the Soul Serpent