Shadow Slave

[Your nightmare is over.]

[Prepare for appraisal…]

Once again, Sunny found himself in the space between dream and reality. The boundless black void was illuminated by a myriad of stars, with countless strings of silver light connecting them together to form an infinite, beautiful pattern.

Now that he had a nascent understanding of sorcery, Sunny saw the pattern differently. His old suspicions grew stronger, slowly turning into a certainty.

This was the inner sanctum of the Spell. And if the Spell had been created by Weaver… then what he was looking at was its weave.

The myriad of stars were the nexuses. The strings of light, however, were not the same as the threads of essence he could create himself.

…Instead, the Spell was weaved from the Strings of Fate itself.

As that realization took root in his heart, Sunny shuddered. The scale of the cosmic weave of silver light and numerous stars that surrounded him had already been too vast to comprehend. Now that he glimpsed its true nature, it suddenly seemed even more inconceivable.

Yes, Weaver was called the Demon of Fate… but harvesting its very fabric to create a titanic enchantment was too incredible, even for the firstborn of the Unknown.

For a daemon…

Sunny shivered once again.

"We are their Flaw… what did she mean?"

Hope's answer had shaken him to the very core. The implications were too… unthinkable. He did not truly understand what she had meant, but felt as though he was at the precipice of a vast and terrible truth.

Sunny was still far away from grasping that truth, however.

Were the daemons personifications of the Flaws that the gods had shed? Is that how the gods had become flawless? Or had the gods been flawless before the daemons appeared, instead?

None of it made any sense. How did the Unknown, from whom the daemons had come, fit into this? Was there a hint at who or what the Unknown had been… or was?

As always, there were too many questions, and almost no answers!

If there was one thing that became clear, however, it was that the relationship between the gods and the daemons was even more complicated than he had thought.

"How infuriating…"

way to understand it. He stared into the distance for

I am too small and weak to concern myself with

was not as small and weak as he

He was a Master!

rather, was about to become

his thoughts,

Your trial is

to resonate in

a land of shattered dreams. It was captured and thrown into a cage, but escaped by weaving sorceries from its own soul. The shadow beheaded itself to take the slave collar off its neck, and lost its heart to win

ensnared. It lived a hundred lives and died a hundred deaths within a dreadful nightmare, forgetting what it was and where it came

a mad sorcerer, a feral child, a crippled archer, and a blind prophet. Together, they collected the deaths of

were killed,

chains of Hope, and set Desire

have slain

Spell went on to list everyone and everything he had killed inside the Nightmare. Sunny felt that something strange was happening to time inside the black void, because it did not take too long for the Spell to

after all. He had lost count at some point, but the number of his victims had to be somewhere between one and two thousand. He had slain a thousand enemies at the

few of them stood out from

officers of the flying fleet, Solvane herself... that

his most dangerous battle had been the battle

the Spell was

set free a demoness chained by a

[Your achievements are remarkable!]

[Final appraisal: excellent.]

it

for a few

"Wait… what?"

Excellent? Just excellent?

"What the hell, Spell?!"

bother to add a remark after the appraisal. He had killed hundreds upon hundreds of Awakened humans and Nightmare Creatures, including plenty

sorcery, won a battle against a whole army, caused the deaths of several immortals, and set free a daemon against a god's will! He had his head cut off and his heart ripped out, and still

a True Name and an Aspect Legacy.