Shadow Slave

The wall trembled violently, almost throwing Sunny off his feet. He caught himself from falling and spun, the Sin of Solace flying into a defensive stance.

"What the hell was that?!"

Master Jet used her glaive to keep herself upright and looked around. For the first time since the start of the battle, her expression became grim. She did not answer for a couple of seconds. Then, her icy eyes widened slightly. Soul Reaper turned to Sunny, trying to say something, but he had already sensed it himself.

A cold shiver ran down his spine.

"The Call..."

The Call of the Nightmare had suddenly grown much louder, assaulting his mind with an onslaught of screaming whispers.

In the next moment... the world came undone, and the piercing sound of tearing alloy filled Sunny's ears. The battlement beneath him was falling apart, and a strong aftershock of whatever it was that had destroyed it rolled through the air, throwing him away.

'No!'

Sunny did not see it yet, but he already understood what had happened.

A Nightmare Gate had just opened right below where he and Jet had fought, annihilating a large section of the wall.

An ugly rift in reality tore through the armored alloy, turning it into nothing. The vertical schism of pure nothingness played strange tricks with both light and darkness, making it appear simultaneously perfectly flat and inconceivably deep. A litany of inaudible screams thundered out of it in deafening silence, washing over the world like a demented call.

The wall was breached from top to bottom - some of it devoured by the Gate, the rest simply collapsing when the supporting structure suddenly disappeared.

Sunny plummeted down in a rain of debris.

Before he could truly comprehend what was happening, his body brushed against the boundary of the Gate. Instantly, an explosion of blinding pain enveloped his body and soul, and a strange repelling force pushed him away.

A Nightmare Gate was a one-way path - creatures of the Dream Realm could enter through it into the waking world, but nothing from the waking world could pass through it into the land of nightmares. Only Awakened could answer its Call by sending their souls on a perilous journey. All they had to do was fall asleep in the vicinity of the rift.

their own anchors - but not by physically stepping through the Gate. Maybe Sovereigns were different, but Sunny

moments after experiencing the shock of brushing against the lightless rift, his mind became utterly

he found himself falling from a seventy-meter height, the ground approaching

Dark Wing, but then froze for a

itself into existence and for its enchantment to activate. He had maybe three

fall from

did not know, and he did not want to find out. Even if he survived somehow, a flood of Nightmare Creatures would soon flow out of the

'D-damn!'

head. A torn piece of the wall's frame... following an instinct, Sunny reached forward and called upon the shadows of the

next moment, a vast mantle of darkness surrounded him like a streaming black cape, catching the wind and slowing

It was almost enough.

of shadows was torn apart and dissipated. Sunny rolled away, his body a mass of pain, vaguely recognizing the landscape of the staging area around him. He came to a halt after violently slamming into the feet of a loader

a second later, a piece of alloy that must have weighed several tons crashed into the ground in the spot where Sunny had been

the legs of the loader, all strength seemed to abandon him. All that was left

'A-argh...'

well as his Ascended physique, had protected

Gate had caused

not know what kind of damage he had received, but it felt

now, he could hardly

'Not good...'

his temporary shelter, Sunny had a clear view of the broken wall and the vast rift of nothingness pulsing

dead, killed by

to emerge from the Gate, flood the

Sunny was utterly

voice suddenly resounded

you that you're

Sunny gritted his teeth.