Shadow Slave

For a moment or two, Sunny's mind was empty. He crawled back, looking up at the familiar figure towering above him.

Verne… it was Verne. There was no mistake.

…Or something wearing Verne's corpse, at least.

His shadow was much more vast and dreadful than a human's shadow was supposed to be.

The hollow gaze of the dead Master pursued Sunny, his face still and unmoving like a mask. Behind him, the dark waves stirred, and more figures rose from the water. Men, women… dozens of them, hundreds even. They marched forward like an army of the dead, silent and emotionless, their eyes drowning in darkness.

All their shadows were wrong.

The people of LO49 that Sunny had left to die. He recognized all of them, staring at the undulating surface of the ocean in horror.

'The… the Terror…'

Strangely, it was the contemptuous laugh of the cursed sword that shattered his paralysis.

"Look, Lost from Light… your sins have come to haunt you!"

Sunny shuddered, coming to his senses.

'What sins, you bastard? I did everything I could to save them!'

The insidious voice laughed again, then whispered, its hissing words falling like drops of poison:

"Weakness is also a sin, you pitiful worm… it is the greatest sin of them all…"

to his feet and froze for a split

wall of Falcon Scott, so nothing could escape the shore without being torn to shreds by the

the Awakened of the House of Night were also there, protecting

put a dent in the defenses of the port. As for the Terror

behind the slowly advancing figures of the drowned residents of LO49, the black water

step back, then steeled

be allowed to reach the port. Hundreds of thousands of refugees were currently there, with even more already on the ships. Thankfully, the elevator platforms leading to Falcon Scott were empty, the evacuation stopped briefly

also spotted the new threat. Powerful beams of light fell from above, illuminating the quiet

But it didn't.

spotlights moved on, as if not noticing anything. Instead of an obliterating onslaught of heavy rounds, all

of the port fortress were silent,

a chill run down

'The hex…'

get a

moving with much more speed than he had been capable of as a human. Sunny shifted, trying to deflect the incoming attack, but his reaction was too slow. A

'Curse it…'

thralls had been before falling prey to the Terror. Whatever the creature had done to

neglectful

were capable of

Master, a hundred or so Awakened, close to a thousand mundane soldiers, several hundreds of civilians… and thousands upon thousands of Nightmare Creatures, all controlled and changed by the

everyone seemingly blind to

was

true fear for the first time in a long while, Sunny forced himself to rise once again and look at the

'No, not everyone…'

seemed to be ignoring the Terror's thralls, some were still firing their rifles. That meant that the creature's hex was not absolute. With so many residents around,