Shadow Slave

The sky parted, sliced through by a narrow vertical rift. Behind it, the fabric of reality made way for a dark, harrowing abyss of nothingness — both light and darkness seemed to be twisted and changed near the Gate, breaking as they were destroyed.

The rift dwarfed the entire battlefield, stretching for hundreds and hundreds of meters into the shattered sky. The abandoned outpost, and the black fissure of the Nightmare Gate that led to the vicinity of the Black Skull, looked tiny and insignificant in front of it.

An invisible shockwave rolled outward from the point where the gargantuan rift touched the ground, exerting an almost irresistible force. Sunny braced himself, but still staggered as the wave passed through him, barely managing to stay on his feet.

His mind was drowned by the deafening, cacophonous howling of the Call — it was many times louder, more unbearable, and maddeningly demanding than it had ever been before.

Sunny desperately resisted the overwhelming desire to submit.

All around them, the Awakened warriors screamed as they grabbed their heads and fell to their knees. Their eyes were wide open, but unseeing. Some were bleeding, and some seemed to be crawling toward the Gate. Some were thrown to the ground by the shockwave.

The invisible force made no distinction between those serving Valor and those serving Song — they were all the same in the face of the harrowing rift.

Mundane humans, if any had come to witness this battle, would have been outright killed by the pressure of the Gate.

Sunny staggered back and looked up at it in terror.

His lips moved.

"Four… it's a Category Four Nightmare Gate…"

And, just as he said those words…

The world shook again, and another rift tore through the sky.

The world convulsed, and one more sliced the fabric of reality apart.

Like three dark pillars holding up the heavens— or three vile spears cruelly thrust into the flesh of the world — three colossal Nightmare Gates surrounded the battlefield, cutting out all paths of retreat.

was a

warriors of Clan Valor, the fearless soldiers of Clan Song, and those Awakened of the Evacuation Army that had come as escorts of Saint Cor —were trapped between the abhorrent black

then, something vast moved in the abyssal darkness of the first

enough presence of mind left to see witnessed something shift within the Nightmare Gate. A moment later, giant fingers suddenly pushed from it into the waking world, each as large as a tower. There were dozens of

the edges of the vertical rift and

most horrifying part of it

That they succeeded.

sky. Then, the gaping wound of the Nightmare Gate was torn open, and a seething mass of the same dark flesh flowed out of

gargantuan black tentacles, which then shot forward

took a step back. His eyes

from him, on the opposite side of the battlefield, the towering tortoise Echo was ripped apart with a single swing of a black tentacle. The Awakened sheltered in the stone fort on its carapace were thrown into the air, and the Transcendent

else, the tentacles reached the massive figure of the titanic worm. The titan rose its repulsive body into the air to meet

away. A split second later, the

Most shocking of all…

far away from the Gate, Beastmaster suddenly staggered back from the vague figure outlined in front of her,

with terrible speed, and a fountain of blood suddenly bloomed where the vague figure had stood a moment ago. There was no time to

they splattered all around, unrecognizable

King of

He was dead.

watched the

Great Terror?

by the terrible sight of a Great Nightmare Creature forcing its way into the

it.

was when the darkness within the other two Gates moved, as

would enter the waking world in

Were zero.

obliterated in seconds, a