Shadow Slave

"Move, monster!"

An Ascended of Clan Valor had fear in his eyes as he pushed Mordret in the back with the butt of his spear. Mordret had already been walking as fast as he could, so the forceful push made him stumble and fall.

The blistering white sand burned his mangled face.

He sighed, then struggled to stand up.

One of his eyes was gone, and he had only one hand left. His Reflections had all been destroyed. His body was in a sorry state...

Even though Mordret had managed to escape the rampage of the Great being, his luck in the Nightmare Desert was awful. Soon after entering it, he stumbled on the pursuing Gate Guardian, and after barely surviving that unfortunate encounter, a band of surviving Masters of Clan Valor ambushed and overpowered him.

He had failed to finish off his sister, too.

'A pity.'

Now, his arms were bound behind his back with enchanted shackles. Even if he wanted to abandon his original body, he was temporarily trapped within it... the heavy chains were probably not the tool Morgan had planned to imprison him with, but they too were forged by his father.

Getting out of the shackles was going to be troublesome. If anything, though, having only one hand left could help with that.

"Stand up!"

Mordret sighed in exasperation.

"I'm trying... really now, is this how you treat a prince of Valor?"

Instead of the answer, the Master angrily hit him in the ribs.

Mordret plopped back into the scorching sand.

Another voice resounded from somewhere above:

"Stop it! You're only slowing us down... the Skinwalker has to be drawing close. If we want to survive, we need to reach the Citadel as soon as possible."

him alive - they wanted Mordret to show them the

mounts, the band of survivors had been able to traverse a great deal of distance in the past day. Their luck was also not too bad - the area where the Call had pulled

help, they managed to make it most of

had to be traversed on

too. In fact, the

the way. Your life depends on reaching the Black Skull,

a

worry. We're

between

hours of suffocating heat, they finally saw the giant black skull appear in the distance. The Masters froze

took a

He shook his head.

asked him where the Citadel was, and

have asked another question as

question was really

corpses of the Awakened

that he

the giant black skull. One, two, three... a dozen, two

headless corpse was also there, walking

survivors wanted to escape the Skinwalker, but they had actually been marching toward their deaths all

'Time to run.'

his body to fall and roll down the slope of a

***

the end, Kai stayed with Sunny and the others. Together, they made their way through the desert, heading for

though most of them were mesmerized by the call of the Seeds, some weren't, or at

the Great Rank. Each of

it was a rough

suffering from the inhuman conditions of the white desert, and under terrible mental strain because of

not... but just the possibility of meeting

fought were all powerful and

seemed to be affected the least. However, she was struggling with her own

flawlessly white expanse of white dunes, she shook her