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."

the only reason that the stragglers of Clan Valor had kept him alive - they wanted Mordret to

distance in the past day. Their luck was also not too bad - the area where the Call had pulled

managed to make it most of the way

stretch, however, had to be traversed

too. In fact, the ones with him now were simply those who had survived the encounter. They

depends on reaching

lingered for a

worry. We're already

between

suffocating heat, they finally saw the giant black skull appear in the distance. The Masters froze for a moment, excitement

silently took

He shook his head.

Citadel was,

should have asked another question

question was really

corpses of the Awakened inside the Black Skull

was that he had

emerging from inside the giant black skull.

also there, walking at the

Skinwalker, but they had actually been

'Time to run.'

to fall and roll down

***

and the others. Together, they made their way through the

even though most of them

had to fight were of the Great Rank. Each of the five Masters was immensely

it was

white desert, and under terrible mental

knew whether the corpse of Master Xu was on their trail or not... but just the possibility of meeting the

fought were all powerful and

of the five of them, Nephis seemed to be affected the least. However, she was struggling with her own

at the flawlessly white expanse of white dunes, she shook her head and sighed