Shadow Slave

Nephis looked into the darkness as she spoke in an even voice:

"It happened after the Demon of Destiny had his falling out with the Goddess of the Black Skies... I think. But before Hope escaped her chains, and the daemons rose in rebellion against the gods. In the darkness... in the true darkness that fills the halls and caverns of the Underworld. Below the Hollow Mountains."

She sighed.

"When I opened my eyes, I was a woman made of stone. A crude, clumsy, and defective precursor of the Stone Saints. I was laying on a mountain of abandoned statues just like me, all of them broken, discarded, and forsaken. Everything around me was enveloped by cold darkness, with not a spark of light or hint of warmth anywhere. There was just me, my broken siblings, and the lonesome silence."

Sunny shifted slightly.

"True darkness?"

Nephis slowly nodded.

"Yes... those mountains are called hollow, but in fact, they are full of darkness. Their hollows are like great reservoirs of it - it is where darkness lives, and where it comes from. True darkness is very much like this river, in fact. Legends say that a terrible creature was slain by the gods once, at the dawn of time, and that its blood seeped into the earth. This is what true darkness is - the dark creature's blood."

Sunny shivered. That dark creature... to be the source of all true darkness, of the entire element of darkness, it had to be something far greater than an Unholy Titan.

It must have been one of the unknown, then. A being of the Void...

was thinking about, Nephis continued after

left by the death of that creature. And so, most of true darkness remains below them. This is the place that Nether made his home. However, it was not entirely empty... while he ruled the Underworld, there were many

lingered for

followed Nether, the remains of the army he had led to wage war on Storm God. They lived in the great hollows within the peaks. There were also his children, the Stone Saints, who lived below the mountains, in the heart of the Underworld. And

Sunny frowned.

Storm God?

pale smile appeared on

it was his own private affair. I don't know the details of his relationship with Storm God or why it ended in resentment. But he must have taken it to heart, enough so that he assembled an army and stormed the divine realm. Of course, he lost. Most of his army was decimated, and he secluded himself in the Underworld, becoming its ruler and losing himself in the obsession of trying to create the

for a

race of living beings just to keep him company... or maybe it was his defiant, prideful way of challenging the gods. After

silent for a moment, and

one of these

sigh escaped

Nether's failed attempts to create the Stone Saints. Some of them were outcasts and derelicts for whom there was no place in the world above anymore. All of them were pitiful and weak... and I

silently into the darkness for a while. The expression on her face

Eventually, she spoke softly:

before that Nightmare. I had always relied on my strength... I had always told myself that I had to be strong. If only I was strong like my father...

after she returned to the waking world. He also thought

Nephis smiled.