Shadow Slave

By the time Sunny had finished the alteration of the Dawn Shard, they were not that far away from Fallen Grace. Neither he nor Nephis knew the exact distance they had to traverse to find the last city of the sybils, but the navigation tools Ananke had left them pointed to its approach.

Fallen Grace was situated in the western reaches of the Great River, where the sky was almost always painted crimson by the setting sun. As the Chain Breaker sailed deeper into the past, it was also leaving behind the pure light of day.

Gradually, the color of the sky above their heads changed. From vibrant azure to breathtaking magenta, and finally to the bloodred blaze of perpetual sunset.

It was like sailing into a sea of blood.

Sunny stared at the burning sky, awed by its fiery beauty... and its ominous dread.

'That's... not concerning at all.'

Why would the sybils build one of their cities in such a darkly beautiful, but sinister place? Surely, living in the warm sunlight of the central region of the Great River would have been much more pleasant.

Shaking his head, he returned to the shade of the sacred tree and sat down, resting his back against its white bark. He had just finished weaving another Memory for Nightmare and was not in the mood to start on the next one just yet.

His study of the spellweave of Ananke's Mantle had also been producing fewer and fewer results. It would never stop being useful to him as a learning tool, but Sunny felt like he was nearing a dead end. He would need to gain more skill as a weaver before looking to the nebulous mantle for more lessons.

So, what else was there to do?

Feeling restless, he summoned the Estuary Key out of habit. Staring into the weave of the mysterious Memory had become like a ritual by now. Even though Sunny could not understand anything about it, the process itself was calming.

However... he had not taken a glance at the Key since before attempting the alteration of the Crown of Dawn. Who knew? Maybe passing such an important milestone on his path to becoming a proper sorcerer would change something...

Why don't you toss it overboard and be done

stared at him disdainfully from the shadows of the

Sunny held up the jagged black stone and peered

weave of ghostly strings was as unattainable as ever. He studied its dark tapestry, following

can't

Estuary Key was perhaps the most bizarre. He still had no idea how this Supreme Memory of the Sixth Tier had ended up in his Soul Sea, or what it

spending countless hours staring at the staggering weave of ghostly

enchantment of the Estuary Key had two distinct effects. He did not know what these effects

that a Memory of the Sixth Tier only possessed a single enchantment - since it did, that enchantment had to be a powerful one. And most of that power went into ensuring the function

exactly the enchantment does. It's only affecting the

was an enchantment that teleported the strange Memory

Sunny was feeling amused

weave. The lightless tapestry was vast enough that he

now, he froze, staring at the

what the hell is

pattern... looked familiar. Sunny had definitely

was a Memory, after all, and as such, it shared many small parts of its weave with all other Memories - the patterns that created the rudimentary enchantments like the ability to be summoned and dismissed, repair

knew these patterns by heart. He had woven them from scratch many times, after all. And this one... this one was not one of

I

which was different from the rest of the spellweave. He recognized its nature after a moment of contemplation - patterns like these were rare but present in

- one etching them through a written language, the other invoking them directly. However,

and therefore for the runes inscribing them. These runes, translated from the corresponding string patterns, expressed the name of the Memory, its description, and the True Name of