Shadow Slave

1497 Chain Barrier

The Chain Breaker rose higher, eventually cresting the wall of the floating stronghold and coming to a stop above the ramparts. From there, they could see a bit further into the haze.

Far away to their left, another floating fortress could barely be seen in the dim twilight, just as battered and forlorn as this one. There was one more to their right. All three had been connected by thick chains once, but those had long been torn.

Sunny remained motionless for a moment.

'...It's a barrier to block the Great River.'

There must have been a ring of these fortresses built around Twilight once, with massive chains strung between them both above and beneath the water. That way, the Defiled would have had to break through the chain barrier before reaching the city.

The other choice would have been to dive much deeper and bypass the fearsome barricade of floating fortresses altogether. But that would have left their backs wide open to retaliation by the garrisons of the vanguard strongholds… in any case, it was easy to see that the Defiled had chosen to assault the chain barrier directly.

The fighting seemed to have been especially harrowing in the vicinity of the fallen fortresses. And beyond them…

Sunny shivered.

On the other side of the breached stronghold, there were so many floating corpses that he could barely see the water. It was to such a degree that one could probably walk from here to Twilight without getting their boots wet once.

Frowning, he placed his hand on the railing.

Before he did, however, Sunny hesitated for a moment and looked at his companions.

Mordret…

— or at least, he was supposed to be. In truth, it was

Second Nightmare, Mordret had slaughtered the entire population of the northern reaches of the Kingdom of Hope, all in pursuit of power. So, he was not someone who was going to have a

have chosen to ally himself with the Six Plagues if he thought that their method of conquering

sure that the Plagues needed to either kill or Defile every human in the Tomb of Ariel to win. And, no matter how odious, Mordret was still a human. Unless the Prince of Nothing was ready to surrender his soul to Corruption, his only way out of the Tomb was

what Sunny hoped for… especially because Mordret was the only person who could teach them about Soul

Still…

Sea was most likely just as dangerous as Sunny's — if Mordret tried to possess her, he would be incinerated in a radiant inferno of white flame. Jet's shattered soul could not be easily

forged by Mordret's father to protect people against his son was with Kai

able to defeat Effie in a soul battle. But Sunny did not want to

moment, he looked at

and

a little, but then nodded and forced out

guys go and

step back and leaned

pulled her into the shadows. The two of them appeared on the battlements below a moment later, while Jet simply jumped down. Cassie glided

been Awakened once, and which had been mundane humans — the former were covered only by rotten fabric, their Memory armor long gone.

for was nearby, resting against

the four of them reflected in the polished breastplate of the dead man… a white skull stared at him eerily from

reflection, but, to his surprise, there were only four figures there — Nephis, Cassie, Jet,

is that

had anything

Then, however…

He stared at it, feeling strangely drawn to