Shadow Slave

Ananke's ketch was floating through a world of mist. The thick fog surrounded it from all sides, suffused with somber twilight. All sounds seemed both muffled and exaggerated, echoing across the vast expanse of shrouded water. Sunny could not see very far. Even his shadow sense was dulled by the mystical mist.

It was a familiar sight.

'Indeed... I've been here already.'

This was the exact same place where Sunny had found himself at the start of the Nightmare.

The Source.

Here, covered by mist, the Great River flowed into itself, and the past turned into the future. He could not feel the current anymore, but it was still there, strangely jumbled and disjointed. The ketch was moving, yet Sunny could not tell in what direction it was being carried.

If he allowed himself to be pulled by the invisible current and reached the edges of the Source... he would be sent back to the day he had entered the Tomb of Ariel, as well as to the point upstream where the person whose role he took had been at that time.

'No... I can't allow that to happen.'

Sunny did not know if he could endure another cycle of the Great River. Much more importantly, the Six Plagues — and the Mad Prince — had broken the rules of time, somehow, and invaded a cycle they were not meant to exist in.

He did not know if their existence had become a part of the Great River by now, or if their heretical presence would be erased should a new cycle start. If it was the latter, then all the effort the Mad Prince and Torment had put into ensuring that all members of the cohort survived until the end of the Nightmare would be for naught.

More than that... that end was so close. Nephis would be reaching Verge soon, armed with the means of destroying the First Seeker. Sunny desperately did not want to live through the horrors of the Tomb of Ariel one more time, especially since the result would be hanging in a fragile balance.

get lost in the mist and miss his opportunity to enter the

heart of the great pyramid, lay

made sure that he would have everything he

had the Guiding Light to lead him to the entrance of the Estuary.

Sin of Solace, which had made

been in the mood to talk, or simply unable to manifest within the Source. Either way, Sunny did not miss the company of

away for as long as

Sunny studied the radiant crystal that

was behaving...

change, pointing in an entirely different direction. That repeated over and over again, with the radiance of the sacred relic jumping around

was as though the entrance to the Estuary was constantly moving. 'No... it's not moving.

was true. The Estuary was stationary, but space itself was unreliable in the Source. It was Sunny who was being thrown around without any order, moving

the Seekers of Truth, despite all their might and

image of the Great River, going so far as to create her own time loop, and her own sea of mist.

suspected that she had not succeeded in finding

Aletheia had found there was her own doom... unless that was exactly what she had been searching for,

what goals the Nine

case, Sunny was not someone capable of raising a flying island in the middle of a mystical whirlpool and taming the time to make it flow endlessly in a circle. Therefore, he would

the first time, as well? Or had his

the way, Sunny allowed the

Nightmare Creatures in the Source, no danger... except for the danger that the Source itself presented. So, traveling through the somber