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.

he could not allow himself to get lost in the mist and miss his opportunity

there, at the heart of the great pyramid, lay

Cassie had made sure that he would have everything he

to the entrance of the Estuary. He had the Mirror of Truth

Solace, which had

surrounded him, the bastard had disappeared somewhere. He must not have been in the mood to talk, or simply unable to manifest within the Source. Either way, Sunny did not miss the company of the loathsome

as

Sunny studied the radiant crystal that was

light was behaving...

light would suddenly change, pointing in an entirely different direction. That repeated over and over again, with the radiance of

Estuary was constantly moving.

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

was no wonder that the Seekers of Truth, despite all their might and knowledge, had failed to discover the Estuary before

so far as to create her own time loop, and her own sea

did not know, but he suspected that she had not succeeded in finding the Estuary by

found there was her own doom...

knew what goals the

island in the middle of a mystical whirlpool and taming the time to make it flow endlessly

he had found it the first time, as well? Or had his versions

the way, Sunny allowed the ketch to sail forward, moving the steering

for the danger that the Source itself presented. So, traveling through