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.

in the mist and

the great pyramid, lay the key to his shackles. His chance

that he would have

the Guiding Light to lead him to the entrance of the Estuary. He had the Mirror of Truth to resist the Defilement once he entered

Solace, which had made it all

him, the bastard had disappeared somewhere. He must not have been in the mood to talk, or simply unable to manifest within the

as

the radiant

was behaving...

but after a few minutes of sailing through the mist, the light would suddenly change, pointing in an entirely different direction. That repeated over and over again, with the radiance of the sacred relic jumping

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

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 knowledge, had failed to discover the

had even constructed her island in the image of the Great River, going so far as to create her own time loop, and her own sea of mist. Had it all

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

it was, then, that all Aletheia had found there was her own doom... unless that

knew what goals

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

first time, as well? Or had his versions from the previous cycles come up with their own

guessing. Using the sacred relic of the sybils to illuminate the way, Sunny allowed the ketch to sail forward, moving the steering oar in accordance

the Source, no danger... except for the danger that the Source itself presented. So, traveling through the somber mist