Shadow Slave

Sunny remained motionless for a few moments, staring at the distant figure wearing a bright vermilion cloak.

The clouds veiling the sky were not clouds, but a myriad of flying swords. The man standing on the ruined wall of the siege capital was not a mere mortal, but a Sovereign.

One of the three Supreme humans in existence...

Anvil of Valor, the King of Swords.

The Sovereign was facing a Great Titan. Sunny recognized that harrowing creature from the Battle of the Black Skull, where it had decimated the armies of both Valor and Song. The Titan was vast and abominable, its power inconceivable...

But the King of Swords was no less terrifying.

He was more like a force of nature than a human being, a walking cataclysm that tolerated no defiance. Where Anvil stood, his will was the law. Wherever his sword pointed was his kingdom.

And within the borders of his kingdom, his authority was absolute.

Whoever dared to disobey would be obliterated by a flood of slaying swords.

Sunny took a stifled breath.

'Crazy... it's crazy.'

That was what Nephis wanted to fight against?

He slowly shook his head and forced himself to look away from the awesome visage of the rain of swords. If each of them was infused with the power of a Supreme being... then Anvil was much more powerful than Sunny had ever imagined.

Considering that he was effortlessly controlling enough swords to cover the entire sky, this whole siege capital could be destroyed by the tyrannical Sovereign in a matter of seconds. There was no one in the waking world strong enough to stop him.

the other two. Ki Song

here, in

As for the most mysterious of the Sovereigns, who

settled on the

Nightmare Gate...

A Dream Gate.

mind, and Sunny's

course. It

of the Sovereigns for many years, but he did not really know a lot about them — and about their power. What did it mean, exactly, to be Supreme? He had learned that the Sovereigns possessed a unique ability to create, rule, and expand their

not what

he was thinking about a more subtle characteristic of those carrying

at will and physically, leaving a tether behind. Saints were like miniature Gateways, able to come and go between the two words as they pleased,

How did this facet of their power evolve when they

reasonable to assume that theirs would be a continuation of the power that all Saints possessed? That they would not only contain a Gateway within themselves, but would actually be capable of creating a stable external bridge between the

opposite of a Nightmare Gate. Nightmare Gates allowed abominations to leave the Dream Realm and enter the waking world. A Dream Gate, then, would

'...He is evacuating civilians.'

Army had spent close to a year ferrying refugees over the dreadful expanse of the ocean to other Quadrants. The process was slow — after all, the

that the naval

evacuated as many refugees as they could, and the operation would have probably ended in a semblance of success... if not for the three Category Four Gates that had opened during the Battle of the Black Skull. With the Great Nightmare Creatures roaming East Antarctica, there was no hope of

ended up the same way the Antarctic Center had, with everyone who

so, the two Sovereigns must have descended, holding back the Great horrors

could not allow their children —

they were building in the Dream Realm had to be populated by someone, after all, and hundreds of millions of refugees with nowhere else

any case,

Antarctica's salvation.

the towering Dream Gate. Relieved because his worst fears had not come true, and his mission... the Evacuation

the unexpected salvation had come from those whom he despised the most — the Great Clans, whose conceited indifference created