Shadow Slave

The sky was black, with pale stars shining coldly in the distance. They were much paler than the bright constellations of the illusory realm, though, because there was something brighter in the night sky, spanning its vast expanse.

The fragments of the shattered moon.

The moon was up there, above him, but it was viciously broken into countless pieces. Some of them were vast, like jagged continents, floating in the forlorn darkness. Some were infinitely small, painting the sky like clouds of starlight vapor. The trail of moon shards formed a heavenly river that stretched beyond the horizon, illuminating the hidden world with ghostly light.

The sight of it was both terrifying and humbling. Sunny did not know what kind of blow could have been so harrowing as to fracture even the moon... or if the moon had been broken from within, like the shell of a cosmic egg... all he knew was that seeing the broken sky filled him with a deep sense of terror.

He rarely felt true fear after becoming a Transcendent, but the true face of Bastion was one of the few things that could still make him shudder.

Looking away from the celestial river, Sunny gazed at the distant castle. The castle existed both in the illusory world and in the terrifying reality. However, while it stood tall and proud in the former... It was a desolate ruin in the latter.

The mighty walls had collapsed. The tall towers were toppled. Bastion was like a mountain of fractured white stones, the shape of a once-magnificent citadel barely recognizable in its ghastly crookedness. Here and there, one could still recognize the lines of partially unscathed buildings and courtyards, but they only seemed like an epitaph on a towering gravestone.

Across the lake, where the thriving city had been a moment before, a monumental wall of towering dark trees rose to the broken sky.

The illusory Bastion had been surrounded by a forest once, too - a forest that was one enormous living being, a horrid Titan with which the Knights of Valor had waged war for decades. Eventually, it was Anvil, still a Saint back then, who had destroyed it.

But here in the hidden reality, the forest was untouched, and there were many creatures inhabiting it that were much more terrifying than that Titan had been.

Because the real Bastion... was a Death Zone.

there were dreadful beings dwelling in the deep, dark lake

the real Bastion and the beautiful mirage created by the Demon of Imagination, though, Both

much fewer of

'I need to hurry.

than its copy. Sunny was capable of facing its inhabitants in a battle, but he wasn't capable of doing so unnoticed.

different in this hidden, true world. Out in the illusory

Here, though...

as the castle, and their empty windows were like dark eyes that watched Sunny as he passed by. The city must have been beautiful once, but now it was cold and empty, with signs of

streets themselves were littered

of the drowned city, but he made sure to lighten his body and swim instead of walking on the ancient roads. He did not want to disturb them,

of a tall mountain, which was now submerged in water, with only its peak rising above it. The ruins

Casale was supposed to

from its current Inhabitants. There were plenty of harrowing Nightmare Creatures dwelling in the drowned ruins - he had studied their

much more potent since his days in the

and closer to the mountain. From time to time, grotesque carcasses appeared from the darkness, each

extended into the real version of Bastion, as well, and although the King of Swords did not rule the entire area, he was the master of the ruined castle. Anything that tried to crawl out of the water and challenge him ended

battling Nightmare Creatures in the forest, too. However, they were doing so without the support of their king. That was because he used the dark forest as a crucible to forge better warriors for his army-the dreadful abominations inhabiting it

forest and ordered not to return until she redeemed her mistake. She eventually emerged from it

couldn't ask, because this information wasn't supposed to be known to any outsider to begin