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.

dwelling in

was one thing in common between the real Bastion and the beautiful mirage created by the Demon of Imagination, though, Both in the illusory castle and the real castle,

were much fewer of

'I need to hurry.

facing its inhabitants in a battle, but he wasn't capable of doing so unnoticed. And so, he dove down once again, falling like a stone into the depths of the

much different in this hidden, true world. Out

Here, though...

the same white stone 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 horrible devastation visible

streets themselves were

cracked cobblestones, looking like pale fungus. Sunny did not know what doom had befallen the people 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, and

now submerged in water, with only its peak rising above

was also where Casale was supposed to be waiting

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

to remain unseen and unsensed in the shadows had become much more potent since his days in the Dark City, so

grotesque carcasses appeared

rule the entire area, he was the master of the ruined castle. Anything that tried to crawl out of the water and challenge him

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

into the forest and ordered not to return until she redeemed her mistake. She eventually

was true, and couldn't ask, because this information