Shadow Slave

After getting all the information the frightened Sleeper could share, Sunny and Nephis let him rest. Without wasting any time, Nephis headed for the exit from the temple... however, Sunny led her into its depths Instead.

Soon, they reached a set of stairs and descended underground.

The Nameless Temple was larger than it seemed from outside, because it had a vast basement level. In fact, it was almost a perfect copy of the grandiose upper level, with its own great hall, auxiliary rooms, and inner sanctum.

There were a few differences, of course. For one, there was no altar in the underground temple. There was no path to the courtyard, either. Instead, a towering gate was cut into the marble wall, covered by intricate engravings.

When Sunny and Nephis reached the underground hall, it was bathed in impenetrable darkness. Even the radiant light of the flames burning on her palm could not dispel it... Sunny didn't want anyone to see what was hidden there, yet, and so, he shrouded everything in the deepest of shadows.

And for a good reason.

As Sunny had found out after conquering the Nameless Temple, all Citadels had something special about them. Some special qualities were minor, while some could do truly stunning things.

Sunny called them Components.

He was not sure if these Components were innate to the ancient strongholds or something added to each by the Spell, like the Gateways were. Perhaps it simply built upon what was already there, strengthening existing traits and making them easily accessible by humans.

However, what Sunny did know was that only a Saint that bound the Citadel to their soul could command it, making use of the Components. The Spell made the process easier for them, most likely... as for Sunny, he had to sort everything out himself.

Luckily, it had not been too hard.

not on the level of the Great Citadels or the Ivory Tower, of course, but far more prominent compared to

and imperceptible, had been killing anyone and anything that tried to enter the

the temple in his First Nightmare because

himself to the gods, Back then, Sunny had assumed that it was a temple of

sense. At the time when the slave caravan perished while trying to cross the mountains, the imperial soldiers were actively destroying shrines and monasteries of the Shadow God. And yet, the styglan edifice of the grand temple looked like

he had offered himself as a sacrifice to Shadow God... instead, it said that he had offered himself as a sacrifice to all the gods. Shadow was just

much more ancient than almost anything else he had seen in the Dream Realm. If he was correct, it had been built at the dawn of time, during

why this temple, and all the other temples built for the Pantheon of Seven, had been abandoned and lost. They had been forgotten, just like Dream

well have been the temple of the Forgotten

heretics who worshiped the

the Nameless Temple had already been empty for thousands of years during Sunny's First Nightmare, which took place at the very end of the Golden Age, just before the fleeting Age of Daemons came to

stood on the peak of a black mountain, desolate and forsaken. The only creature who ever visited it was the Mountain King, who seemed to have possessed a spark of divinity in its soul,

yet, now, the Nameless Temple was somehow

for this discrepancy... was the

resembled the enchantment of the Nameless Temple were the knives Sun

was the heart of the enchantment that allowed

flooded the ancient temple with an ocean

of Godgrave. He suspected that it had been wandering the realms long before being made into a Citadel by the Nightmare Spell, as well. The wandering temple had not been built on the peak of that dark mountain, but

be able to share this secret with Nephis once she

they walked through the darkness until they reached the great gate. Nephis did not