Shadow Slave

Nephis had not been dismissive when she answered the question posed by the Lord of Shadows...

How could one kill a Supreme?

After years of striving bitterly to maneuver herself into a position where resisting the Sovereigns was not a foolish, futile, and frivolous delusion, she had come to understand that the only plausible way to defeat them was to attain Supremacy herself.

Years ago, she had come back to the waking world after an eternity of being lost in the Dream Realm, defeated and broken. Back then, she had made a decision to join the Great Clan Valor, knowing that there would be no better way for her to come to know her enemy.

When Nephis killed a Nightmare Creature, she dissected the carcass to examine its anatomy and learn how to slay such abominations better. But she couldn't dissect a Great Clan... so, joining one was the best way to study the enemy from within.

She had also harbored other aspirations - to earn the trust of the King of Swords and therefore place herself in a position where striking him down would be tenable. Nephis was a master of combat, after all, of which decelt and misdirection were Integral parts, Life wasn't that different from combat... her life was not, at least,

But, although she had attained some success in her ambition to Infiltrate the Great Clan and become trusted by its King, the more Nephis learned about the enemy, the more hopeless her burning desire to vanquish the Sovereigns seemed.

Even if she knew everything there was to know about Valor, and even if the King of Sword lowered his guard one day... she wasn't confident at all that she would be able to defeat him, despite all her power as a Transcendent Titan.

So... Nephis had to become a Supreme Titan, instead.

The problem was that she was not allowed to even try.

Times had changed, and there were many more Awakened, Masters, and Saints walking the world today. The Sovereigns had relaxed their iron grip on achieving greater power... a little. But they still demanded fealty from the absolute majority of Transcendents, and would certainly never let someone rise to the throne of Supremacy and become their equal.

Ki Song could not even tolerate the existence of each other. How could they allow

like Nephis, who had a perfectly justified

permission, and survived... she would be slaughtered Immediately after returning to reality. The might of a Sovereign lay in the power of their Domain, after all, and hers would not be established yet

inconsequentially more powerful than

take. She had to attain Supremacy without the help of the Nightmare Spell, by following in the footsteps

only that, but she had to do it

to say, that path was

Awakened walked the path of Ascension from Ananke. However, the old priestess had not known anything about the

had been the Serpent King, a stranger

could not learn the natural way to Supremacy from somebody else, She

even for her, but having no other choice, she had been striving to accomplish it for the last

able to come anywhere near becoming a Sovereign. But she was mostly sure that she had discovered

the Awakened of ancient times learned to control their essence before forming their soul cores instead of the other way around, Nephis believed that she had to realize

Nightmare Spell gave humans a chance to challenge the Fourth Nightmare, attain Supremacy, and therefore the ability to manifest a Domain. However, without the Nightmare Spell... Nephis had to claim that authority herself. It

However...

no clues about how

the beginning,

Nephis was at least on the right track - at least she thought

the Path of Ascension was, reasonably, hidden in

the world and becoming intertwined with a part of it. The soul of a Sovereign,

was the essence of Supremacy. To be