Shadow Slave

When a seed of a troubling theory formed itself in Sunny’s mind, he tried his hardest to suppress his shock. However, he must have let something show, because the shadows across the Ivory Tower suddenly grew restless.

Nephis spared him a brief glance and continued her verbal duel with Asterion. Sunny, meanwhile, was too preoccupied with exploring his suspicion, wanting to turn it into certainty... and dreading that certainty, as well.

‘It can’t be. Can it be?’

He examined the facts.

All of them were things he had already known. However, only after meeting Asterion face-to-face did it become possible to assign real weight to these tidbits of knowledge and, therefore, draw connections between them.

The first hint...

Was the timing of Asterion’s supposed return.

He had mentioned having to push his plans forward because of Neph’s unexpected ascension to the throne of Supremacy. But what about it had made Asterion feel hurried, exactly?

Maybe the answer to that question was not as important as the question itself. Asterion had mentioned planning to escape his lunar prison soon after the Chain of Nightmares, as if it held some hidden meaning.

He had spent decades imprisoned on the Moon. So why would he only want to escape after Antarctica fell, and not at any point before? The death of the Sovereigns had apparently nothing to do with it, even if they had been responsible for ruthlessly ensuring the continued non-existence of his insidious Domain.

There were numerous potential answers to that question. The fact that the Sovereigns had finally revealed themselves, for example. The arrival of the Skinwalker and other Great Ones on Earth; the Dream Realm beginning to devour the waking world piece by piece. The conflict between the Great Clans moving toward open war, thus distracting the original Supremes...

But what if the real reason was something else?

Sunny was suddenly reminded of the conversation between him and Morgan that had happened in the Nightmare Desert soon after the disastrous Battle of the Black Skull. She had been planning to leave them and escape with the Summer Knight, while Sunny had been planning to challenge the Third Nightmare as a means of escape.

So, he had asked Morgan if he would face consequences for attaining Transcendence without the permission of the Great Clans... and she told him that he did not have to worry about that.

Because critical mass had already been reached, and the waking world’s collapse could not be delayed anymore. So...

The Chain of Nightmares was when the Sovereigns had stopped artificially suppressing the number of emerging Saints. That was when Asterion had begun to plan his return.

Sunny remembered another conversation, as well.

That one was not a conversation with Morgan — instead, it was a conversation with her sinister brother, Mordret.

It happened back in Mirage City, where Mordret revealed to him how Asterion had ended up on the moon, as well as the fact that he would inevitably return and pose a grave danger to everyone.

Mordret had described Asterion as what Nephis was supposed to be, but taken to a logical conclusion. A being that walked on the edge between a human and a Nightmare Creature.

Nephis and Asterion were like two sides of the same coin, or perhaps twisted reflections of each other. Nephis had denied the Nightmare Creature part of herself, so much so that she became the epitome of humanity, as well as its ruler. Asterion, meanwhile, embraced the creature part of himself fully, to the point that he did not even consider himself to be human.

Now that Sunny had heard Asterion personally confirm Mordret’s description, he was struck by a sudden revelation.

In hindsight, it felt almost obvious... like most things were.

And the key to that revelation was a third conversation Sunny remembered.

That last conversation had nothing to do with the Valor siblings. Instead, it was a conversation with Nightwalker, who had been betrayed and abandoned by Asterion in the Eternal City.

It was not about the Dreamspawn himself, though.

It was about a different monster...

The primordial human who had been cursed by Shadow God at the dawn of time, Kanakht.

Kanakht had become the ruler of the first human kingdom, in the end. However, he was not satisfied with his historic throne — instead, Kanakht wanted to become a god. To achieve Apotheosis.

No matter how much he tried, though, godhood eluded him. His kingdom slowly turned into a land of nightmares, ruined by his obsession, but eventually, Kanakht did find a way to become a deity.

He learned how to achieve Apotheosis through consuming his kingdom, as well as all its citizens... and he would have succeeded if the Demon of Repose had not stopped him.

‘Damn... ation’

Nightwalker had explained something else to Sunny, as well. It was the way Tyrants became Terrors.

They became Terrors by consuming the minions.

So, now...

Here was a man named Asterion, who did not consider himself human and thought of himself as a creature instead.

Creatures walked the Path of Ascension in a different manner from humans. Wouldn’t that mean that Asterion, born to the zealots of the Path of Ascension cult, could strive to emulate that manner himself?

He was not a Tyrant, though, and did not control an army of minions.

Instead, he was a Supreme who controlled a Domain.

Just like Kanakht had controlled the first human kingdom.

So if Asterion — the descendant of the God of Hunger — expanded his Domain to encompass all of humanity... could he attempt to consume humanity in order to fuel his Apotheosis?

Sunny sensed a cold shiver run down his spine.

’T—that... that lunatic.’

Asterion might not have spent decades on the Moon because he couldn’t come back. Instead, he might have simply remained there, far above Earth... waiting for humanity to fatten up.

And only when the number of powerful humans began to rise exponentially in the wake of the Chain of Nightmares, thus offering him a big enough feast, did he decide to come back.