Shadow Slave

The winter solstice and the weeks following it were usually the most tense and the most beneficial time for the embattled humanity.

That was, naturally, because Sleepers entered the Dream Realm for the first time on that day.

The Awakened warriors guarding the Citadels ventured into the wilderness to help them reach safety, which at times resulted in casualties among rescue parties and increased pressure on the weakened garrison forces. As a reward, however, the number of Awakened capable of defending humanity swelled, with new recruits joining the seasoned veterans and lending their strength to that solemn duty.

Familiar ways were slowly changing over the past few years, since there were more Sleepers who challenged the First Nightmare from within the Dream Realm, and those Sleepers who had conquered it in the waking world had more ways to enter the Dream Realm and tether themselves to a Citadel in advance — but the old challenges of the winter solstice still persisted.

In fact, this year, they were more dire than ever. Nightmare Creatures were on the move all across the Dream Realm, converging toward the Citadel Cities — so, a far more perilous journey awaited those Sleepers who met the winter solstice in the waking world.

Even if they managed to survive the journey and make it to the walls of the nearest Citadel City, there was a high chance that they would find a swarm of abominations laying siege to it and find themselves in the middle of a fierce battle. Correspondingly, those Awakened who had ventured into the wilderness to support the Sleepers faced far more danger.

And that was not all.

In the days prior to the winter solstice, several consecutive disasters struck humanity, sending both worlds reeling.

First, several Category Four Nightmare Gates opened across all Quadrants, unleashing swarms of powerful abominations into the waking world. That instantly threw the forces of humanity, which were already struggling with keeping Earth under human control, into disarray.

Almost at the same time, the situation in the Dream Realm took a turn from bad to worse, with drastically more powerful Nightmare Creatures emerging both on land and in the sea. Several Citadel Cities were suddenly under immense threat, forcing both Sunny and Nephis to scramble in an effort to protect them and minimize the casualties among the local garrisons. Although there was no confirmation yet, it was most likely a result of the realm boundary continuing to deteriorate, with pieces of America and Earth’s oceans being integrated into the Dream Realm — and therefore pulling the Nightmare Creatures inhabiting them back.

The worst crisis, however, took place in the eastern reaches of the Dream Realm, where several Citadels had only recently been conquered by the subjugation crusade of the Human Domain. There, an eerie and inexplicable phenomenon emerged, swallowing one of those Citadels and putting the rest of them at risk.

That phenomenon was a wall of unnatural darkness that devoured the world, reaching toward the sky and spanning hundreds of kilometers across. Worst yet, the darkness was slowly expanding, swallowing more land with each day.

The easternmost Citadel had been covered by the darkness, its entire garrison perishing — all of the Awakened stationed there turned Hollow in their sleep, and both the Masters guarding the Citadel and the Saint ruling it vanished without a trace. Now, the darkness was slowly spreading in all directions, threatening the nearby Citadels as well.

Sunny and Nephis had ventured into the darkness, reaching the lost Citadel in hopes of understanding what had happened there. However, they did not find anything — no bodies, no traces of a siege, no signs of a struggle.

Only an eerie, chilling silence.

They could not determine what the mysterious darkness was and where it had come from — even Cassie failed to glimpse its true nature. All she felt was that venturing deeper into it posed a dire, existential threat even to someone as powerful as Sunny and Nephis were. Suspecting that the eerie phenomenon was the manifestation of a powerful Cursed Nightmare Creature’s influence — or possibly even of an Unholy one, all they could do was retreat in grim dejection and prepare the nearby Citadels for evacuation.

Both worlds hung in fragile balance in the wake of the winter solstice. Nephis led the warriors of humanity into battle, shining like a beacon of light… Sunny, meanwhile, assisted mankind from the shadows.

His Shadows had scattered to defend the key strongholds of humanity. Nightmare was in Bastion, defending the Dreamscape and the city itself, Fiend was in Ravenheart, lending his strength in the fight against the harrowing abominations that came from the frozen wastelands in the west.

Serpent was in the Stormsea, guarding Web and the sprawling city that had grown in the estuary of the River of Tears. Saint and Slayer led the warriors of the Shadow Legion in the fight against the Barrow Wraiths, using Mimic as their mobile stronghold. Vile, meanwhile…

Sunny wasn’t reckless enough to let Vile out of his sight, so he kept the sinister spawn by his side, using its powers to assist him in the more dire battles.

Even then, there seemed to be no hope of the situation improving anytime soon.

But then, unexpectedly… it did.

Just when the developing calamity seemed to be nearing critical mass, help came from an unexpected direction — from Mordret, who had remained mostly withdrawn since the Dreamspawn was sealed.

The King of Nothing did not emerge from his self-imposed exile in the mists of the Hollow Mountains, but he did send an envoy to assist humanity in its time of need.

That envoy was an immensely powerful Reflection — a Supreme Terror who wielded more power and was seemingly in possession of more sapience than the Reflections the original Mordret used to create, which allowed it to act with a measure of independence and battle abominations of higher Ranks more effectively.

From what Sunny knew, as shared by Cassie, that Reflection was born from the very shard of mirror that Mordret had used to kill his other self.

With this powerful creature adding its strength to the forces of humanity, the flood of disasters was stemmed, somewhat. And soon after that, the true relief came.

It was the Fire Keepers, returning triumphantly after conquering their Nightmares.