The Villain's Story

Chapter 805: Lord of Shadows(2)

How do you know this?”

Kulak laughed softly at Alan’s question; it was an unsettling sound that rippled through the surrounding darkness. He did not answer with words at first, only lifted his gaze, for his eyes were witnesses to every shadow that ever was.

They whispered to him, those silent things that clung to existence.Even when unseen, unheard, they spoke to him—murmuring truths their masters could not bear to know. The world’s secrets were not carved in light, but in the dark outlines of those who cast it.

He knew because they told him. The shadow of an innocent child. The shadow of a deceiver. The shadow of the crying calamity itself.Even the faint, distant shadow of the evil beyond the horizon.

Every one of them had a voice. And through them, Kulak learned all there was to learn.Only one kind of truth eluded him, the truth one’s own soul was blind to. In that ignorance lay his only weakness.

”Tell me, Alan,”

He said at last, his tone measured yet echoing through the lightless abyss.

”What do you think a shadow truly is?”

The Lightless Void stirred. The darkness moved as if breathing, bending and writhing to Kulak’s will, save for one stubborn fragment that resisted, the one that lay beneath Alan’s feet. The rest surged like a sentient tide, sweeping across the ground, devouring the light, and rushing toward Alan with inhuman speed.

Alan braced himself, arms raised, but the shadows did not strike. They passed through him harmlessly, cool and weightless as breath. Kulak stepped forward through the shifting dark.

”You have her eyes,” he said, voice low and oddly tender.

”Beautiful... radiant, even now. Yet your gift wounds me whenever I try to see her through you.”

At that, the Void stilled. Kulak reached forward and plucked Alan’s shadow from the ground, as though it were no more than silk caught between his fingers. It writhed for only a moment before curling into a small orb of darkness that rested in his palm. A fragment of Alan’s essence—quiet, serene, and still loyal even when torn from its master.

”The eyes,” Kulak mused, holding the shadow as if it were a relic, ”are gateways to mind and soul alike. They speak of triumph, despair, and the weariness of a monotonous existence. To us Dragons, what lies within the eyes is sacred, for they hold the story of being itself.You were meant to become one of us... yet never born as such.”

His tone grew somber, his amusement fading like dying embers.

”But the shadows,” he continued, voice deepening, ”they are mirrors to the soul. They reflect every fracture and flaw, every truth their masters conceal behind masks of flesh and light.”

Alan’s shadow quivered in Kulak’s palm before slithering up his arm, spreading across his form as if overjoyed to be reunited with its sovereign. Alan stood frozen, merely watching it all unfold.

”He tells me what you do not know. He tells me what you do know, but will never confess.He speaks of every moment since he first came into being, since he first saw you, felt you, touched the world through your feet.”

Kulak’s eyes glimmered as he spoke.

”He sees what you refuse to see.He believes what you cannot believe.And thus—he reveals your truth... and his own.”

Kulak lowered his hand, pointing toward the ground at Alan’s feet.

”Look beneath you. See what the shadows have to say.”

Alan looked beneath him, only to find the same shadows encompassing the Lightless Void. He struggled to understand what the shadows were trying to say, because of course, he couldn’t.

He had never used this affinity before in his life, only seen Kazikato wield it; Kazikato may have been able to understand what these things were saying, but he was not able too.

’Do I need to use the skill?’

Shadow Walker, was he required to use the skill he acquired after absorbing Ariel’s ichor? Alan thought that might have been the case, but he couldn’t be so wrong.

It happened when he tried to use it, only to find the custom system Ariel built for himself to declare that.

[Skill: Shadow Walker is in effect.]

’The skill is already in effect?’

And it was precisely then, when he recoiled from the shock, that he saw a bit beyond the shadows beneath his feet, and noticed the difference, he saw what Kulak wanted him to see.

The shadows beneath his feet, in a small circle, were still. It was here that the Lightless Void was still, but everywhere else?

It was constantly moving, endlessly shifting, like the wild tides in a sea; not a single part of it was bereft of motion. Only the one beneath his feet was still, motionless, and slowly but surely, the surrounding shadows were losing motion as well.

’Why is that so?’

He wondered, and it was then that something came to his mind.

’Lapsus, Fatipu, and Dominatus.’

The names of the Unique skills of Aranus, James... and his own, respectively. A skill he didn’t even know existed, his unique skill, according to the words of the Supreme being in front of him.

He opened the custom system Ariel built for him, a display of black with intricate designs of white at the edges, a personal taste of the Old Primordial, and called the name of the skill in his mind.

’Dominatus.’

His tab for Unique skills was empty, but he didn’t stop. Kulak’s stare urged him on, as well as the desire to find out the properties of his ’Unique Skill’.

Therefore, he kept calling out to his skill until it would finally make an appearance.

And there it did, slowly but surely, Alan noticed some irregularities with his system window, the black display was turning...odd.

It was losing its color, bit by bit, pixel by pixel. The intricate designs of white at the edges began to break down, and the display began to change.