Shadow Slave

Surrounded by a radiant halo, Sunny plummeted into the darkness. His breath was ragged and hoarse, and his eyes were blinded by the piercing shine of the immolating ocean of white flames beneath him.

Fearing that his eyes would be permanently blinded by it, he closed them, which helped a little.

‘Hot… it’s so hot…’

He was drawing closer and closer to the remains of the divine inferno, and as he did, the stonelike metal of the Mantle of the Underworld was growing hotter and hotter. Soon, its outer layer turned bright red. Then, it started to melt.

‘Damn!’

Sunny directed more of his remaining essence through the coils of the Soul Serpent, activating the [Living Stone] enchantment of the Underworld armor.

As the onyx melted and cracked, causing him excruciating pain, the Mantle began to repair itself. Before anything could fully breach the surface of the incandescent onyx, the damage was undone.

…For now, the enchanted armor could heal itself faster than it was being destroyed. In large part due to being augmented by both of his shadows, perhaps.

Sunny encountered another problem, though.

It was getting harder and harder to breathe… not even because the air was scalding and hot, but because there was not enough of it.

Fire fed on oxygen, after all.

Luckily, Sunny was no stranger to being deprived of it. What’s more, thanks to the Blood Weave, he could get by without breathing for much longer than most Awakened… and he suspected that he would have to do just that very soon.

Hopefully, he would be able to reach the rift shortly after that.

And speaking of the rift…

He carefully opened his eyes a little and glanced into the blinding inferno beneath, trying to judge whether or not he was going to make it. For now, it seemed that he would easily pass the field of fire and enter the dark emptiness… but that was just an illusion.

Sunny had to factor in that his forward momentum was constantly growing weaker, which meant that his trajectory would become more and more vertical the longer he fell through the searing abyss.

It was too hard to tell whether or not he was going to make it.

Gritting his teeth, he shifted his weight and lowered one hand, grabbing the hilt of the Cruel Sight. Then, he raised the silver blade to his chest, threw a cursory glance at his warped reflection, and activated the [Light Eater] enchantment of the somber sword.

Instantly, the mirror blade began to absorb the merciless light of the false stars, growing white-hot and incandescent. Sunny, however, found himself able to see once again. He even felt a little cooler, although it might have been just wishful thinking.

Surrounded by a strange bubble of darkness left behind by the devoured light, Sunny plummeted toward the obliterating stars.

‘Almost! I’m almost there!’

By then, the conflagrations of the divine flame were so close that it seemed as though he could reach out and touch them. No matter how hard Sunny tried, he couldn’t draw in even a little bit of air into his lungs. The rift was so close…

But in the end, it turned out to be just a little bit too far.

Sunny reached the very edge of the field of flames. He only had to fly past one last cluster of conflagrations. However, his fall took him straight into the embrace of fire instead.

Sunny would have screamed if there was any air in his lungs. Moving at a terrible speed, he pierced right through one of the seething orbs and emerged from the other side of it, wreathed in white flame. A terrible pain enveloped his whole being.

But it wasn’t physical pain… it was the similar kind of pain he had experienced while using the Broken Oath, only magnified a hundredfold.

‘…shadows… my shadows!’

His shadows were wrapped around the Mantle of the Underworld, and so, they had been badly damaged by the divine fire. The armor itself had caught aflame and was now quickly disintegrating. The fire was spreading, too, threatening to envelop him whole.

Half-blind from pain, Sunny did the only thing that could save him now — he dismissed the onyx armor. The Mantle of the Underworld fell into countless sparks of darkness, which then disappeared, causing the fire to be extinguished.

Naked and hurting, Sunny fell into the darkness and saw the Cruel Sight crack, the silver of its blade becoming dull and tarnished. Following an instinct, he activated the [Dark Mirror] enchantment, and then dismissed that Memory, too.

Finally, he wrapped the wounded shadows around himself and circulated what little shadow essence he had left through his entire body, spending all of it to make himself more resilient…

And then, he felt cool wind touch his blistering skin.

Sunny fought through the terrible pain and opened his eyes.

Behind him, there was a wall of ruthless radiance.

But in front of him, there was nothing but darkness.

…He had reached the rift.

***

‘Hurts… everything hurts. Crap… this is so unfair!’

Sunny flew deeper into the rift, creating more distance between himself and the conflagrations of the divine flame. Of course, they were too close for him to feel comfortable. But at least he could breathe again, and wasn’t being cooked alive.

Well… at least not very fast.

Before being badly hurt by the divine flame, Sunny had hoped that somehow, miraculously, he would turn out to be immune to it. He was technically a shadow of a Sun God’s descendant, after all. Why wouldn’t he be immune to the manifestation of his master’s domain?

Well… his master’s indirect ancestor’s domain, to be precise.

Plus, he was not just any shadow, but a divine one left behind by Shadow God himself. Light and shadows were two sides of the same coin, weren’t they?

As it turned out, the divine flame didn’t care.

‘Argh!’

Currently, Sunny was falling through the rift. He had reached its center and dove straight down, hoping to stay as far away from the surrounding stars as possible. It was as though there was a tunnel of empty darkness torn through the very heart of the field of flames, and he was following it down.

Down, down, down…

It was hard to even conceive of a world where he wasn’t constantly falling down.

Now that he had no Mantle of the Underworld to protect him from the blaze, Sunny was suffering a lot. Rift or not, the air was still permeated by the unbearable heat. His skin was red, with patches of it blistering. Some of it was badly burned by his unfortunate clash with the divine flame and because he had not dismissed the burning Mantle of the Underworld fast enough.

It was not life-threatening, though.

…Yet.

‘Come on! End, goddammit!’

But the field of flames showed no signs of ever ending.

Until it did.

After a while, when Sunny was on the verge of losing conscience from the constant heat, he noticed that the scattering of the immolating stars around him became a bit thinner.

And then, even more so.

And then, suddenly and without any warning, he fell out of the field of divine flame and found himself surrounded by nothing but blessed nothing once again.

…The radiant inferno was now above him, growing further away with each second. It looked as if…

As if heaven was on fire.

And beneath him…

Sunny looked down and shivered.

‘What… how?’

His eyes widened in shock.