Shadow Slave

A distant, rumbling roar washed over the world, making it seem as if everything had gone still for a moment. It sounded like an enormous beast was stirring awake somewhere far away, rising from its slumber as forests and mountains rolled off its broad shoulders.

There was a flash of lightning. Half-blinded by the rain, Sunny unconsciously took a step toward the parapet. The others did the same, all looking in a single direction with tense, confused expressions — toward the source of the rumbling sound.

They were facing north.

”What...”

Effie’s voice drowned in a deafening thunderclap.

Sunny inhaled sharply.

Somehow, he knew what had happened... and what was going to happen, as well.

The world was dark, obscured by the heavy storm clouds. Still, some light penetrated their thick barrier, and Mirage City was enveloped in a dim twilight. The restless surface of the Mirror Lake was stirring in front of them, and beyond it, the great mass of the drowning city sprawled on the distant shore.

Beyond the city were the mountains... and the ancient barrier of the Northern Dam. That dam was breaking apart now, unable to endure the crushing weight of the artificial lake hidden behind it. It had held proud for thousands of years, withstanding the ruthless tyranny of time and the fierce assaults of natural forces... but it had not been able to withstand human corruption. The subpar renovation works perpetrated by the Valor Group on Madoc’s orders had compromised its integrity, and the disastrously persistent rains had caused the great reservoir contained by the dam to swell uncontrollably, pushing it to and over the limit.

And now, it could not hold any longer. Sunny’s eyes widened as he watched the calamity unfold.

At first, it was a single crack that appeared on the great dam. The floodgates had already been opened to relieve the pressure, with foaming torrents of water pouring down from a vast height;however, that was not enough. The crack split the dam from top to bottom, spreading across its surface with the speed of lightning...

It was narrow and barely noticeable, almost impossible to see. However, a second later, that small crack became a devastating breach.

The still water of the reservoir had become an unstoppable monster, wielding power so awful that millions of tons of stone and concrete were flung outward as if shot from a cannon. The entire middle section of the dam exploded, with giant chunks of stone flying into the outskirts of the city below and crushing residential buildings as if they were paper boxes.

What followed the annihilating debris was much worse, though.

Sunny froze, enthralled by the distressing visage and unable to move. His companions were motionless, as well, witnessing the scene of utter destruction in a deafening silence.

The water roared as it escaped its prison. It rushed through the wide breach in the damaged dam like a living being, hungering for human souls. The titanic torrent was too vast for its scale to be fathomed, or for its force to be measured — looking at it, Sunny felt something that he had not felt in a long time.

The utter, frightening awe that mortals felt in the face of the insurmountable power that dwarfed their very existence — the terrifying power of hostile, untamed nature. The torrent of water hit the outskirts of Mirage City and swallowed them whole, flowing far and wide to consume everything in sight. The buildings, the streets, the rushing PTVs, the tiny figures of the terrified people — all of it was washed away in an instant, crushed and broken, ground into nothingness and drowned in the foaming expanse of raging water.

Of course, the flood did not stop there.

The powerful current rushing through the breach in the dam did not weaken — on the contrary, as more of the dam collapsed, it became more potent. The great tidal wave that had swallowed the outskirts continued south, devastating the northern areas of Mirage City. The rivers running toward the Mirror Lake swelled and overflowed, escaping their beds.

Their flooding caused by that was merely a promise of the imminent disaster, though. All across the city, the heavy iron covers of the drainage pipes were sent flying into the air. Towering plumes of foaming water shot upward like geysers. It was only then that the thunderous roar of the collapsing dam reached the distant parts of Mirage City, and people on the streets froze in place, looking north with confused expressions. The flood utterly crushed and destroyed the northernmost parts of Mirage City... However, the rest of it was not spared, either.

Even if the obliterating force of the tidal wave had been exhausted as it moved further away from the broken dam, the water still continued flowing. In the districts north of Mirror Lake, the water flowed freely across the streets, rising higher and higher. It swallowed the PTVs and the pedestrians, collecting an unimaginable death toll.

Some of the buildings were partially flooded, some even submerged in the water completely. The citizens trapped in them had not survived, either.

Standing by Sunny’s side, Effie let out a strange cry and grabbed the parapet, her fingers turning white.

Finally, the flood reached the Mirror Lake. It stopped the torrent for a while. However, the level of water in the lake rapidly rose — soon enough, the slopes of the mountain and the stone steps leading to the Castle disappeared beneath the surging waves, leaving only the platform directly in front of the great gates above the tide.

By then, the Mirror Lake had overflowed, as well.

A secondary wave poured from the confines of its shores, joining the flood as it rushed south. The narrow streets there funneled the water, giving the torrents more strength. Nothing could withstand the terrible force of the flowing water, and everyone who had been looking north minutes earlier drowned with terrified expressions on their faces, unable to escape.

Everything in sight had drowned in the vast, unstoppable current.

Sunny had seen this scene before... he had seen it innumerable times. Every time the night came to the Forgotten Shore, the Dark Sea would flood the Crimson Labyrinth and destroy anything and anyone who had not found shelter from its fury. Only, this time, it was not abominations that were being destroyed by the rushing water — it was people. ᚱÄＮȰΒĘŜ

The streets of Mirage City become their watery grave.

Something like that must have happened in the True Bastion, as well, thousands of years ago.

Soon enough, the Mirror Lake seemed to have expanded greatly, growing to cover the entire area where Mirage City had once stood. Here and there, the edifices of skyscrapers rose from the water like orphaned towers, but most of the city was hidden under the mass of water.

At the heart of the great lake, the Castle stood lonesomely among the waves.

The Other Mordret swayed as he took a step back. His expression at the moment was hard to describe, even if someone was in a state to pay attention to such details. Everyone seemed stunned and petrified by what they had just witnessed.

..Except for Sunny.

Sunny, on the contrary, was restless.

‘I missed it. I missed it. Damn it! How could I have been so foolish?! How could I have been fooled again?”

While everyone stood still, he suddenly spun around and raised his revolver.

Aiming it at Mordret’s head, Sunny then gritted his teeth and pressed the trigger.