Shadow Slave

The words hung in the air, enveloped by a terrifying silence.

Cassie remained motionless, as well, doing her best to suppress her body from trembling.

’Asterion.’

It would be a lie to say that, for a moment, she did not feel fear. Her thoughts spun, and she sent a stream of mental messages to those caught in the web of her Aspect.

The man sitting next to her at the bar... was a herald of the Dreamspawn, an agent of the insidious foe threatening the very foundations of the Human Domain.

But he wasn’t Asterion himself, so she was not in mortal peril yet.

Cassie lingered for a few moments, assessing the danger, and came to the conclusion that she had to buy some time above all else. So, instead of reacting strongly, she simply reached for her drink and took a leisurely sip.

“Oh, my. You are a new type.”

The man smiled.

”You should have foreseen that people like this one would emerge, no?”

He was not wrong.

Cassie, Nephis, and Sunny were still determining the full extent of Asterion’s powers. There were few reliable sources of information about him, sadly — the previous Sovereigns had been too thorough in erasing all notable mentions of his existence from history.

Asterion’s Aspect was one of mental and spiritual manipulation. He could sense and influence the thoughts and emotions of others, as well as feed on them to grow stronger... and that was only as far as his Dormant, Awakened, and Ascended Abilities went, according to Nightwalker.

No one — not even Jest, the exiled patriarch of Clan Dagonet — knew what his Transcendent form was, let alone what his Domain’s nature and Supreme Ability were. They could infer quite a lot, though.

Asterion seemed to possess an ability to spread his influence akin to a memetic virus. Everyone who was exposed to his name was infected by his power, and after that... well, different people were affected differently. Some did not show any symptoms at all, some would begin uttering his name randomly from time to time without even noticing it, helping the virus spread. Then, there were those whose thoughts and actions changed entirely under the influence of the Dreamspawn — those were his agents in the human world. They were the ones Cassie had been hunting for the last few months.

But the man in front of her seemed to represent a new breed. He was not merely under the influence of Asterion’s powers... he seemed to be consumed by them completely, falling under complete control of the eerie Sovereign. Cassie was not even sure if he could still be considered an actual individual, as opposed to a mere extension of the Dreamspawn.

An avatar, perhaps.

She nodded.

”I did. Even if my powers of foresight are not what they used to be, I can still make deductions.”

Asterion was not that different from Cassie, in a sense. If she wanted to, she could burn every single memory from a person’s mind, turning it into a blank slate. Then, she could fill that canvas with whatever false memories she wanted to invent, turning them into a marionette... not that she had done something like that yet.

He could most likely do the same with a person’s feelings and thoughts, just on an entirely different level due to being a Supreme.

The question was, why had he sent this brainwashed Ascended to find her? There were plenty of reasons to eliminate Cassie, naturally — her powers could counter Asterion’s influence, for one, albeit on a limited scale. But how would a lone Master eliminate a Saint?

”Who says that I am alone?”

As the man smiled, Cassie felt a cold shiver run down her spine.

She had taken measures to guard her thoughts, but it seemed that it was all for naught.

Asterion still read her like an open book. “Both you and every little fly caught in your web, young lady. What an intricate net you have woven, indeed...”

Flinching once again, Cassie hurriedly cut the connection to most of her marks — except those gathered in the lounge, and therefore serving as her eyes.

The man laughed.

He studied her with a calm, subtly mocking smile.

”Do you still hope to buy time, Song of the Fallen?”

As soon as he said those words, Cassie’s perspective shifted.

That was because the people she was using to see what was happening inside the lounge — all of them — turned their heads at the same time. They were all looking in the same direction now...

They were looking at her.

For a split second, all she could see was her own pale face, the golden waves of her hair, and the electric light reflecting in the blue depths of her unseeing eyes.

’I’ve... walked into a trap.’

Cassie tensed her muscles, preparing to fight.

But before she could move...

She suddenly went blind.

It was not because someone had erased her mark off the Awakened and Masters gathered in the lounge, and neither was it because she fell victim to some debilitating Ability.

No, it was much simpler — it was because all her marks simultaneously closed their eyes, plunging her world into darkness once again.

The lounge exploded into a cacophony of sounds.

Every single person inside used their superhuman bodies to lunge forward, shattering the furniture and splitting the wooden floor as they barreled in her direction.

Before they even reached her, however, Cassie felt a flash of monstrous pain — that was the bartender bringing down an enchanted dagger to nail her hand to the bar and immobilize her.

The weapon had to be at least an Ascended Memory to pierce the flesh of a Saint. The man himself must have been quite powerful, too.

...It was a good thing that Cassie had activated her Awakened Ability as soon as she entered the lounge. So, the pain she felt was merely a phantom conjured by the promise of an immediate future.

She moved her hand, avoiding the bartender’s blade, and smashed her glass into his head. At the same time, she slid off her chair and kicked the wrist of Asterion’s avatar, preventing him from sliding a cold blade between her ribs.

By the time she did, the rest of them were upon her.