Shadow Slave

Cassie stumbled and turned around as the gates of the Ebony Tower shut behind her. She was safely protected from the eerily quiet, deceptively slow-moving mass of white mist that flooded the Ebony Island in the blink of an eye…

However, her marks weren’t.

Suddenly, all she could see was swirling white fog, and all she could hear was the choir of strangely distant, muffled screams that echoed in its depths.

She shivered.

‘Nothing…’

It took her a moment to regain a semblance of composure. Able to think once more, she easily understood what Mordret had done. His Aspect allowed him to open paths between reflections. So, he had prepared one last trump card to use against the Dreamspawn in case the tides of war turned against him.

Somewhere in the white mists of the Hollow Mountains, there stood a great mirror Mordret must have created and had been sustaining despite the endless erosion of being exposed to nothing. And now, he opened a path between that mirror and the Ebony Tower, unleashing nothing into the world…

No, he did not open a path. He tore a hole in existence, allowing nothing to seep into the Chained Isles.

‘Has he… lost his…’

Cassie turned around, listening to the sound of Mordret’s limping steps.

He was heading to the middle of the great hall of the Ebony Tower, leaving a trail of blood in his wake. The seven Reflections followed.

Placing a mark on one of the Reflections, Cassie was finally able to see Mordret.

The King of Nothing… did not look too good.

His black armor was bent and shredded, slowly collapsing into a rain of ghostly sparks. His clothes beneath were soaked with blood, and countless cuts covered his battered body.

There was bloody foam in the corners of his mouth, and his pale face glistened with cold sweat.

His eyes, however…

In the depth of his mirror-like eyes, a feverish determination and a dark, demented kind of glee were smoldering like coals.

His lips twisted into a grin, revealing his bloodied teeth.

“Ah, how improper, how unsightly. Why am I having so much fun? I shouldn’t… I really mustn’t. Where is my decorum?”

He let out a laugh.

Cassie frowned, suppressing a desire to step back.

It really felt like Mordret had completely lost his mind… of course, she knew that he hadn’t. That man was too insidious to be broken so easily. More than that, he had never been sane, to begin with — how could one lose something they had never possessed?

‘Right. Why wouldn’t he unleash nothing upon his enemies?’

Normal people could not survive in the white mist of the Hollow Mountains. However, Mordret could — he was kin to the Others and the Creatures of Nothing, after all. So, his vessels would be able to prey on the warriors of the Hunger Domain, moving freely through the mist.

That was what Cassie had expected to happen. She had assumed that Mordret would wipe out the weaker soldiers of the Dreamspawn with the help of nothing, then send his vessels to slaughter the stronger ones by using the mist to his advantage.

But reality was different from her expectations.

‘W-what is happening?’

In Cassie’s mind… myriad points of view she had been perceiving the world through were vanishing, as if erased from existence. She was not surprised that many of the human soldiers who had invaded the Ebony Island ceased to exist, the fragile sparks of their lives washed away by the tide of nothingness. However, most of the perspectives she was losing did not belong to the thralls of Asterion.

Instead, they belonged to the vessels of the King of Nothing.

The winged vessels that had been fighting a calamitous battle in the vast expanse of the Sky Above were dropping like flies, their corpses raining down and disappearing in the endless darkness of the Sky Below.

The vessels that had been arrayed on the black obsidian of the Ebony Island were toppling like broken dolls, their lifeless bodies veiled by the mist.

There were no visible wounds on their bodies, no explanation for why they died. It was as if some vast and harrowing force simply snuffed out their lives, leaving only empty shells behind.

The Hunger Domain suffered countless losses due to the flood of white mist Mordret had unleashed, but it was actually the King of Nothing himself who was seemingly being eradicated.

The scale and scope of the devastation that had befallen his vast legion of vessels was simply unimaginable. It was as if the Ebony Island and its surroundings had been swallowed by a dark hell of death, where finality reigned.

Cassie studied the battered figure of Mordret, then asked in a subdued tone:

“What is happening? What are you doing?”

Mordret turned to her, and his features contorted in a pained grimace for a moment.

Then, a pale smile illuminated his bloodied face.

“Well, Song of the Fallen… Cassia. I am ashamed to admit that I have become somewhat of a degenerate gambler as of late. And as any degenerate gambler would do after being dealt a losing hand, I am going all in. It’s all or nothing for me, I’m afraid. And while I certainly hope to win it all… if that’s not in the cards, I’ll just have to settle for nothing instead.”

She frowned.

Suddenly, the cuts left on her face by the pieces of shrapnel seemed to hurt more, and the pain pulsing in her empty eye socket was harder to endure.

“Stop speaking in riddles. I don’t understand.”

Mordret reached the center of the hall by then and stopped there, breathing heavily. The seven Reflections surrounded him, their stolen forms reflected in his eyes.

Then, their figures grew vague, and a moment later, seven identical copies of Mordret were staring back at him, his battered silhouette reflecting in their eyes instead.

A violent tremor ran through the Ebony Tower, and Cassie’s frown deepened.

She turned her head slightly, as if listening to what was happening outside.

Out there, in the mist…

A short while ago, the vanguard forces of humanity had been rallying around the Saints.

The invaders had lost many soldiers when the flood of nothingness washed over them, Awakened warriors dissolving into mist as their existence was literally erased from the world.

Most of them would have shared the same fate, with only the strongest Saints managing to maintain themselves through sheer stalwart determination… if not for the fact that they were thralls of the Dreamspawn, and therefore conduits of his will.

As the sea of white mist drowned the Ebony Island, Asterion had been approaching the end of the heavenly chain. Jumping down into the ghostly embrace of the swirling fog, he looked around with a thoughtful expression, drops of blood still falling from the blade of his scarlet sword.

Asterion frowned slightly and unleashed his Will, anchoring the existence of his thralls in reality.

The litany of distant screams permeating the mist slowly died out, replaced by an ominous silence. Of course, not all of the human soldiers were saved… could be saved. After all, even if each of them was a conduit of Supreme Will, not all of them could channel that Will in equal measure.

The Awakened were limited in their capacity as its mediums. The Ascended were better suited to be the Dreamspawn’s mortal instruments, their souls able to endure more. But it was the Saints who could truly become heralds of his Will, unleashing it upon the world.

So, the Saints became beacons for the rest of the soldiers to rally around. Not only could they firmly maintain their existence with the help of their Sovereign, but they were also able to allow him to influence the world around them, creating islands of the Hunger Domain in the devouring sea of swirling white mist.

Within the bounds of their influence, the soldiers did not have to fear nothingness.

…They still had to fear what hid in the nothingness, though.