Shadow Slave

Depicted on the ancient engravings, a beautiful land was bathed in sunlight. Lush forests, glistening rivers, and fields of flowers surrounded human cities built of stone. From what Sunny could tell, this was the Forgotten Shore before the mysterious and terrifying curse had turned it into the desolate hell it was today.

In the next mural, the beautiful land rested under the sky that was full of stars. Suddenly, one of them fell to the ground, causing a wave of destruction to wash over the human cities. When people approached the center of the crater left behind by the falling star…

Sunny almost stumbled when he saw the next engraving. In it, a naked human figure was standing at the bottom of the crater, wreathed in light. The inhabitants of the stone cities were surrounding the radiant figure, dressed in archaic garments and armor.

The figure seemed beautiful and pure, as though untouched by the imperfections of the mundane world. What made Sunny lose his composure was not its beauty and not how eerily familiar the soft radiance emanated by its skin was, but...

Its face.

On it, three eyes were burning with pure, incandescent light. Two were just like that of a human, with the third one situated above the other ones, right in the middle of the creature's forehead.

…Just like that of the terrible skull that the walking colossus had shattered with his stone hammer in the middle of a raging storm.

'...What does it mean? What is this thing?'

To Sunny's dismay, the next engraving was heavily damaged. He couldn't discern anything of what was depicted on it.

However, the one after that was in almost perfect condition.

On it, the radiant figure was kneeling on the ground, its chest pierced by the spear of the tallest human among the inhabitants of the beautiful land. What flowed from the terrible wound, however, was not blood, but an endless flood of pure darkness.

'Why... why did they attack it? What happened?'

Left without an answer, Sunny walked forward and soon reached the next mural. He saw darkness devouring the humans gathered around the fatally wounded creature and spread. Soon, it devoured the crater left by the fallen star, too.

And then, it devoured the entire world.

"...The curse of all-consuming darkness," he whispered.

Finally, Sunny got a glimpse at the origin of the terrible disaster that had destroyed this land and turned it into a hellish nightmare. Although the details of it were still unclear, one of the mysteries he had been trying to solve now had an answer.

But the story told by the engravings was not yet over. Walking further into the ancient mine, Sunny learned of what had happened next.

As the darkness spread across the world, it reached the skies. The stars were either devoured by it or fell down, turning the sky into a terrible, lightless abyss.

The starless void.

The sun never rose above the cursed land again, leaving humans trembling in the cold. Soon, horrifying creatures came from the darkness to devour them. The best and the brightest of the ancient civilization took arms to defend their cities, and for a while, they were able to resist the tide of monsters.

…But then, humans themselves started to turn into abominable horrors.

At that point, Sunny felt a cold shiver running down his spine and couldn't help but tremble.

Not because he was affected by the tragic disaster that had befallen these ancient people.

But because it all seemed so terrifyingly familiar.

The details might not have been the same, but the end result was eerily similar to what was happening in the real world right now.

A curse that suddenly appeared and spread across the entire world. The horrible monsters that came from nowhere to attack settlements and devour humans. The champions who had taken charge of defending their kind from the abominable creatures. And the fact that some humans had begun turning into those creatures themselves.

Was it not the same as the Nightmare Spell spreading like a plague across the globe, the Nightmare Creatures coming through the Gates, the Awakened rising to fight against them, and the unfortunate soles who failed their First Nightmare transforming into monstrous abominations?

The only difference was that the story of the civilization of the Forgotten Shore was already over. Eventually, the curse had destroyed it. The people of his own world, however, were still trying to resist such fate.

But was it even possible to defeat fate? The inhabitants of the Forgotten Shore were proud and mighty. They were capable of building cities that stood for thousands of years and fighting against the most terrifying monsters on equal footing. And yet, in the end, they were utterly obliterated and wiped out. Their land had become a cursed desert.

Would the real world turn into a desolate hell like the Forgotten Shore too, one day?

With a dark expression on his face, Sunny turned away from the engraving he was staring at and walked away.

There were a few more left ahead, still.

On one of them, seven heroes came together from different parts of the dark land. Under their protection and guidance, people living in the darkness migrated from their half-destroyed cities and came to the shore of the vast crater. There, they built a new home for themselves, one surrounded by a mighty wall that no monster could scale or breach.

One of the heroes, a man depicted with a mason's hammer in his hand, was in charge of building the wall. Despite the fact that the part of the engraving depicting his face was damaged, it was unmistakably one of the seven founders of the Starlight Legion, the man whose statue had carried them across the Forgotten Shore.

In the second to last engraving, the mighty wall was finished, and the city was prospering amidst the darkness. The seven heroes stood at some distance from it, surrounding…

Sunny's eyes narrowed.

The seven heroes were surrounding an inconceivably tall tower. It loomed above them, connecting heaven and earth like the axis of the world. Despite its cyclopean height, the tower was still unfinished.

The Crimson Spire. Only it was not crimson yet, as there were no growths of cursed coral covering its walls.

On the last engraving, the tower was complete, and on top of it…

On top of it, a new sun was burning bright, bathing the land and the celebrating people in the light once again.

The darkness was gone.