Shadow Slave

Sunny held his breath, affected by the disturbing scene in front of him.

The corpse was kneeling on the floor of the small cell, its hand chained to the floor. There was a circle carved into the stone around it, with countless symbols that Sunny could not understand surrounding it.

However, the circle was broken. In the thousands of years since the fall of the Dark City, the floor of the dungeon cell had cracked, with several fractures running straight through the intricate engraving.

Whatever it was the circle was meant to contain had either perished or escaped a long time ago.

Now, the only thing that remained was a withered corpse.

Coming closer, Sunny took another look at the person who had been imprisoned and died under the ruined cathedral, in a cell situated exactly beneath the statue of the nameless goddess.

Because of the dark mantle and the black lacquered mask, Sunny couldn't glean a lot of information about the corpse. It seemed to belong to a human, but other than that, everything about it was a mystery.

What terrible sin had this person committed to be condemned to this awful death?

Strangely, Sunny's intuition was silent. It was as though there was nothing in front of him at all. To his sixth sense, the prisoner of the underground cell appeared as an empty space.

'...Weird. This person had clearly been either hated or feared a lot to be locked behind all these barriers. Surely, finding such a creature would affect my fate… why don't I feel anything, then?'

With a tense frown, he took a deep breath and carefully stepped inside the circle.

…It was then that Sunny noticed a chaotic mess of runes drawn on the floor near the prisoner's left hand. The sight of them almost sent him into a seizure.

Staggering away, Sunny fell to his knees and threw up.

'Agh… damn it!'

Those runes… those were the same runes the Spell used to describe the mysterious Unknown. Only here, the intensity of the terrible effect they had on the mind of anyone who saw them was much, much stronger.

'What the hell?'

Wiping his mouth, Sunny grimaced and glanced at the masked corpse with a bit of resentment.

Then, he picked himself off the floor, took a deep breath… a looked at the terrible runes once again.

Immediately, Sunny felt a splitting headache and a sickening, terrible sensation spreading through his mind. It was as though all his thoughts and memories were being torn and twisted. But despite all of it, Sunny persevered and kept staring at the final message that the prisoner had left behind.

He knew he couldn't read the runes — he didn't know that particular language, and the Spell either was forbidden, incapable, or refused to translate them. But for some reason, Sunny felt compelled to try.

Fighting through the intense pain, he slowly studied the strange runes. And then, suddenly, his eyes widened.

Because right below the chaotic mess of them, a line of text was written in the script he was familiar with — the usual runic language that the Spell always used.

This time, it did not provide any translation. Luckily, Sunny had studied these runes and knew enough about them to understand what was written himself.

The last thing the person imprisoned under the cathedral wrote before succumbing to death made him shudder.

Scratched into the stone was a short prayer:

"Hail Weaver

Demon of Fate

Firstborn

of the -unknown-"

***

Sunny stared at the runes until he was on the verge of losing consciousness. Only then did he turn away and closed his eyes.

The nauseating dissonance of the terrible runes stayed carved into his mind. Only after several minutes passed did it fade a little, allowing him to breathe again.

So… the mysterious Weaver whose forbidden lineage he had inherited was, in fact, associated with fate. Just like Sunny himself.

What were the chances?

'...That's Fated for you, I guess.'

The word he translated as "Demon" wasn't the one used to describe Nightmares Creatures of the third rank, but a different one.

Perhaps calling it a spirit or a daemon would have been more suitable — a mortal, but powerful and ominous deity. One different from gods, but sharing the same nature. However, Sunny wasn't that versed in mystical terminology. All he knew was that the runic language was incredibly rich in words describing all types of monsters and creatures, while the human language wasn't.

Hence "Demon" was fine with him.

Apart from the tantalizing revelation about the mysterious Weaver, he had noticed one other important thing by forcing himself to study the runes.

Before, Sunny had thought that there was a single entity that the Spell refused to call by its name and simply described as "-unknown-" — leading him to call it the Unknown.

…Yes, Sunny was not that imaginative when it came to word choice.

Whether the Unknown were a kind of beings, a single existence, or a force of nature, he did not know.

But now, he realized that there were actually two types of forbidden runes, and two things that the Spell did not know how or did not want to mention.

One was the same as those used in the description of the Drop of Ichor, which stated that the Vile Thieving Bird was hated both by the gods and by the Unknown. It also said that the reflection of the Unknown stayed forever frozen in the depths of Weaver's pupils, and that just looking at it drove the Thieving Bird mad.

The other was the same as those used in the description of the Stone Saint, which was created by "the last child of the -unknown-", and now here by the dead prisoner, who had called Weaver the firstborn of the "-unknown-".

'What the hell does all of this supposed to mean?'

His suspicion that Weaver had something to do with the creation of the Nightmare Spell only grew stronger after learning that he… she… it?.... they had something to do with the domain of fate. After all, the Spell seemed to be weaved out of numerous strings of fate, and there was this being called Weaver, who had the blood of gods in their veins, but was also somehow connected to the Unknown.

Feeling his headache only growing stronger, Sunny winced and shook his head.

'Later. I will think about it later.'

There would be time to ponder about all this later. Or not, if he dies trying to escape the Forgotten Shore. Either way, that time was not now.

Turning back to the chained corpse, Sunny cautiously avoided looking at the dangerous runes and kneeled in front of it.

He wanted to know what was hiding behind the mask.

But as soon as he touched it, the corpse suddenly shattered and fell apart, turning into dust right in front of his eyes. Even its dark mantle rotted and disappeared, as though the thousands of years that had passed since the fall of the Dark City and the destruction of the cathedral finally caught up with it.

Soon, all that was left was a pile of dust.

…And the lacquered mask lying on top of it, its black surface glinting slightly in the pale light of the ghostly torches.