Shadow Slave

Several days passed with nothing disastrous happening. Sunny and Cassie spent them inside the small room, eating the food Welthe or one of the Echoes brought them and restoring their strength. Even though they were constantly watched, both remained calm and somewhat relaxed.

Outside, things weren't as peaceful.

Of course, Mordret had not killed again… doing so would have only compromised his efforts to frame Sunny for the murders. However, the air was so full of tension that one could almost cut it with a knife. With every day of nothing happening, the already frayed nerves of the Lost drew tauter and tauter.

Fear, unease, and anxious anticipation built and built, mixing under the pressure of uncertainty into dark, viscous, and volatile dread.

Sometimes, doing nothing produced the best result.

...Mordret knew when to push and when to pull too well.

With nothing to do but wait for an inevitable attack and nowhere to release the tension, the Lost spent a lot of time staring at the closed doors that led to the quarters where Sunny and Cassie were kept, their face growing darker with each day.

Something had to give… at this point, even Pierce and Welthe didn't seem confident in their ability to keep these soldiers under control and battle-ready. The two Masters spent the time making their own plans. Sunny didn't know what these plans were, since he didn't dare to send one of his shadows to spy on the formidable knights of Valor.

…He had a pretty good guess, though.

On one of these days, he noticed that the Lost seemed especially restless. Pierce and Welthe were behaving a bit strangely, as well.

Sunny frowned, then walked to the door, picked up a tray of food that had been delivered by an Echo a few hours earlier, then brought it over and handed one of the bowls to Cassie.

"Eat well today."

The blind girl gave him a short nod. To an outsider, this exchange would not have looked like anything, but the two of them knew each other very well… no matter how complicated this relationship was.

Sunny had let Cassie know everything he needed to convey, and she had signaled that his message was received.

Not saying anything else, they concentrated on the food.

Although the Night Temple was sealed and cut off from the outside world, it seemed as though the temperature inside had dropped by a lot in the last few days. The cathedral was chilly before, but now, the cold felt intrusive and everpresent.

Beyond the black walls of the Citadel, November was in full swing. It was at least one week past the date when Sunny and Cassie were supposed to rendezvous with the rest of the cohort on the Shipwreck island, in case Valor denied them access to the Gateway.

Sunny wondered how Effie and Kai were doing right now. Were they worried, or waiting patiently, not knowing that everything had gone horribly wrong?

There was no way to know.

He sighed and looked at Cassie. The blind girl was sitting silently, staring into nothingness. They were close enough for him to see the reflection of his pale face in her beautiful blue eyes.

Sunny smirked.

'Huh… not bad.'

He had looked terrible after crawling out of the iron cage, but by now, his appearance was more or less back to normal. He felt much better, too.

Whatever fate had in store for him, he was ready.

…A few hours later, the door of their small room opened, and Welthe appeared outside. The Master looked at them somberly and said in an even voice:

"Lady Cassia, Awakened Sunless. The situation has changed a bit. It is… not safe for the two of you to remain here anymore. Come. We have to move you to a different location."

Sunny stared at her for a few moments, then asked cautiously:

"Is, uh… is everything alright?"

She lingered, then answered succinctly:

"...It will be."

'Wow. Not ominous at all.'

Without much choice, Sunny and Cassie stood up and followed the red-haired Master. They were led into the main hall of the fortified encampment and through it, feeling the Lost follow them with dark gazes.

At some point, several Echoes appeared to their right and left, as if to protect them should anything happen.

…Or to prevent them from escaping, depending on how one was inclined to look at it.

The small procession left the stronghold of the Valor forces and entered the corridors of the inner sanctum. They walked through the maze of them and entered a spiral staircase.

Sunny looked around tentatively, then asked:

"Where are we going?"

Welthe gestured down.

"The bell tower."

She didn't add anything else, as if her answer had explained everything. Sunny scowled, but didn't press the issue.

What was the point?

The staircase was long and winding, circling the entire tower many times. With each revolution, the spiral became narrower. From time to time, they saw closed doors to their left, but never to their right.

Finally, after a while, they reached the end of the stairs and waited as Welthe opened a heavy gate blocking the path forward.

Sunny and Cassie found themselves at the very bottom of the main bell tower of the Night Temple. Somewhere below them, a massive bell was swaying gently on an ancient iron chain. The tip of the seventh belfry was narrow, encompassing only a circular corridor and one central chamber. Currently, they were looking at its door.

The door was slightly opened.

Welthe stopped, then looked at Sunny and gestured forward.

"Come inside."

Sunny threw a glance at her, then at the Echoes surrounding him. He hesitated for a few moments, then sighed, swung the door open, and stepped into the chamber.

He found himself in a room built of cold stone. It was dark and full of deafening silence, arranged in the shape of a heptagon. Its seven corners were drowning in shadows, and at each of its seven walls, a large mirror frame stood.

However, the frames were empty. The mirrors they had once housed were long shattered and gone.

Sunny stared at them for a moment.

'Well… at least it's now clear where those thousands of mirror shards came from.'

That discrepancy had been tormenting him for a while. In a prison where no mirrors were allowed, where had Mordret found all those shards? Where had the piles of broken mirrors that Cassie saw in her vision appeared from? Now, he had an answer.

Satisfied, Sunny lowered his gaze and looked at the figures waiting for him inside the dark chamber.

Pierce was standing in its center, surrounded by the rest of the Echoes. His eyes were cold and heavy.

The fearsome master grimaced, then said, his voice low and threatening:

"Whatever you think of doing… I would advise against it."

At the same time, the door of the chamber closed with a deafening bang. The Echoes that had escorted them here were already inside, behind Sunny. Welthe was there, too.

She was holding a blade to Cassie's throat.

Her expression was dark and calm.

Sunny lingered for a couple of seconds, then slowly raised his hands with his palms open.

'Damn. How very unexpected... what a surprise...'