She could no longer see the grand design.
She could no longer predict events years or months in advance.
Her grand visions of the Great River were gone, crushed when he had ripped her eyes from her skull.
But two seconds?
In the sluggish, mundane reality of ordinary humans, two seconds was a brief hesitation.
A quick breath.
A momentary lapse in judgment.
But in a battle between Supreme beings, Titans, and Transcendent horrors?
In a realm where movement occurred at the speed of thought, where space was severed in a microsecond, and where absolute destruction was delivered in the blink of an eye?
Two seconds was an eternity.
It meant that in any physical engagement, the Echo of Torment would react to an attack before the enemy’s synapses had even fired the command to strike.
It meant absolute, infallible evasion.
It meant perfectly timed, lethal counters.
It was a localized, concentrated form of omniscience that made her practically untouchable in direct combat.
A slow, appreciative hum vibrated in his chest.
“Interesting,” he whispered into the void of his soul sea.
“Very interesting.”
As he dismissed the description, another prompt from the Nightmare Spell materialized before his eyes, written in runes of pure, glowing silver.
[Do you wish to convert this Echo into a Shadow?]
The Mad Prince paused.
He stared at the silver runes, a torrent of ancient, bloody memories surfacing in his mind.
He remembered the last time he had interacted with this specific prompt.
It felt like an eternity ago.
He had been Sunless back then—a desperate, paranoid boy fighting for survival in a world that wanted to grind him into dust.
He had converted Saint, pouring his hard-earned fragments into her dormant shell, marveling at the miracle of her birth.
He had done the same for Fiend.
He had nurtured them, fought beside them, bled with them.
And then, when the Defilement took root, when he realized the sheer, impossible volume of power required to break the temporal loops of the Great River…
he had systematically slaughtered every single one of them.
He had driven his blade through Saint’s loyal heart.
He had crushed Fiend’s skull.
He had choked the life from Nightmare.
He had devoured their essence, cannibalized their shadows, and absorbed their fragments directly into his own cores to force his evolution to the Titan class.
He had only destroyed them.
But now…
the situation had changed.
He was a transcendent Titan.
His seven cores were overflowing with an ocean of shadow fragments—seven thousand out of seven thousand, an absolute maximum that could not be breached until he challenged the Fourth Nightmare.
He had a surplus of power, and he was currently lacking in independent, intelligent commanders for his legion of the dead.
The lifeless husks of Saint and Fiend that he manifested were incredibly powerful, but they were ultimately just puppets controlled by his own divided attention.
Torment, however, converted into a true Shadow, possessing the [Near Sight] attribute?
She would be an autonomous, invincible vanguard.
She would be an incredibly useful tool in his impending war against the remaining Plagues and the shifting currents of the Tomb of Ariel.
“Yes,” the Mad Prince said aloud, his voice echoing with absolute authority across the dark realm.
He accepted the prompt.
[Shadow fragments will be consumed.][300/7000]
It was a trivial cost.
A drop from a boundless ocean.
Instantly, the violet sphere hovering above his palm shattered.
It did not dissolve peacefully.
It exploded into a violent, roaring tempest of dark essence.
The absolute silence of the soul sea was shattered by the howling of a shadow storm.
The Mad Prince stood perfectly still, his black silk tunic whipping violently in the ethereal wind, watching the creation process with cold, fascinated eyes.
The ambient darkness of the soul sea surged upward, answering the call of his Divine Aspect.
Shadows flowed like reverse waterfalls, spiraling into a towering vortex in front of him.
The 300 shadow fragments—pure, concentrated essence of his own transcendent power—ignited within the storm, acting as the foundation, the mortar, and the blueprint.
He could see the structure forming within the maelstrom.
It was a visceral, beautiful, and terrifying sight.
The shadows wove themselves together with the precision of a master artisan.
First came the skeleton—obsidian bones forged from the essence of his own .
Then came the musculature—cords of liquid shadow wrapping around the frame, pulsating with the dark vitality of shadow.
Finally, the skin—pale, flawless, and completely devoid of the grotesque mutations that had plagued her physical corpse.
The Shadow Conversion was absolute.
It did not merely reanimate the dead; it purified it. Find the original chapter at g.com.
It stripped away the rotting, insectoid carapace of the Defilement, burning out the plague and leaving behind only the core, essential truth of the entity.
The storm raged for what felt like hours, though time held no meaning in the dark realm.
And then, abruptly, the howling wind died.
The vortex of shadows collapsed inward, settling gently onto the surface of the black water like falling ash.
A figure stepped out from the dissipating mist.
The Mad Prince’s eyes narrowed slightly, a genuine spark of dark delight flaring within his obsidian pupils.
It was Torment.
But she was no longer the wretched, half-transformed abomination he had torn apart on the deck of the Chain Breaker.
The shadow had restored her to her absolute prime, capturing the ethereal, tragic beauty of the oracle before the Corruption had gnawed away her humanity.
She stood before him, woven entirely from darkness and memory.
Her long, flowing dress was exactly as it had been—elegant, seamless, trailing behind her on the surface of the black water like a shroud.
But it was no longer stained with blood; it was the color of the midnight sky.
Her long hair, once a vibrant, spun gold, was now a cascade of ashen silver, moving gently in an unseen, ethereal breeze.
Her pale skin was flawless, possessing the pristine, porcelain quality of a living statue.
And wrapped securely around her eyes, hiding the sockets he had so brutally emptied, was her blindfold.
It was a ribbon of pure, absolute darkness, a stark contrast against her pale face.
She possessed no soul cores of her own.
She was tethered entirely to him, an extension of his will, a manifestation of his power.
She was a Shadow.
His Shadow.
The dark girl stood perfectly still, her head tilted slightly downward in a posture of complete, absolute submission.
She did not speak.
She did not move.
She merely waited for the command of her sovereign.
The Mad Prince stepped closer, the black water rippling beneath his boots.
He reached out and traced a cold, cracked finger down the line of her pale cheek.
Her skin felt real—soft, cold, and flawless.
The absolute antithesis of the twitching, bloody meat he had left on the ship above.
A dark, incredibly cruel smile spread across the Mad Prince’s face, pulling at the corners of his mouth.
His eyes gleamed with a terrifying, absolute malice.
“Voo,” he whispered, the ancient, forgotten syllable slipping from his lips like a dark promise.
“Now I get a new toy to play with.