Sunny stood frozen, his limbs bound by the absolute authority of the Shadow Bond.
The hot, ash-choked wind swept across the scorched carapace, carrying the acrid stench of melted metal, burnt flesh, and ancient decay.
Beside him, the dark copy of himself—the entity that had just used his True Name to enslave him—began to walk calmly toward the shallow crater where Nephis lay.
Sunny’s mind was a chaotic, bleeding wreck.
His thoughts tumbled over one another in a mad, desperate scramble to reconcile the impossible reality forced upon him.
He was a slave to a shadow that shared his face, his voice, and his True Name.
He was a prisoner in his own flesh, unable to raise a hand, unable to speak, forced to watch as the dark reflection approached the dying white flame.
Near the center of the crater, sitting casually upon a throne woven entirely from solid darkness, was the second figure Sunny had seen from above.
As they drew near, the figure on the shadow chair shifted.
The entity stood up slowly, stretching its limbs with a fluid, terrifying grace.
The pitch-black darkness that had been suffocating Nephis’s dying flame pooled around its feet like liquid ink, then rose, wrapping around its body like a cloak of living shadows.
Sunny’s breath hitched in his chest, though his body allowed no sound to escape.
The figure turned.
It was another one.
Another copy of himself.
This one, however, was different.
It did not possess the cold, pristine porcelain look of the dark copy standing beside Sunny.
Its skin was cracked and dark, like baked earth, and its eyes burned with a mad, crimson fire.
It wore an armor forged from twisted obsidian, and its presence radiated an pressure so crushing, so monstrous, that the air around it rippled with distortion.
The figure looked down at the unconscious, burning form of Nephis, then looked up at Sunny.
It opened its mouth and began to laugh.
The sound was horrifying.
It was a deep, raspy, maniacal roar that shook the very dust off the scorched shell beneath their feet.
It echoed across the vast expanse of the Great River, vibrating against Sunny’s ears with a maddening, manic cadence.
“Look at him!” the mad copy roared, pointing a clawed finger at Sunny’s immobile form.
“Look at the little puppet! He still doesn’t understand! He still thinks he’s the hero of his own story!”
Then, the mad entity snapped its fingers.
Snap.
The darkness pooling at its feet surged outward.
Five distinct shadows broke away from the central pool, rising from the scorched stone like ink blooming in clear water.
They twisted, stretched, and solidified into tall, humanoid shapes.
Sunny’s eyes widened in sheer, unadulterated terror.
One by one, the shapes took form.
And then, the copy that had forced Sunny down from the sky stepped forward, joining the five risen figures and the mad throne-dweller.
Seven shadows.
Plus the master standing in the center.
Eight.
Sunny’s soul cores violently shuddered.
‘Eight…’
His mind spun into absolute, suffocating overdrive.
He knew those shapes.
Gods above, he knew every single one of them!
They were his Shadows—his loyal, trusted companions, the manifestations of his divine Aspect!
Except…
they weren’t his.
They stood behind the mad copy, surrounding it like a royal guard.
And more terrifyingly…
they were distinct.
They weren’t mere extensions of essence.
They were fully manifested, independent, physical entities.
‘What…
what is this?!’ Sunny screamed internally, his sanity fraying at the edges.
‘How can they be seven?!
Just like me?!
I have five shadows!
And then, a thought struck him like a bolt of lightning, freezing his soul to its very core.
‘Wait…
how can they talk?
How can they move like that?
They are shadows!’
In his experience, Shadows—even those granted sentience by the Spell like Saint or Imp—communicated through silent thoughts, subtle gestures, or soul-transmition.
They did not form complex, physical guards that laughed and conversed in human tongue unless…
unless their master possessed a power far beyond anything Sunny could currently comprehend.
Desperate for answers, unable to move his body or use his voice, Sunny did the only thing he could still control.
He pushed his perception to its absolute limits, channeling his shadow sense into the ethereal plane.
He reached out, peering directly into the souls of the figures standing before him.
He looked into their soul seas.
What he saw broke his mind entirely.
Sunny expected to see soul cores.
He expected to see the familiar structure of Awakened, Ascended, or even Transcendent ranks—the steady, glowing orbs of essence that defined a creature’s power in the hierarchy of the Nightmare Spell.
Instead, when his sight pierced their spiritual shells, he was met with an infinite, suffocating abyss of pure, absolute darkness.
Inside each of the six figures standing around the mad copy…
were seven towering, monstrous cores, burning with a lightless, cosmic fire.
They were not Ascended.
They were not Transcendent.
They were not even Supreme or Sacred.
They were Corrupted Titans.
All of them.
Every single figure standing before him was a Corrupted Titan—beings of unimaginable, world-ending power, entities whose very existence was a cataclysm capable of razing entire continents to ash.
Seven Corrupted Titans, standing behind a eighth.
‘No…
no, no, no!’ Sunny’s mind collapsed into pure, unadulterated horror.
‘That’s impossible!
That’s completely impossible!
A Shadow can’t be a Corrupted Titan!
A human can’t command seven Corrupted Titans!
What kind of monster is he?!
WHAT AM I LOOKING AT?!’
The sheer, soul-crushing weight of their collective power pressed down on Sunny’s soul sea.
It felt as if seven mountains were resting directly upon his chest, threatening to grind his spiritual cores into dust.
The air around the titans warped and fractured, space itself buckling under the density of their divine, corrupted essence.
As Sunny hovered on the verge of total mental collapse, the mad copy standing in the center took a slow, deliberate step forward.
Its soot-stained boots clicked against the burned rock.
Its burning, crimson eyes locked onto Sunny’s wide, terrified gaze.
It raised a pale, clawed hand.
Before Sunny could even register the movement, the entity was standing directly in front of him.
The speed was so absolute, so blinding, that space itself seemed to have been erased between them.
The mad copy reached out and grabbed Sunny by the chin.
Its fingers were ice-cold, like frozen iron, digging into Sunny’s jaw with a force that threatened to shatter his bones.
It forced Sunny’s head up, forcing him to stare directly into its manic, blood-red eyes.
“Ha… ha ha ha!”
The mad copy chuckled softly, its breath smelling of ozone, ash, and ancient blood.
“Look at you,” it whispered, its voice dripping with a terrifying mixture of pity, amusement, and profound madness.
“You can’t process it, can you? Your little mind is breaking at the seams. You’re trying to calculate, trying to measure, trying to find a logical path through the maze.”
The entity leaned in closer, its face inches from Sunny’s.
“I was the same,” it rasped, its crimson eyes widening with a sudden, wild intensity.
“Oh, Sunny… I was exactly like you. Cautious. Calculating. Paranoid. Thinking that if I was just smart enough, if I was just careful enough, I could outsmart fate. I could save everyone. I could break the chains.”
The grip on his chin tightened until Sunny felt his jaw crack.
“…now I am changed.”
Before Sunny could process the terrifying words, a sudden, blinding flash of movement occurred.
There was no sound.
No warning.
THWACK.
A sharp, agonizing sensation erupted in the center of Sunny’s chest.
Sunny blinked, his vision instantly blooming with crimson spots.
He looked down.
Protruding from the center of his chest, right through his dark armor, through his Marble Shell, and directly through his heart, was the tip of a black jade blade.
The Sin of Solace.
The dark copy standing beside him had moved with effortless, terrifying precision.
It held the hilt of the jade sword, thrusting it straight through Sunny’s spine from behind, pinning his heart to his backbone.
“Gah…!”
A choked, wet sound escaped Sunny’s lips—the first sound his body had been allowed to make since being bound by the Shadow Bond.
A crushing, unimaginable pain surged through every nerve in his body.
It was not merely physical agony; it was a soul-rending, agonizing destruction that tore into his five shadow cores.
The cursed blade sang with a high-pitched, screaming frequency, flooding his bloodstream with pure, concentrated madness and dark essence.
The fire in his chest expanded, devouring his lungs, his veins, his very life force.
Sunny tried to collapse.
He tried to fall to his knees, to clutch his chest, to scream at the sky.
But he couldn’t.
The absolute authority of the Shadow Bond held his body perfectly upright.
He remained standing, pinned like a butterfly to a display board, his head held up by the cold, iron grip of the mad copy on his chin.
Blood spilled from his mouth, pouring over the clawed fingers holding his jaw.
“Why…” Sunny managed to rasp through the crimson foam filling his throat, his eyes wide with desperate, dying confusion.
“Why…”
The mad copy holding his chin smiled gently, almost tenderly.
“Because the cycle must be completed, little slave,” it whispered softly.
“You must die here… so that he can be born.”
The jade blade was twisted violently inside his chest.
CRACK.
Sunny’s heart exploded.
His shadow cores shattered one by one, detonating in his soul sea like dying stars.
The excruciating pain peaked, blinding his senses, drowning out the sight of the six Corrupted Titans, the dying white fire of Nephis, and the dark, smiling face of his master.
The world went dark.
His vision collapsed into an absolute, lightless void.
The sensation of his physical flesh dissolved.
His soul, severed from its anchor, began to drift away into the cold, infinite expanse of nothingness.
His consciousness was fading.
Slowly…
Gradually…
The agony faded into a deep, numb tranquility.
The noise died.
The fear disappeared.
There was only the endless, silent dark.
Time lost all meaning.
Sunny drifted in the darkness, a nameless, formless spark of lost soul, suspended in the timeless abyssal quiet of the void.
And then…
In the deepest depths of that million-year darkness…
a faint, mechanical chime echoed.
It was distant, as though sounding from the far side of a universe that had long since burned out.
But it was clear, absolute, and undeniable.
The voice of the Nightmare Spell resonated through the endless dark, speaking to the broken, slumbering soul(MAD PRINCE):
[Welcome back, lost from light .]