The sensation of weightlessness was not a peaceful drifting; it was a violent, staggering drop into absolute nothingness.
The mountain peak, the howling wind, the ancient altar, and the endless sea of white clouds did not simply fade away—they vanished in a single, silent snap, leaving Sunless suspended in a place where time, space, and form held no meaning.
‘Where… am I?’
There was no up or down.
There was no cold or heat.
He could not feel the cracked ‘Scavenger’s Carapace’ pressing against his chest, nor could he feel his own frostbitten toes, his malnourished ribs, or his shallow, gasping breaths.
His physical vessel had dissolved, leaving behind only the naked, unburdened core of his soul, hovering like a tiny, pale ember in a vast, infinite ocean of dark.
This was not the quiet, comforting shadow of the mountain pool.
This was the primordial void—the cosmic expanse between the realms of reality and the nightmare, the vast hall through which all souls traveled when summoned or returned by the Spell.
And it was not empty.
In the endless expanse of blackness, millions—no, billions—of tiny, glittering specks of light hovered in the void like a galaxy of fallen stars.
Each speck of light was a soul.
Some burned with a fierce, blinding crimson brilliance; others flickered with a cold, sickly green or a majestic, golden radiance.
They were the souls of those trapped in the Nightmare—the sleepers, the Awakened, the Masters, the Saints, and the countless mortals whose lives were being weighed on the scales of destiny across a thousand different worlds.
‘So many…’ Sunny thought, his spirit trembling as he looked out at the infinite constellation of souls.
‘How many people have died in this darkness?
How many are dying right now?’
As he drifted, the vast, cosmic quiet of the void began to hum.
It was a low, deep vibration that did not echo through air, but resonated directly within his newly formed Shadow Core.
It sounded like the beating of a colossal, ancient heart—a heart that had been sleeping beneath the foundations of the universe since before the gods were born.
And then, he felt the gaze.
It was not a physical eye opening in the dark.
It was a sudden, terrifying shift in the fabric of the void itself.
A vast, incomprehensible consciousness—an entity so colossal that the entire constellation of floating souls seemed like mere dust motes in its presence—stirred in the absolute depths of the dark expanse.
The Nightmare Spell.
It did not speak with a voice of words, but with a torrent of ancient, golden runes that erupted across the void, illuminating the dark expanse with a blinding, celestial glare.
[Evaluating soul record…]
[True Name granted: Lost from Light.]
[Divine Lineage detected: Shadow God.]
[Soul Core transformed.]
The golden script hovered in the void, expanding until it filled Sunny’s entire vision, detailing the true essence of what he had achieved—and what he had become.
[Shadow Core: 1/1]
[Aspect: Shadow Blade]
[Aspect Rank: Divine]
[Aspect Description: You are a remnant of the dead god, born from the deepest shadows of the world. Darkness is not your enemy; it is your home, your cloak, and your domain. While wrapped in shadows, your presence is hidden from the world, and your strength is multiplied by the silence of the night.]
[Innate Attribute: Mark of Divinity]
[Attribute Description: Your soul carries the quiet, dormant spark of the ancient shadow. Though faint, it commands the reverence of the dark and the dread of lesser beings.]
[Innate Attribute: Fated]
[Attribute Description: Strings of fate weave around you with extraordinary density. Misfortune and glory, tragedy and triumph—the world will draw you into its grandest plays, whether you wish it or not.]
[Flaw: Clear Conscience]
[Flaw Description: You cannot tell a lie. Whenever you are asked a direct question, your voice will speak the absolute truth, regardless of your desire to conceal it.]
Sunny stared at the floating runes, his spiritual form shivering in the void. Find the original chapter at g.com.
‘Fated…’ he noted, his inner voice laced with cold, bitter sarcasm.
‘A fancy word for saying the universe is going to constantly throw me into terrible, life-threatening situations just to see if I can crawl out of them alive.’
And then came the final reward—the culmination of surviving a trial that should have claimed his pathetic, street-rat life a hundred times over.
[You have received an Echo.]
Sunny’s breath hitched, even in his soul form.
An Echo!
In the Waking World, Echoes were the rarest, most prized treasures in existence.
They were not mere Memories that could be summoned as tools or armor; Echoes were the lingering, spiritual shadows of slain Nightmare Creatures, recreated by the Spell to serve their killer as loyal, mindless guardians.
A single Echo, even of a common Dormant rank, was worth enough gold to buy an entire block in the upper spires of the real world.
[Echo: Mountain Scavenger]
[Echo Rank: Dormant]
[Echo Class: Beast]
[Echo Description: A bone-white scavenger that once hunted the cold, frozen passes of the high peaks. Now, its soul belongs to the shadow that brought its end.]
A faint, ghostly white silhouette materialized in the void beside Sunny—a smaller, shadowy version of the bone-white creature he had slain near the overturned wagon, its jointed limbs folded neatly, waiting silently for his command.
A dark, genuine grin broke across Sunny’s spiritual face.
‘An Echo…’ Sunny thought, staring at the bone-white shape.
‘A living, breathing bodyguard.
I don’t just have armor and a blade…
I have something that can tear a man’s throat out while I sleep.’
The golden runes slowly dissolved back into the dark expanse, leaving only the endless sea of floating souls surrounding him.
The weightless floating began to change.
The gentle drift turned into a sharp, accelerating drag.
The void was pushing him out, casting his soul back across the threshold of reality, returning him to the physical vessel he had left behind in the Waking World.
‘It’s over,’ Sunny realized, watching the constellation of souls recede into the distance.
‘I survived the First Nightmare.
I’m an Awakened now.’
The cosmic darkness fractured into a million blinding, white lines of light.
The profound silence of the void was suddenly torn apart by a harsh, grating, incredibly loud metallic sound.
BZZZZZZZZT!
“Hey! Wake up, dirtbag!”
The transition from the divine, quiet void to the sensory overload of reality was like being struck in the face with a heavy steel shovel.
Sunny snapped his eyes open, gasping violently as a surge of real, physical air flooded his lungs.
It wasn’t the crisp, freezing, unpolluted mountain air of the Nightmare realm.
It was stale, warm, and reeked heavily of cheap floor disinfectant, old sweat, and burnt synthetic coffee.
He was sitting on a cold, bench made of hard, molded plastic, his arms cuffed behind his back with heavy, magnetic restraint bracelets.
The harsh, flickering white glow of a fluorescent tube light buzzed directly overhead, hurting his eyes.
“I said, wake up!” a coarse, bored voice barked from across the room.
Sunny blinked, his dark blue eyes adjusting rapidly to the bright light.
He was inside an interrogation room in the Sector 25 police precinct—a sterile, concrete box with reinforced metal doors, a wide one-way mirror on the wall, and a scratched steel desk separating him from a thick-necked police officer dressed in a crisp, blue law enforcement uniform.
On the desk sat a digital tablet displaying Sunny’s citizen profile, along with a half-empty paper cup of cold coffee.
“Name: Sunless,” the officer read aloud, tapping the tablet screen with a thick, calloused finger without even looking up at Sunny.
“Age: Sixteen. Residence: Lower Sub-Level 4, Slum Block 12. Apprehended three hours ago for vagrancy and sleeping in a restricted transit tunnel.”
“You’ve been unconscious for nearly forty-five minutes, kid. We thought you were overdosing on cheap stims until your vitals stabilized. What’s wrong with you? Were you high?”
Sunny sat on the cold plastic bench, feeling the heavy, solid reality of his physical body.
His clothes were still the ragged, filthy street garments he had worn before entering the Spell, but underneath his tunic, his skin felt different.
The severe malnutrition that had plagued his ribs for sixteen years hadn’t vanished, but his muscles felt tightly coiled, his posture naturally balanced, and his senses… terrifyingly sharp.
He could hear the hum of the air circulation vents three rooms away.
He could see the microscopic scratches on the steel desk.
And in the corner of the interrogation room, where the fluorescent light failed to reach, the shadow cast by the officer’s chair seemed to twitch softly, acknowledging Sunny’s presence with a subtle, loyal nod.
His Shadow Core sat quiet and complete deep within his chest.
[Name: Sunless]
[True Name: Lost from Light]
[Rank: Awakened]
[Class: Monster]
[Shadow Core: 1/1]
[Aspect: Shadow Blade]
[Aspect Rank: Divine]
[Flaw: Clear Conscience]
The golden runes hovered briefly in his vision, invisible to the police officer sitting across from him.
“Hey! Are you deaf, trash?” the officer slammed his hand onto the steel desk, making the paper cup rattle.
“I asked you a question! Were you high in that tunnel, or were you trying to steal power cables?!”
Sunny opened his mouth to give his standard, evasive street answer—a practiced, lying excuse about feeling dizzy or looking for a lost coin.
But as he tried to frame the lie, a sharp, unyielding pressure suddenly clamped down on his throat.
It felt as if an invisible, iron hand had gripped his vocal cords, physically preventing him from uttering a single false syllable.
His Flaw.
[Flaw: Clear Conscience – You cannot tell a lie.]
Sunny’s eyes widened slightly in silent horror.
‘No… no, no, no!’ Sunny screamed internally, panic rising in his chest.
‘Not now!
Not to a cop!’
The officer leaned forward, his brow furrowing in suspicion as he watched Sunny hesitate.
“Well? Speak up, kid. What were you doing out there?”
The invisible iron hand on Sunny’s throat tightened, forcing his jaw to move, forcing his vocal cords to vibrate, compelling his voice to speak the absolute, unvarnished truth.
Sunny took a shallow breath, his dark blue eyes looking straight into the officer’s face, and spoke in a clear, completely calm voice:
“I was returning from the First Nightmare, where I killed a mountain beast, inherited the divine lineage of a dead god, and received a True Name.”
Silence descended upon the interrogation room.
The officer stared at Sunny for five long, agonizing seconds.
The fluorescent light overhead continued to buzz softly: BZZZZZZZZT…
The cop slowly leaned back in his chair, blinked twice, and rubbed his temples with a weary, heavy sigh.
“Great,” the officer muttered, reaching for his tablet and tapping the screen to input a mental health flag.
“Another street kid who fried his brain on black-market hallucinogens. Hey, squad room! Get the psych-eval team down here! We got a sixteen-year-old who thinks he’s a divine god!”
Sitting bound on the plastic bench, Sunny let out a long, quiet exhale, a cold, dark smirk touching his lips as his shadow stretched comfortably across the floor.
‘Well,’ Sunny thought, feeling the power of the shadow pulsing in his soul.
‘At least the truth sounds so insane that nobody will ever believe it.’