Soul Conduit].
The Attribute had no description, nor was its acquisition announced by the Spell. Staring at the runes for a few more seconds, Sunny cast one last glance at the white void of his Soul Sea and left it.
He had no answers for this mysterious sequence of events, but his intuition was ringing the alarm bell.
He was almost sure that the strange and painful process that began after he had absorbed the last shadow fragment was somehow interrupted. The white light permeating the Soul Sea felt unnatural and wrong, like something external to it rather than natural. The mysterious new Attribute was most likely connected to this external influence instead of to the saturation of the Shadow Core.
In fact, [Soul Conduit] was most likely the manifestation of the radiant force that was currently suppressing the core. In that sense, this Attribute was more akin to the mind hex of the Soul Devourer than to the Blood Weave. It wasn't something that Sunny had achieved or acquired. It was forced upon him, for reasons yet unknown.
Gritting his teeth, Sunny shifted and changed his grip on the handle of the Moonlight Shard. Then, he summoned the Ordinary Rock and immediately dismissed it. Finally, he ordered the shadow to wrap itself around his body, then shift to the ghostly stiletto and back.
...At least the new Attribute did not seem to be directly harmful. Sunny was still in control of his body and mind, as well as having full access to his Memories and Shadow Control. All it seemed to be affecting was the Shadow Core itself, preventing it from… from achieving whatever it was that had failed to happen.
At least for now. But how long would that safety last?
Raising his head, Sunny stared at the pinnacle of the Crimson Spire. Something unexplainable had transpired there, causing this strange turn of events.
Why was he trying to guess if all the answers were most likely waiting for him up above?
To his side, a massive slab of stone had lodged itself between stumps of broken coral roots. More debris piled on top of it at steep angles, forming a twisting path to the distant sunlight.
Pushing himself off the wall of the tower, Sunny glided forward and landed on the inclined stone surface. Then, he lingered for a few moments and began climbing up.
The higher he ascended, the more sunshine surrounded him. Eventually, the whole tower was filled with nothing but stark beams of light and deep, dark shadows. The world was black and white, as though no other color was allowed into this solemn space.
After a while, Sunny approached the broken dome of the Crimson Spire.
There, a vast hall was hidden in the darkness, both its floor and roof now shattered, letting in the brightness of the sun.
With a deep sigh, Sunny reached with his hands and pulled himself into the hall. He was now at the very pinnacle of the Crimson Spire.
In the lair of the Terror of the Forgotten Shore.
***
At the very tip of the ancient tower, there was once a vast and beautiful chamber. It seemed as though it had a large circular opening in its center, allowing sunlight to easily flow into the gargantuan structure at high noon.
Then, however, that opening had become overgrown by crimson coral. And now it was gone.
Due to something that had happened during Changing Star's battle against the Terror, the floor of the chamber partially collapsed, bringing the coral down with it. The ceiling was damaged too, although to a lesser extent.
Through the chasm in the Spire's roof, Sunny could see the boundless white skies and the burning orb of the artificial sun.
Lingering at it for a moment, he then lowered his gaze and looked at the chamber itself.
The first thing he saw was Nephis, who was sitting on the floor, staring into the distance.
Although her state was not as terrifying as on that terrible night when a dweller of the depths had pulled her beneath the waves of the cursed sea, she did not look too good.
The Starlight Legion Armir was practically destroyed, revealing gruesome burns and cuts on her ivory skin. Just like then, white flames were seeping out of them instead of blood.
These fires seemed strangely weak, though, as though on the verge of being extinguished. They were also failing to mend her mangled flesh. Neph's wounds appeared to be healing, but at a very slow pace — a far cry from the miraculous restoration that Sunny had witnessed so many times in the past.
The furious power that had always burned deep within her soul seemed to be finally exhausted. Almost…
Following her gaze, Sunny shuddered when he saw the Terror.
The creature that had created the Forgotten Shore might have looked as a human once, but now, it was like a feverish nightmare.
For some reason, Sunny had expected to see the familiar shape of the nameless goddess, whose statue was created in the likeness of the girl that had been made into the vessel of the artificial sun.
What met him instead was a giant creature whose body was made out of a perverse fusion of crimson coral and mutilated human flesh. In a sense, it was similar to the crimson golems he had fought at the base of the Spire. It was a twisted approximation of a living being, one that radiated a horrifying sense of madness, wrongness, and loss.
Instead of a human face, the Terror had hundreds of them, all contorted in expressions of blind agony and suffering. Their mouths were open, as though straining to scream. Their eyes were empty wells of pure darkness.
At least now, they were. When the Terror was alive, they must have shone with blinding, annihilating light.
…And it was, unmistakably, dead.
The harrowing creature was sprawled on the floor, its limbs unmoving, its body fractured almost in half. The edges of the terrible wound were burned and melted, leaving no doubt that it was dealt by Changing Star's incandescent silver blade.
'How… how is this possible?'
Stunned, Sunny stared at the vanquished Terror, failing to comprehend what he saw.
How could Neph kill a Fallen Terror? No matter how powerful she was, she was still a Sleeper. Even with the tremendous augmentation of the Dawn Shard, she should not have been capable of slaying something this powerful.
Something was very wrong here.
'This doesn't make sense.'
...But then again, this wouldn't be the first Terror Nephis had slain. Changing Star had killed one in her First Nightmare, too, earning her that name. Still, there was a vast difference between a dormant human killing an Awakened Terror and a Fallen one.
One feat was impossible. The other... the other was simply unthinkable.
Turning to her, Sunny hesitated and then said in disbelief:
"You… you actually killed it."
Neph flinched, as though noticing his presence for the first time. Then, she slowly turned her head and looked at him with empty, lost eyes. Only after a few seconds, a hint of recognition appeared in them.
She remained silent for a while, and then said in a hollow voice:
"...Sunny. You are finally here."
He hesitated for a few moments, not sure how to answer. As seconds passed by, the silence between them grew tense, full of untold meaning.
Finally, Nephis blinked and looked away, staring at the corpse of the Crimson Terror. Her sword hand trembling slightly.
"...Killed it? Yes… I did. Got lucky, I guess…"
After a while, she added in a quiet voice:
"It was just a fake star, in the end."
Sunny smiled slightly, but his eyes remained cold.
"Lucky… I know a thing or two about being lucky, Neph. A creature like this would not have died just because of bad luck."
She remained silent for a bit, then sighed and looked down.
"It was evolving… trying to become a titan. The burden of transformation made it vulnerable. I just happened to attack while the Terror was at its weakest. That's why it died…"
'Evolving… into a titan?'
Noticing a surprised expression on his face, Changing Star grimaced and pointed to the artificial sun.
"Have you not thought about what we have done?"
Sunny looked up, at the radiant sphere of light, and frowned.
In all the chaos, he had indeed forgotten to consider the full scale of what had transpired after the battle, as well as the reasons for and consequences of it.
Come to think of it… why would the light of the artificial sun destroy the souls of every living creature it touched? It had not been like this before the fall of the ancient civilization, for many generations, at least.
But then, the Vessel had become corrupted and turned into a Nightmare Creature. The Terror. And at the same time, the seals imprisoning the curse of the all-consuming darkness had been destroyed, letting it free.
…So, in fact, the corrupted sun had never existed without the dark sea keeping it company.
Until today.
Sunny had always thought that the sun was restraining the dark sea. Could it be… that it had always been restrained by the darkness, as well?
And when he banished the ancient curse and locked it underground… the sun was finally liberated from its shackles. That's why its light suddenly changed, turning into the annihilating white radiance.
It had become free to do whatever it wanted.
But there was something else…
As his eyes widened, Nephis nodded.
"Yes. The artificial sun does not just illuminate the vicinity of the Crimson Spire. It illuminates the whole of the Forgotten Shore. Its light reaches everywhere. So… as we were fighting our way through the tower… most of the living creatures on the Forgotten Shore had been wiped out. All that death, all those countless souls… guided into the Spire by the Labyrinth, like a colossal hecatomb, to fuel the evolution of the Crimson Terror."
And Nephis just happened to attack while the Terror was in the throes of that terrifying transformation. Well… that wasn't a coincidence, most likely. Sunny had not forgotten the thoughtful look on her face as Neph had peered out of the gates of the Spire before giving the Dreamer Army the command to advance.
He shivered, only now realizing that this whole region of the Dream Realm was now almost completely empty of life. Only a few Nightmare Creatures must have survived… those who were lucky enough to hide from the deadly sunlight in time, or were powerful enough to resist it.
Such a boundless influx of souls would indeed be enough to push the Crimson Terror to the next step of its evolution… devolution? Whatever it was that happened to Nightmare Creatures as they grew more powerful. Not that Sunny knew anything about this matters — but if anything could cause something like that, then the evisceration of an entire region of the Dream Realm would certainly do the trick.
Now, however, the Terror was dead, and its corrupting influence was gone, turning the artificial sun back to its normal self.
It couldn't be that easy, though…
As if answering his thoughts, the Spire shuddered again. Another slab of stone broke off from the floor of the chamber and plunged down. Suddenly, the light of the sun grew a little bit dimmer.
Looking up, Sunny noticed that the artificial sun looked not as bright as it had just a few minutes ago. It was as though it was slowly dying.
…Was it dying? There was no vessel to channel soul essence into its furnace anymore, after all.
Interrupting his thoughts, Nephis suddenly spoke, her voice hoarse and tired:
"What happened to the others?"
Sunny shifted and looked down through the chasm in the chamber's floor.
Far below, he could see the vast balcony and the shimmering ring of the Gateway on it. Somehow, its shine seemed… weaker. The balcony, however, was empty. There were no humans there, and even the coral golems lay unmoving, their semblance of life snuffed out when the Terror died.
"Everyone has escaped."
Neph sighed slowly, as if with relief. After a long pause, she moved slightly and asked:
"What about Caster?"
Sunny glanced at her and shrugged. When he spoke, his voice was cold and indifferent:
"...I killed him."
Changing Star remained silent for a long time. Then, she whispered, seemingly addressing no one:
"So that's why…"
Suddenly, a bitter laugh escaped from her lips.
Nephis raised her hands and pressed them against her face, as if overwhelmed by some deep, dark emotion. After a few seconds, her muffled voice reached his ears:
"You shouldn't have killed him, Sunny…"
Sunny snarled.
"Yeah? Why, exactly?"
She remained motionless for a few seconds, and then slowly lowered her hands and put them on her knees. Her face was pale and bleak.
"Have you checked your Attributes?"
He nodded and looked at her with a curious expression.
"I did. There's a new one there. Soul Conduit."
Changing Star stared into the distance and nodded.
"Yeah. Same for me."
Sunny raised his eyebrow and asked, his voice calm and steady:
"Any idea what it means?"
She did not say anything for a while, and then turned her head to look at him.
"Have you not figured it out?"
He shrugged.
"I was a bit preoccupied. Why? What is it?"
Nephis sighed and looked at the walls of the chamber. Finally, she said:
"This whole tower is a giant soul machine. It was created to collect soul essence and funnel it into the artificial sun. However… it can't function without one small, but crucial gear. A human to serve as the fulcrum of all that power, the conduit for all those souls."
And then, in a much quieter voice, she added:
"...The vessel."
Sunny shuddered, then stared at the corpse of the repulsive creature. The previous vessel of the artificial sun.
Nephis had killed it, destroying a crucial part of the Spire's mechanism… and so, the Spire found it a replacement.
The two of them.
The only two humans left on the Forgotten Shore, conveniently hiding from the obliterating sun inside the ancient tower.
One would be tempted to say that it was fate…
"What does it mean for us, exactly? Are we going to turn into something… like that thing?"
Neph slowly shook her head.
"...Not yet. Not for a long time. The Terror had absorbed most of the souls it had reaped after the battle, and there's no one to make sacrifices to the sun now. The Labyrinth, too, is now dead."
Echoing her words, the Spire trembled once again, and somewhere down below, a deafening sound of crushing stone could be heard.
Sunny tilted his head.
"So what's the problem? Can't we just… get the hell out of here and never come back?"
Changing Star looked at him, her eyes full of cold, bitter emotion.
"You don't get it, do you?"
After that, she gritted her teeth and said:
"The Crimson Spire is a machine, and the Gateway is a part of that machine. The Spire can't function without a human serving as the Soul Conduit… and neither can the Gateway. There has to be a Vessel inside the tower for the Gateway to work."
She slowly rose to her feet, swayed slightly, and finally pierced him with a dark gaze.
"Which means that only one of us can escape."
Sunny stared at her for a few seconds, then looked down at the distant ring of the Gateway.
Finally, he turned back to Nephis and said:
"I don't suppose you'll stay behind and let me go?"
Changing Star looked at him, her striking grey eyes full of intensity and nascent white flames:
"...I was about to ask you the same."
Sunny lingered for a moment, then grinned.
"Not a chance."
Slowly walking away from the edge of the chasm, Sunny stopped opposite Nephis and looked at her.
In his dark eyes, there was nothing but coldness.
"Well… it's not like we didn't know for a long time that this would be how things end. Did we?"
She stared at him for a while, then smiled bitterly.
"...We did."
Indeed, they knew.
From that terrible day when Sunny had first understood the meaning behind Cassie's vision, he suspected that one day, in order to survive, he would have to kill Nephis.
This was the truth he had chosen to hide from, even if it meant losing his mind. The final and most unbearable reason for why he had spent months alone in the Dark City, hunting monsters and slowly turning into one of them.
How does one come to terms with the knowledge that, one day, they will have to kill the person they care for the most?
…Knowledge, indeed, was the heaviest thing in the world.
Back at the beginning of it all, far away from the Dark City, before they had even known that the Crimson Spire existed, Cassie had shared with them a terrible vision.
She said:
"At first, I saw a… a boundless darkness locked behind seven seals. Something vast was churning in the darkness. I felt like if I directly saw it, I would lose my mind. As I watched, terrified, the seals broke one after another, until only one remained. And then that seal broke, too."
The first part of her vision described the day when the Vessel of the Artificial Sun had gone mad, and the curse of the all-consuming darkness had escaped the prison created for it by the seven ancient heroes.
"I saw the human castle again. Only this time, it was at night. There was a lonely star burning in the black skies, and under its light, the castle was suddenly consumed by fire, with rivers of blood flowing down its halls. I saw a corpse in a golden armor sitting on a throne; a woman with a bronze spear drowning in a tide of monsters; an archer trying to pierce the falling sky with his arrows."
The lonely star shining in the black skies was Nephis, the herald of ruinous change, who had drowned the halls of the Bright Castle in blood to become its ruler, and then watched as it burned to the ground.
The corpse in the golden armor was Gunlaug, who had died on his white throne, killed by her hand.
The woman with a bronze spear and the desperate archer were Effie and Kai, who had almost perished fighting against the nightmare horde during the siege of the Crimson Spire.
"In the end, I saw a colossal, terrifying crimson spire. At its base, seven severed heads were guarding seven locks. And at the top, a… a dying angel was being consumed by hungry shadows. When I saw the angel bleed, I suddenly felt as though… as though something so precious that it can't be described with words was taken from me."
Seven severed heads guarding seven locks were the heads of the giant statues, who stared at the Star Sigil that Sunny had used to banish the dark sea.
And the last part of the prophecy… it wasn't that hard to understand, too.
Nephis was the dying angel, the precious thing that was going to be taken from Cassie, and Sunny was the hungry shadow that consumed her.
It was their fate.
"Then, I felt so much sorrow, pain and rage that what little remained of my sanity seemed to disappear. That was when I woke up… I think."
This was the last thing Cassie had said.
…Looking at Nephis, Sunny sighed and turned away.
"I warned you, didn't I? I told you that this story won't have a happy ending. That there will be only sorrow, pain, and rage. Do you remember what you answered me?"
These were the words he said on the day Neph had asked him to join her expedition.
Back then, his suspicion that they would inevitably end up as enemies had already grown, becoming almost a certainty.
Almost… that cursed word. This was the word that had given him hope, no matter how small. Hope that he was wrong.
But despite that hope, Sunny had been preparing for this moment for a long, long time.
It was because he had known that he would have to face Nephis in combat that he had decided to incorporate Saint's methodical style into his technique, why he trained without rest, day and night, not sparing himself from the pain and hardship. If his only skill was one that she herself had taught him, what chance did he have of defeating her?
It was for that reason that he had climbed to the highest point of the Hunter's statue and spent a night alone there, steeling himself for the inevitable future. Forcing himself to accept the terrible truth that, soon, he would have to kill Nephis.
It was because of this that he had refused Changing Star's offer to heal him. How could he allow her to endure the terrible pain of the white flames, knowing that she would be suffering for the sake of her future killer?
And it was because of this that he had not tried to learn all of her secret plans, remaining comfortable in his role as a hired mercenary. An outsider. He had known that, no matter what, they would end up here, in this moment, forced to fight each other.
Fate… fate was a terrifying enemy to fight against. He knew it better than most.
Fate always won, in the end.
Defeating it was almost impossible.
…Shifting slightly, Nephis looked at him and answered, her voice strangely wistful:
"...Life is not a story. It only ends when you die."
Sunny smiled.
"So… are you ready to die?"
As white sparks ignited in the depths of Changing Star's eyes, she answered with another question:
"What about you?"
Instead of answering, Sunny summoned the Midnight Shard and raised it, assuming a battle stance.
Opposite of him, Nephis did the same, her silver sword weaving itself from blinding light.
…Of course, neither of them planned to kill the other. They needed the other to remain alive, at least until the victor passed through the Gateway. How long would the loser survive after that, though? Especially if they were beaten terribly enough to lose the ability to resist further.
Staying behind meant death.
…As the ancient, gargantuan tower quaked around them, balancing on the edge of collapse, Lost from Light and Changing Star prepared to cross their blades.