Perhaps, the people of the buried city had worshipped a Miracle?
That was their crime, and their entire crime. In an age when the golden grace of Dawn still touched the world, they turned their faces from it and bowed to a silver point of light instead — and heaven answered the apostasy with a sentence crueler than fire. The city was swallowed whole, sealed beneath the world from root to bedrock. Death would have been mercy. Therefore, death was the last gift they were denied.
Nothing on the surface of the Shores admits that the city exists. No map has ever carried it, and the pilgrims of the Age of Daemons wore their devotion into roads that reached every shrine under the sun but this one. The city admits one kind of guest — the falling kind. The earth opens beneath a trespasser without warning, and the plunge runs past the corpse of a long-dead gate, down into a dark that refuses to swallow either traveler or light. Whoever lands there lands uninvited. The fall is the whole of the hospitality.
Below waits a night the city built for itself, or had built for it by hands worse than mortal ones. A black dome arches over everything, sewn with silver stars, and each star keeps the station assigned to it — centuries beyond counting have passed, and none has drifted so much as a finger's width. Someone or something decreed an eternal night here, and the sky has honored the decree ever since.
Beneath that faithful dark stand towers of mournful perfection, and in the plazas between them kneel figures of robed stone, faces rubbed featureless, arms raised toward the night above. They pray to whatever abandoned them. Stone keeps its appointments. The worshippers themselves left nothing behind at all — a city raised for ten thousand voices holds only a lost lullaby now.
Nothing in the city has been permitted to change since the burial. No wind has ever entered; a coin spilled in an alley still lies where it fell, uncorroded, unborrowed; no wall has surrendered so much as a pebble.
The care behind that stasis could only be called… hatred. And though silence governs the streets, the city answers a footstep. The ring travels on from plaza to colonnade, gathering strength as it goes, until one traveler's noise stands in for the crowd that once filled the avenues. Beneath the footsteps runs a second sound: the lullaby, with no mouth behind it, seeping up from somewhere under the foundations.
Cries drift through the streets out of their proper order — children weeping for parents who died before the city ever fell, prayers reciting themselves in voices long turned to dust. The dead hold their service here without end. The living are free to walk through it, but they attend alone.
The Nameless City, forbidden to die and abandoned by the star it knelt to, holds no life, yet holds their cries and unfounding love.
—
Down the grand alley and into the main plaza walked the city's first living guests in an age — Sunny, Saint, and Cassie, in that order.
The plaza was beautiful. Loose starlight drifted through the avenues, motes of silver alighting on stone and skin without preference. The grass between the flagstones had been painted white by hands long gone. And every arch, every column, every line of the architecture aimed itself inward and upward, toward the false night — this ground had been the heart of the city's worship once, and it had kept the posture.
The congregation, however, was on the walls.
Grayed by uncounted years, the dead of the city clung where death had left them — hands stretched toward the false night, eyes hollowed out, mouths opened on screams the stone still kept. Prayer and protest had ended as the same gesture here.
Which of the two the dying meant, nobody alive could say.
'What a charming place… huh.'
Sunny glanced aside and found Cassie's face folding into a grimace.
'She hears them, then.'
Saint, walking ahead of them both, gave no outward reaction. Her message arrived regardless, carried on the [Blessing of Dusk].
[The voices are no illusion.]
He sent his answer back down the link.
[Yeah. The 'Will' behind them is real. Mundanes and Awakened — everyone buried here was alive at some point.]
Cassie spoke next, in a voice pitched below the lullaby.
"I can tell by the feelings of your Shadows that I'm not the only one hearing it. This Lullaby. It feels so… lonely."
Sunny received the information with gratitude and banished it at once, folding his attention forward instead. His shadow sense found movement at the far end of the plaza.
Fallen abominations, and several at that.
The three of them had already cut a road down to this depth. Between Sunny's arts and Saint's overwhelming strength, the Fallens of the upper avenues had been brief interruptions. Cassie's weight ran far below that class, though — twice already, the Silvershade had poured itself out of her shadow and closed those fights for her.
'Well. Nobody can hold that against her. Few souls ever got to be Lost from Light — harrowing, dreadful, and trailed by a glorious, beautiful Phantasm!'
He armed himself while the movement ahead sharpened. The [Burden of Conflict] answered the summons — an Ascended Memory in the shape of a bastard sword, silver from pommel to point. Saint's Soul Weapon followed it into the open: an nightblack Ascended blade of the Fourth Tier.
Cassie borrowed hers as well — the [Midnight Shard], lifted out of the depths of a Soul Sea that belonged to Sunny. She carried quite a few of his things by now.
"Let's go say hello."
The plaza accepted the invitation.
Four shapes came gliding out of the far colonnade. Fallen Nightmare Creatures, each one a mass of molten silver — eyeless, faceless, shapeless. For the moment, that was all they were.
These formless creatures require vessels, and the burial had left the streets furnished with them. The silver poured into the ruined bones lying around the plaza, and within seconds, all four had dressed themselves in the dead.
The first walked out wearing a skeleton with no head — three arms, four legs, an arrangement of bone and stone no pure god would admit to designing. The second chose the shape of a hound, and the shape carried a single defect: a second head sat where the tail belonged. Whichever direction it attacked from, it arrived snarling.
The third declined assembly altogether; it rolled across more of the ruined ground instead and became a greater weight of silver, trusting in mass.
The fourth ignored the bones. It chose a worshiper instead — flowed into the robed stone of one kneeling figure, silver threading up through the granite until the whole statue gleamed wet. Then the worshiper ended its prayer. It rose off its knees, and kept rising, until a faceless priest stood over the plaza with its arms still lifted in offering.
Nothing on that smooth head could have been called an eye. Yet, all three of them felt its attention regardless.
Behind the trespassers, the dead on the walls held their hands up to the false night. Ahead of them, the newest monster held its arms up too. And far beneath the flagstones, the lullaby never paused…
The battle began at once.
—
A booming crash shook the plaza when the silver mass struck the flagstones, and a violent charge rushed out from the point of impact. It spread through the ground in crooked veins, turning the pale stone bright for a breath before the current raced toward Sunny from every side.
He pushed himself backward with a surge of shadow, boots skidding across the flagstones while the bastard sword in his hand deflected the silver light. The creature in front of him had claimed no true corpse and borrowed no complete shape from the dead. It had merely gathered itself into a great weight of molten silver, trusting the enchanted ground and its own unnatural body to make up for the lack of bones.
That made it stronger than the headless thing and the two-headed hound, in some respects. The first two Silver Tears had taken vessels that limited them, forcing their power through joints, ribs, skulls, and broken limbs. This one had chosen mass instead, and mass had its own tyranny.
To his right, Saint faced the kneeling priest and the headless abomination together. The robed statue had risen far above the plaza, arms lifted in an offering that had become a threat, while the other Silver Tear advanced on three arms and four legs with hideous balance.
To his left, Cassie and the Silvershade Harrow fought the hound.
Out of the three battles, theirs was the least certain. The young Seer had already survived a few Silver Tears on the road down, yet those victories had belonged to the group more than to her. Sunny and Saint had ended those encounters before the monsters could press her too hard. This time, she had to carry more of the burden herself, with the black owl tearing through the air at her side.
'Well. Nobody can hold that against her.'
A grin touched Sunny's face despite the charge racing toward him.
'Few souls ever get to be Lost from Light — harrowing, dreadful, and trailed by a glorious, beautiful Phantasm!'
The silver mass rose into a crude arm and hammered down. Sunny breathed in, let the essence of the attack enter him, and stepped aside right before the fist shattered the place he had occupied. The ground answered the blow with another burst of current, silver fire crawling up from the cracks.
He had already learned that all Silver Tears carried that same talent. Their power had nothing to do with the heavens above or the storm. It was electricity born from their bodies, crude in origin and vicious in execution, given direction by the strange properties of the buried city.
Sunny left the ground before the current reached his feet. For a moment, the plaza turned beneath him, the dead on the walls staring from their eternal prayer while the false stars above remained fixed in their appointed stations. His sword cut down, and the [Black Moon] answered.
A crescent of raging darkness struck the silver mass and carved it open from crown to base.
The creature split apart, yet both halves were already moving. Spears pushed out from the torn body, lengthening with brutal speed, aiming for his chest, throat, and eyes. Sunny thrust his free hand down before they could launch, and a black surge manifested beneath his palm.
The weight of shadow slammed the Silver Tear into the flagstones. The impact cracked the plaza and sent dust rising from the white-painted grass between the stones. Several spears still tore free, but Sunny borrowed the force of Storm God's Miracle and retreated before they could reach him.
He landed several steps away, knees bending under the pressure of his own speed.
'Ah. Sometimes I forget I'm still only a Dormant.'
The thought carried more annoyance than fear. His strength was absurd for a Sleeper, and the strange inheritance of his soul made him far more dangerous than most Awakened had any right to be. Yet Fallen abominations belonged above his natural station, and there was a limit to how much spite, skill, and stolen divinity could accomplish without the Angelic Transformation.
Therefore, he couldn't instantly overpower every Fallen.
He still had to think.
The Silver Tear rippled, its surface trembling where the dark crescent had torn through it. The wound closed with sluggish violence, and the shape of its next attack changed before Sunny's eyes. It had learned the angle of his strike, the reach of his sword, the timing of his retreat.
The realization did not surprise him. From what he had observed, the Silver Tears adapted to their enemies with a principle that resembled that of Shadow Dance. The longer a battle continued, the more precise their answers became. They studied through being wounded, and punished through endurance.
Under ordinary circumstances, Sunny would have been delighted. An opponent that learned from him was an exquisite practice dummy, especially one that could regenerate from terrible damage and force him to refine his swordsmanship with each exchange.
Unfortunately, this city was full of hostile abnormalities, Cassie was still learning how to stay alive, and Saint had concerns of her own.
So Sunny chose the practical solution.
He would kill it before the lesson became useful.
[Your shadow has slain a Fallen Devil, Silver Tear Hierophant.]
The Spell whispered in his mind at almost the same moment the silver mass lunged. Sunny did not turn to look. He already knew what had happened, because the pressure radiating from the priest had disappeared from his shadow sense.
'Gods. Saint really works fast…'
There was no time to admire her. The creature before him had compressed itself into a towering wave of silver, and the entire front of it bristled with half-formed weapons. Blades, spikes, hooks, and blunt fists pushed out of its body in a disorder that was already beginning to gain purpose.
Sunny drew the [Burden of Conflict] back.
His current skill with the sword belonged to a man who had spent multiple lifetimes seeking to change his 'Conclusion', all of them filtered through the [Primal Vessel Constraint]. In the distant, indescribable past, he had been a 'Sword Saint', a 'Sword King', a 'Sword Emperor', and finally a 'Sword God.' Those attainments were not lost to him because the knowledge had vanished, but because his current body was still that of a mere Dormant.
There was no real point in training his hand — he had already mastered all that is to be, and can be.
His body just had to remember how to survive being weak.
The Silver Tear came down upon him, and Sunny exhaled.
'What did Saint call this one? Ah, right… Moon Harvest.'
Darkness gathered along the bastard sword, flooding the blade until the silver metal vanished beneath a night that had fangs. His arm moved with frightening economy. One slash became three crescents, and each crescent unfolded into a multitude of black arcs that descended through the air with murderous precision.
Waxing Moon of the Black Harvest.
The Silver Tear tried to divide itself around the first cut, but the second had already found the space it chose. Then the third arrived from an angle the creature had failed to account for. Its adaptation came a breath too late, and the black moons passed through its body in a harvest of severed silver.
[You have slain a Fallen Demon, Silver Tear Husk.]
For a heartbeat, the abomination remained upright. It seemed to have failed to comprehend the result, because Sunny had swung his sword only once.
Then the mass burst apart.
Silver motes scattered through the plaza, glimmering among the drifting starlight before dissolving into nothing. The current crawling across the ground died with them, leaving the cracked flagstones dark and still beneath Sunny's feet.
He lowered the bastard sword and looked at his free hand. His fingers closed, opened, then closed again. Nothing came. No fragment of shadow flowed into his soul, no familiar addition brushed against the borders of his cores.
A sigh escaped him.
'What a shame. I wonder where they are going, then.'
He had confirmed it too many times by now. Killing Nightmare Creatures would no longer carry him toward Tyranny by the old road. He was walking the Path of Ascension and the Path of Corruption at once, and so the rules had changed. A Devil did not become a Tyrant by collecting slaughter alone.
He would need dominion.
Minions, or a Territory. Perhaps both.
Taking the Nameless City could have satisfied the demand, in theory. In practice, the thought was close to lunacy. Judging from the power soaked into its stones, the ruler buried somewhere beneath this faithful night had to be a high-class Corrupted abomination. A Terror, perhaps. A Titan, if fortune decided to spit in his face.
Saint was strong enough to make most monsters regret ever existing, but even she would have to pay a terrible price against such a creature. With Sorcery, preparation, and perfect conditions, they might have survived the attempt.
Sunny had Cassie to protect.
That ended the matter all together.
He shook his head and turned left—
[Your Shadow has slain a Fallen Demon, Silver Tear Husk.]
[Your Shadow has slain a Fallen Demon, Silver Tear Husk.]
His eye twitched.
Saint stood near Cassie with her Soul Weapon lowered, the nightblack blade giving off a fading aura of True Darkness. The last remnants of the hound-shaped Silver Tear were already vanishing at her feet, while the headless thing had been reduced to a scatter of ruined bones and dead silver.
Cassie, meanwhile, seemed almost cheerful. She was facing Saint with bright excitement on her face, one hand resting against the feathers of the Silvershade Harrow. The great owl hooted with visible pride, as though it had personally saved the buried city from disaster.
Sunny brought a hand to his mouth and chuckled.
He could hardly blame her. Cassie was a Dormant Beast with no combative Aspect, carrying a weapon that did not quite suit her hand. She had spent most of their journey being protected, guided, or dragged through horrors far above her station. A Fallen Demon was a dreadful enemy for someone like her.
So he decided to let her keep the little victory.
Saint had earned most of it, of course.
He was wise enough to keep that thought to himself.
"Everything went well, I suppose?"
Cassie turned toward him and nodded.
"Silvershade is really helpful, Sunny! The Silver Tears can barely keep up with it."
She patted the massive owl again. The Harrow spread its wings with great dignity and made a pleased sound, which ruined the dignity a little. Saint watched the exchange for a moment, then turned her impassive gaze toward Sunny.
"Are you still unable to collect Shadow Fragments?"
Sunny nodded.
"It's confirmed by this point. I'm not becoming a Tyrant any time soon."
Saint accepted the answer in silence. Her expression remained unreadable, yet Sunny had known her for too long to miss the faint delay that followed. She was considering something, and because she was Saint, the consideration arrived with gravity.
"And what of your… Fables?"
Sunny raised an eyebrow. Then he understood.
Saint's path to Transcendence depended on him. She was a Shadow, and Shadows did not advance through the same principles that governed an Awakened. She needed Memories to consume, and Memories required either the Spell or the hand of a Sorcerer capable of creating them.
Sunny had neither access to Spellweave nor the proper tools for Runic Sorcery.
The question warmed him despite the place they stood in. Saint wanted power, certainly. Power was the language she had been born into, then broken into, then remade to speak again. Yet she did not want it for vanity. She wanted to stand between him, Cassie, and the things waiting deeper in the dark.
There was also the Disaster of the West.
Sunny had seen the shadow that crossed Saint's face whenever that particular abomination entered her thoughts. Cold expressions suited her, but that one carried something quite terrible indeed.
'I almost feel bad for that Disaster.'
He had no doubt Saint would make it suffer before the end.
At last, he answered.
"I've made little progress, to be honest. Like I said before, this will take months. Four at the minimum. Half a year, if the work decides to hate me."
Saint sighed. The sound was quiet, restrained, and full of disapproval.
"Then it can't be helped."
Sunny shrugged.
"That's the nature of things, I guess. Besides, you're already terrifyingly strong, Saint. Don't sell yourself short."
She looked at him, and the darkness behind her eyes seemed to deepen.
"If I was strong enough, Milord, we would not be wasting our time fighting through this forsaken City—"
Sunny walked over and lightly chopped the top of her head with the edge of his hand.
…Saint blinked.
There was no pain, of course. There was probably not much sensation at all through the onyx shell. Still, the gesture achieved its purpose, because she stopped talking and stared at him.
Sunny tried to scold her. He was not very good at it, but his conviction was honest.
"We aren't wasting time. I need to get used to fighting as a Dormant again, and Cassie needs to learn how to fight at all. We'll face more Fallen creatures in the future. Corrupted ones, too."
Her gaze moved toward the ground before he finished speaking. Sunny caught her chin with two fingers and tilted her face back up, forcing her to meet his eyes.
"And besides… I said you're doing enough. Being unable to kill every threat that comes our way by yourself is not a failure, Saint. Gods, you are far too hard on yourself!"
He let go and turned away before the words could grow heavier than he meant them to be. Cassie was still standing beside the Silvershade, listening to the dead city with a strained expression, so he walked toward her instead.
Saint remained where she was.
'Far too… hard on myself?'
The thought entered her mind with strange difficulty. She possessed countless habits of war and obedience, yet very few habits that could be used to judge herself outside of battle. Since the first moment of memory, combat had been the center of her existence. After that, there had been Mirage City Noir, a place of hard benches, clinical offices, measured routines, and a life arranged with severe precision.
Those memories were hazy now. The [Primal Vessel Constraint] had left them distant, full of blurred pages. She remembered cooking. She remembered hygiene, diagnosis, pressure points, firearms, and the brittle pride of a professional who disliked unfinished work. She remembered enough to know that a person had existed there.
Whether that person had been kinder to herself was another question.
'Perhaps Milord is right.'
Saint was not certain.
Sunny stopped in front of Cassie and studied her for a few moments. There was no visible wound, and her breathing had steadied. The Silvershade Harrow seemed unharmed as well, which was good, because the creature would have been unbearably smug if it could speak.
"Well, you're fine from what I can tell. Let's continue."
Cassie nodded. Then the lullaby rose beneath the stones again, sweet and grief-stricken, and her expression tightened.
"Alright…"
Thus, with the battle ended, Sunny, Saint, Cassie, and the Silvershade Harrow moved on through the plaza. Under better circumstances, they would have taken flight and crossed the city from above. They had already tried that, though.
The false sky had rejected them outright.
When the Silvershade rose too high, the air under the silver stars warped until even the Harrow faltered. Sunny and Saint could endure the pressure for a time, but Cassie could not. As a result, they kept close to the ground and followed the avenues chosen by the dead.
'I wonder if it's that Sorcery…'
The thought remained with Sunny as the plaza gave way to a broad causeway. Beyond it, the city suddenly opened before them, falling away into a vast splendor carved beneath the world. Towers of pale stone descended in terraces, bridges crossed the starlit air, and the black dome above held its patient stars over everything.
At the edge of the cliff, Sunny stopped.
Below him, the Nameless City continued downward.
Somewhere in its depths, the lullaby was being sung…
And he intended to find it's origin.
—
From the cliff edge, the bridge looked less like a road and more like a death sentence.
It crossed an immense hollow in a single pale span, leading toward another temple built into the far side of the buried city. Beyond that temple waited the second half of the Nameless City, a lower district divided into terraces, avenues, and vast civic quarters arranged beneath the unmoving stars.
Sunny studied it for several moments.
'Hm… it's either the bridge, or…'
His gaze moved down.
The second path waited below the cliff, where a broad plain of white grass spread between sculpted hills. The landscape had clearly been altered by hands with both power and patience. Slopes had been cut to precise grades, ridges shaped to guide water that no longer fell, and shallow basins arranged across the lower district with strange horticultural intent.
Even from this distance, Sunny could see movement among the pale fields.
Wraiths drifted there, their incorporeal bodies carrying faint blue light through the grass. They moved without leaving marks behind, gliding between the hills with the slow patience of things that had forgotten the need for flesh.
That alone did not make them terrifying.
Saint could harm the immaterial with her Blade of Darkness, and Sunny possessed a sufficiently unfair assortment of abilities and methods to make most incorporeal enemies regret their condition. A body was useful for receiving damage, certainly, but lacking one did not make a creature safe from him.
As long as the wraiths were Fallen, he and Saint could deal with them.
Corrupted enemies changed the calculation.
The current Sunny could use the synergy between [Incarnation of Divinity] and [Star of Divinity] to amplify the traits tied to the six gods. With that state supporting him, he could fight several Fallen Demons at once, and perhaps even face a Fallen Devil or two if the situation demanded everything he had.
If he added his Angelic Transformation to that, battling multiple Fallen Devils became possible. The difficulty lay in ending the fight before sixty seconds passed, because after that, madness would begin to claim mind and intentions.
Sunny doubted he could manage it after that point.
Saint, meanwhile, was even more dreadful. Without assistance, she could contend with a Corrupted Devil. The Idol of the Golden Fleece had only overwhelmed them because it had attacked with support, and since then, Saint had unleashed all of [Diamond Weave]. Her resilience had risen again, turning an already monstrous warrior into something far more unreasonable.
If she used Nether's Sorcery, even a Corrupted Tyrant and its brood would fall within the outer edge of possibility.
It would be hell.
Still, possibility mattered.
Together, Sunny and Saint could survive a confrontation with a high-class Corrupted Nightmare Creature, provided the creature was not a Titan and the cost did not become too obscene. A Terror would be overwhelming, perhaps ruinous. A Titan belonged outside the range of choices sane people entertained.
Sunny remained silent for a moment longer, then sighed.
'In any case, best we stick to the bridge.'
The bridge had its own problem. Something waited at the far end.
Both Sunny and Saint could feel the presence from where they stood. It pressed against the buried city with a harrowing weight, patient and hostile, standing near the temple gate. Cassie noticed it as well, although through a different sense entirely. Her expression shifted faintly, and that was enough to confirm Sunny's judgment.
'A Corrupted Devil.'
There were Silver Tears on the bridge, too. Several clusters of them, including a Fallen Tyrant surrounded by its lesser kin. Demons, Monsters, and Beasts had gathered across the pale span in numbers too high to dismiss, their silver bodies glimmering beneath the false stars.
Sunny turned away from the view and looked at Saint, then Cassie.
"We'll take the bridge. It's the fastest approach. The lower district might let us avoid the Corrupted Nightmare Creatures, but our goal is to leave this place. We are not here to catalogue ruined history."
Saint nodded.
"You will face the Fallen, while I deal with the Devil?"
Sunny chuckled. Her confidence was almost insulting to the city, which naturally made him appreciate it.
Cassie looked between them with a frown.
"I'm still skeptical. If Ms. Saint can really handle it, then… alright."
Saint turned to the young Seer. Her expression remained neutral, carrying no trace of offense.
"Do not worry, Cassie. I am more abnormal than most."
Cassie's expression changed.
Saint paid that no mind.
"Then we should proceed. Silvershade will keep Cassie from harm, and Milord will face the Tyrant and its minions. I will slay what I can before confronting the Devil."
Relief passed through Sunny before he could restrain it.
'Thank the dead gods for that!'
He had been uncertain how he was supposed to handle the entire formation on his own. The bridge was a terrible place for the Silvershade to maneuver, and Cassie would be overwhelmed by such a concentration of Fallen creatures. The number waiting ahead was high enough to make even his confidence suffer an unpleasant injury.
'At least… fifty. Gods—'
Suddenly, his face went pale. Saint noticed it at once.
Sunny grabbed his head and shook it sharply, his fingers digging into his hair. For a moment, his eyes grew darker than they should have been, swallowing the reflected silver light from the city below. Then the darkness receded, returning them to their usual shade.
Saint's gaze hardened.
'Damnation. His Fables… of all the times.'
Cassie did not see the change quickly enough. Her mastery over the shadows was still incomplete, and Sunny's expression had shifted during the brief space between one breath and the next.
Sunny, however, was no longer seeing the bridge.
His vision had been taken elsewhere. Memories rose through him in broken succession, each one filtered through the [Primal Vessel Constraint], each one carrying a life that had once belonged to another version of himself. Voices crowded the edges of his mind, overlapping with the lullaby below the city until the two became difficult to separate.
Saint clapped once. The sharp sound cut through the air with disciplined authority.
"We'll rest here. There is no rush. Silvershade, if you would?"
The great owl lowered itself at once. It folded its body against the stone and spread its wings in a wide half-circle, recreating the posture it had taken after the battle with the Idol of the Golden Fleece. Its feathers formed a dark shelter against the silver light, broad enough for both Cassie and Sunny to rest against.
Cassie turned toward Saint, confused.
"We're stopping now? Why?"
Saint nodded toward Sunny.
"Milord is currently incapable of fighting properly."
Cassie's eyes widened. She knelt in front of Sunny and gripped his shoulders, searching his face with rising alarm.
"Sunny? What happened?"
Saint placed a hand on her shoulder.
Cassie's shadow turned toward the onyx woman, and Saint shook her head.
"Do not bother. He can't tell your voice apart from the… others."
Cassie's face fell.
'The others…? He's hearing voices?'
Saint watched Sunny for a moment, then spoke with care.
"Hold him. I think it helps more than leaving his hands free. I have seen him do horrifying things to himself when his movement was unrestricted."
Cassie did not hesitate. She guided Sunny toward the Silvershade, slow and careful, then leaned back against the great owl with him held against her. Her arms closed around him, and she drew his hands away from his face before his nails could cut too deep.
Sunny trembled once.
Then he murmured something broken.
"A-Ah… so cold… A-Ananke…? No…"
Cassie tightened her hold.
Sunny drowned in his Fables, and Saint looked at them with a sorrow that never reached her mouth. Determination remained where gentleness might have lived in someone else.
'It will only grow worse the more he uses [Shadow of Parsimony]. And he'd be forced to assume that state in the coming battle — no doubt.'
She stood there for a short time, weighing the bridge, the Devil, the Fallen creatures, and the two people sheltered beneath the Silvershade's wings. Then she turned away.
"Stay here until I return. If something truly dangerous approaches, I have no doubt Sunny will react. Just… do not be frightened if he does."
Cassie nodded, still holding him.
"Stay safe, Ms. Saint."
Saint froze for a breath.
Then a low chuckle escaped her.
"I won't stay safe, though. I'll stay alive."
With that, she dashed away and became a blur of darkness across the buried city.
The plaza behind them had already been cleansed of Silver Tears, and Saint's shadow sense would have revealed anything they missed. Amplified by the blessing of Shadow Weave and sharpened by her nature as an Ascended Devil, that sense left little room for hidden threats in the nearby streets.
Sunny, Cassie, and the Silvershade were safe enough.
Therefore, Saint turned all her attention forward.
'I'll take care of the bridge myself.'
She crossed the avenue with dreadful speed, the cliff and its pale grasslands vanishing behind her. Ahead waited the grand bridge, the Corrupted Devil at its far end, the Fallen Tyrant, and the gathered mass of Demons, Monsters, and Beasts barring the path.
Saint was going to confront them alone.
As she neared the bridge, she lifted her hand and opened her palm. Three radiant shards rested there, glowing with condensed power.
Transcendent Soul Shards.
Saint looked at them without any particular expression.
She was going to perform Nether's Sorcery, the sorcery inherited from her creator.
…Diamond Weave.
—
Standing atop the bridge's end, which rose from the pale span with the shape and arrogance of a tower, Saint overlooked the army waiting below.
From there, she could finally discern the nature of the Corrupted Devil.
It was another Tear.
Unlike its silver kin, however, this one was gold. A poisonous radiance moved through its liquid body, staining the air around it with a faint shimmer. Saint studied that radiance for a few moments, then decided that its power had little relation to the crude electricity carried by the lesser creatures. This one possessed venomous essence, and the formless nature common to its kind.
The rest of the formation was easier to judge.
There was the Corrupted Devil, a Golden Tear that had clearly taken the corpse of a Transcendent in the past. There was also a Fallen Tyrant, another Silver Tear wearing a priestly shape, with three pairs of arms folded beneath a gem embedded above its faceless head. Around them waited the lesser host: Fallen Demons, Fallen Monsters, and Fallen Beasts, fifty-two abominations in total.
Saint could imagine the Sleepers of the Forgotten Shore being forced to face such enemies.
They would have died in such a scenario. Even Changing Star would have been finished.
Saint, however, belonged to a different scale. The distance between herself, Sunny, Abaddon, and Lethe, and the distance between everyone else who lived in this abnormal Worldline, was too immense to measure kindly. Some lives were forged under ordinary pressure. Others were made inside catastrophes, then sharpened by surviving them.
She raised her hands.
Diamond threads extended from her fingertips, luminous and fine, all of them converging on two nexuses suspended before her. The bridge stretched below, long enough to hold an army and narrow enough to become a killing field. As such, Saint intended to turn the entire span into a weapon before setting foot on it.
Two enchantments would be enough.
The first was modeled after Sunny's [Essence Leech]. Once awakened, it would drain the essence of every enemy touching the bridge, then feed that stolen power into her Soul Weapon. When the Serpent returned to the form of a tattoo, the essence would be delivered to Saint herself.
The second enchantment was an imitation of an 'Anti-Fortress' spell, although reduced to the scale of an 'Anti-Army' spell. Sunny had once described using such Sorcery during his battle against the Unholy Devil, Fenrir. Pillars of light and darkness had risen from earth and sky, converting the local world to favor their creator's affinity.
Its function was, suffice to say, utterly monstrous.
Life-force, essence, thoughts, and even emotions could be transmuted into the affinity and power of the sorcerer who had shaped the spell. Saint had been mildly surprised by that last property when she first considered the Spell. Afterward, she found herself unsurprised that Sunny had managed to fell a child of Beast God with such a terrible art.
The spell stole from everything within its world.
In that sense, it imitated the privilege of Titans.
With both enchantments active, the Fallen abominations should be annihilated quickly. The Corrupted Devil would endure longer, of course, but Saint could already contend with such a foe by herself. With her shadows augmenting her profound strength fivefold, and the Devil's life being drained with every second it spent on the bridge, the outcome became much less uncertain.
That raised an obvious question.
Why not do this for every battle?
The answer was cruelly practical.
Such enchantments required Transcendent Soul Shards at minimum. Sunny and Saint had hoarded them for two reasons. First, to create Memories specialized for their needs. Second, to prepare truly harrowing Spells for the Disasters, or for the dire possibility of facing a truly harrowing Corrupted Tyrant, Terror, or Titan.
Saint especially wished to preserve them for the Disaster of the West.
She already had plans for that creature. Five separate spells, each designed for ruin, would descend upon the abomination when the time came.
Occasionally, Saint found the depth of her resentment more than a little strange. Yet the feeling changed nothing.
She shook her head and returned to the Weave. The first enchantment took shape without much resistance, its pattern obedient beneath her hands. The second demanded far more essence, drawing on her reserves until even her onyx body felt the strain. Afterward, she would need to wait for enough power to recover before entering the battle.
'…If only I had more pairs of hands.'
For a moment, Saint lamented her lack of [Shadow Manifestation].
Alas, time passed.
A long while later, both enchantments were complete.
Saint remained atop the tower until a small measure of essence returned to her. Then she stepped off the edge, descended toward the bridge, and faced the army of Nightmare Creatures waiting below.
—
The battle began without warning.
Saint augmented herself with four shadows and rushed toward the host of Silver Tears. Her Soul Weapon manifested into the familiar shape of a longsword, while True Darkness flowed over the blade and deepened its edge.
At the same moment, the Fallen Tyrant and its minions turned their formless gazes toward her. Most of the lesser Tears had yet to claim vessels, so the bridge was crowded with restless silver masses. The Tyrant, however, had already taken its priestly corpse, and the many eyes clustered around its gem fixed on Saint with hostile intent.
It roared. Blue lightning burst from the sound and rolled across the bridge in a shallow shockwave.
…Then the Tyrant staggered.
Mysterious blue markings ignited across the entire span, spreading from stone to stone until the bridge shone beneath the army's feet. Every abomination standing on it faltered at once. Several of the lesser Tears convulsed so violently that streams of silver spilled from their bodies.
Then the first one burst.
A sharp report cracked through the air.
Another followed.
Then another.
The Spell began to speak…
[You have slain a Fallen Beast, Silver Tear Husk.]
[You have slain a Fallen Beast, Silver Tear Husk.]
[You have slain a Fallen Beast, Silver Tear Husk.]
[You have slain a Fallen Beast, Silver Tear Husk.]
[You have slain a Fallen Monster, Silver Tear Husk.]
[You have slain a Fallen Monster, Silver Tear Husk.]
[You have slain a Fallen Demon, Silver Tear Husk…]
The messages continued, exact and utterly merciless, until Saint heard them fifty times. The Beasts died first. The Monsters followed. Then the Demons succumbed as the enchantment drank their essence and fed its stolen power into the bridge — all before being drank by Saint herself.
For a few moments, the world was full of silver sparks.
Saint rushed toward the Fallen Tyrant while it writhed in agony, and a faint realization crossed her mind.
'…I may have overdone it.'
The second spell had been very, very unnecessary. Saint had assumed that her first attempt at shaping such Sorcery would suffer from imperfect execution, diminished potency, or clumsy structure. Instead, the result had achieved everything she had intended. Even the Corrupted Devil, standing at the farthest end of the bridge, was being ravaged by the enchantment.
'Perhaps I am a better Sorceress than I thought. In any case…'
The Fallen Tyrant descended upon her with its six arms raised, yet pain had ruined its precision. Saint stepped aside, drew the fivefold strength of her shadows into the Soul Weapon, and allowed the Blade of Darkness to complete the judgment.
Her sword fell once.
The Tyrant split from crown to base, already too close to death to resist the blow.
[You have slain a Fallen Tyrant, Silver Tear Lord.]
[…You have received a Memory.]
Saint ignored the second message. The Memory could wait.
At the far end of the bridge, the Golden Tear finally turned toward her. Its humanoid figure shone with venomous radiance, shaped into an almost complete replica of the Transcendent — quite similiar in appearance to the Bright Lord, Gunlaug. The dead Transcendent corpse within its liquid shell moved with monstrous speed, and a golden spear formed in its hand as it charged.
Each strike of that weapon carried the might of a Transcendent Memory.
Saint stepped aside when the spear arrived, letting its point pass through the empty space beside her shoulder. The Golden Tear answered by opening its chest as dozens of spikes erupted outward as it tried to seize her and crush her into an iron maiden of golden poison.
It caught nothing.
Saint vaulted over the creature and brought her longsword down during the turn of her body. The blade struck its head and split the golden shell open, exposing the decomposed human flesh hidden within.
The corpse had already died long ago, so such a wound would have meant little.
Had it not been struck by the [Blade of Darkness].
Black cracks spread through the Golden Tear's liquid body. The creature staggered back, trying to remake its ruined helmet, but Saint was already upon it. Her sword moved with brutal grace, striking again and again while the enchantment beneath their feet continued to feed on the Devil's strength.
The two of them crossed the bridge in a storm of gold and black. Stone shattered beneath their steps, yet the enchanted span itself remained intact, blue markings burning through the dust and scattered motes. The Golden Tear fought with a dead saint's body and a Devil's malice, but its enemy had turned the battlefield into an execution ground before the battle even began.
The result followed.
By the time the Golden Tear raised one arm and gathered a sphere of poisonous gold, its liquid body was already torn apart. The attack was clearly meant to destroy Saint along with the bridge, perhaps along with itself. But before it could be released, her black blade severed it's arm.
Than her second, seamless strike, followed.
A black line crossed the Devil's chest and passed out the other side.
The Golden Tear split in two. Its upper body flew back, struck the bridge, and skipped across the pale stone before coming to rest among silver ash and golden sparks. The liquid shell slipped away from the Transcendent corpse, flowed into the bridge, and went still.
Saint leaned on her sword and drew a heavy breath. She heard the Spell announce her clean victory.
[You have slain a Corrupted Devil, Dreamlike Charred Visage.]
She raised her gaze.
The bridge had become a field of dying motes. Gold and silver drifted above the stone, turning into sparks beneath the false stars before fading from sight. The army that had barred the path was gone, and the enchantment beneath her feet slowly dimmed.
Saint found herself smiling. For, now, she knew the extent of her current power.
The Disaster of the West no longer seemed quite so distant. If she fought alongside Sunny, if they combined their Sorcery, if they prepared the battlefield with enough care…
Then perhaps that calamity could be made to bleed.
Saint wiped blood from her shoulder. The Dreamlike Charred Visage had managed to wound her a few times before the end, but the damage was minor. She straightened when she heard her name called from the far side of the bridge.
"Saint!"
Cassie and the Silvershade were approaching across the span. Sunny walked beside them, leaning on the young Seer with his right arm draped over her shoulder. His face was pale from the Fables, and exhaustion still clung to him, yet he was smiling.
The expression carried no disbelief. Only tired recognition, as if saying…
'Of course you did.'
Saint looked at him for a moment.
Then she smiled back and raised her hand.
Just like that, one Corrupted Devil, one Fallen Tyrant, twelve Fallen Demons, eighteen Fallen Monsters, and twenty Fallen Beasts had been slain. All in less than ten minutes.
By a single beautiful Sorceress, who possessed the skills of a Sword Saint.