The mist of the memory swirled, heavy and suffocating. The projection did not jump forward this time. It lingered on the aftermath of the question that had just shattered Nephis's trust.
Was I just a piece on his board?
The answer came not in words, but in fire.
The vision blurred, the high cliffs dissolving into a scene of apocalyptic destruction. The audience found themselves standing on the shores of a massive, black island—the Ashen Barrow.
But the island was not silent.
It was burning.
In the center of the devastation, two titans had clashed.
The memory showed flashes of the strategy that had led to this moment: the Blur hollowing out the shell of a dead Centurion, hiding the Echo inside, and using it as bait to lure the island's guardian — the Carapace Demon — into a battle with a horror from the deep.
The guardian was a nightmare of living steel, a colossus of polished, impenetrable armor and razor-sharp spikes that stood as the silent warden of the burning tree.
"A Carapace Demon," Morgan identified, her eyes narrowing. "An Awakened Demon... terrified of a fire started by a Sleeper."
"The Trojan Ass," Noctis snorted, wiping a tear of mirth from his eye as he watched the memory of the young man explaining the plan. "He called it a 'Trojan Ass'. Oh, I adore this boy."
But the cost of the plan was immediate. After the ambush, the Carapace Demon roared, its pincer crushing the black chitin of the Scavenger Echo into dust. The summons shattered into motes of light before it could even fight back.
The Blur winced, watching his new prize disintegrate.
"My Echo..." the young man cursed, his voice filled with genuine, petty heartbreak. "I literally just got it! It didn't even last a month! Curse this damn luck!"
Mordret watched with a dark, appreciative gleam in his eyes. "He didn't fight the Demon. He used the environment. He used the enemy's instincts against itself. He turned a hopeless suicide mission into an execution."
Nephis stared at the projection, her feet planted on the familiar illusory ash. The manipulation was undeniable. He had orchestrated a clash between two nightmares to clear their path. But as she watched the result, her indignation faltered.
Because it had worked.
As the pale light of dawn broke over the Ashen Barrow, the charred, broken form of the Carapace Demon crawled back from the edge of the island. It was a ruin of its former self. Two of its scythe-arms were gone. Its impenetrable metal armor was cracked and leaking azure blood. It was clinging to life by a thread.
"He is heavily wounded," Anvil of Valor observed, his voice cold and echoing over the phantom wind. "The plan succeeded. The guardian is broken."
"Broken, perhaps. But a wounded beast is the most dangerous kind, King of Swords."
The voice was soft, husky, and pleasant, yet it carried an edge that made the hair on the back of one's neck stand up. A woman stepped through the smoke, standing opposite the Valor contingent.
She had long hair that fell like an onyx waterfall and tantalizing red lips. She wore a dashing armor of black leather and scarlet silk that accentuated her sensual figure. But what drew the eye was the ugly scar that marred her enchanting face, running from her forehead to the tip of her chin.
Beastmaster, one of the Transcendent daughters of Song.
She smiled, a bright, beguiling expression that didn't quite reach her eyes. "You of all people should know that pain brings out the truest nature of a creature."
In the memory, the Blur clenched his fists, looking at the limping behemoth with a dark expression.
"What... what do we do?" the young man asked.
The projection of Nephis looked down. There was a cold glint in her calm, grey eyes. She didn't look like a victim of manipulation. She looked like a king accepting a weapon forged by her general.
Stretching her arm to the side, she summoned her sword.
"Finish him off," she commanded.
The final confrontation began. It was not a duel of honor. It was a desperate scramble in the black sand.
The audience watched as the trio moved with the synchronization of a single organism.
The Carapace Demon, though ruined, was still a fortress of steel and hate. It roared, the sound shaking the bones of the audience, and raised its remaining scythe — a blade longer than a human body.
"Creating an opening..." Morgan whispered, her red eyes locking onto the scene, analyzing the battlefield like a chessboard. "The Demon is crippled, but its reach is still fatal. Sunless has to be perfect. One mistake, and he is paste."
And he was.
The Blur dashed forward.
He didn't run like a warrior. He moved like a shadow, low and erratic.
The Demon swung its massive pincer, a blow that would have destroyed a tank.
The shadowy figure didn't block. He slid underneath the blow, the wind of the impact whipping his hair.
Rain flinched, instinctively stepping back on the illusory sand, her hands balling into fists at her sides. "He's too close! Why is he getting so close?"
"To draw the eye," Jet answered, her voice tight with tension. "He is making himself the most annoying thing in the world so the monster forgets the sword behind it."
The Demon, enraged by the tiny pest, raised its massive scythe-leg for a crushing overhead strike.
This was the moment.
The Blur didn't retreat. He roared, and the shadows around him surged, wrapping his limbs in liquid darkness. He leaped toward the strike, bouncing off the Demon's own knee to vault over the sweeping pincer.
"His movement..." Kai breathed, mesmerized. "It's like he weighs nothing."
The Demon's attention was fully locked on the flying gnat. It exposed its chest and the spiderweb of cracks over its heart.
"Now!" Effie shouted, her voice echoing in the emptiness.
Nephis lunged.
She didn't aim for the cracks. She aimed for the one weakness Cassie had seen in her vision: the old, unhealed wound over the Demon's heart, now exposed by the Blur's maneuvering.
Her sword, ignited by the white flame of her Aspect, became a streak of blinding light. She didn't just slash. She thrust with the momentum of a falling star.
Schwing!
The blade pierced the metal. Nephis drove the sword all the way to the hilt, burying her arm inside the monster's chest.
The Demon shrieked — a sound of tearing steel and dying rage that forced the Witnesses to cover their ears. White fire erupted from its mouth and eyes, cooking it from the inside out.
It took a step back, shuddered, and then collapsed, its massive bulk shaking the island one last time.
[You have slain an Awakened Demon, Carapace Demon.]
[You have received a Memory: Midnight Shard.]
The phantom ground trembled with the weight of the achievement.
"They did it," Rain breathed, letting out a shaky breath. "They actually killed it."
Anvil of Valor remained silent, but his gaze was fixed on the Blur. He had seen the coordination. He had seen how the young man had manipulated the Demon's positioning to give Nephis the perfect strike.
"A king needs a general," the King of Swords murmured, his voice low but carrying a new weight. "And a sword needs a hand to guide it. This boy... he is the hand."
"A hand?"
Ki Song stepped forward, her regal robes trailing over the ash. She looked at Anvil with eyes that were ancient and filled with a swamp-like depth.
"Be careful, Anvil," the Queen of Worms whispered, a small, mocking smile playing on her lips. "You look at him and see a tool. A useful appendage to hold a sword. But hands have a nasty habit of developing a will of their own. And when they do... they often strangle the King."
Anvil frowned, but before he could retort, an elegant older gentleman beside him chuckled softly.
Saint Jest of the Valor clan smoothed his pristine coat, looking at the fallen behemoth with a mixture of amusement and disbelief. Even without his signature black cane, he carried himself with a theatrical, relaxed air.
"Marvelous," Saint Jest quipped, his eyes twinkling. "Simply marvelous. Two weeks in hell and they are already slaying Demons? They are certainly climbing the ladder of horrors quickly."
He glanced around the platform, a playful smirk touching his lips, his gaze lingering for a moment on the women of Song.
"An Awakened Demon... what's gonna be next? An Awakened Terror?"
The old man laughed at his own joke, finding the idea of Sleepers facing a Terror absurd.
Beastmaster did not laugh. Her smile widened, but it became sharp, predatory.
"You should not mock the unknown, Saint Jest," she said, her husky voice dropping an octave. "Terrors do not fight with claws and steel. They fight with the mind. And the mind is much easier to break than a carapace."
As if summoned by her words, the projection shifted, plunging the audience into illusory mist.
The mist of the memory parted fully, revealing the summit of the island.
It was not a barren wasteland like the shores below. It was a paradise, dominated by a single, impossible presence.
This tree rose into the sky like a tower, its branches wide enough to cover the whole Ashen Barrow in their shade. Its bark was as black as the water of the Dark Sea, while its leaves were as red as blood. The crimson crown of this majestic tree looked incredibly vibrant and magnificent in contrast to the gray sky.
Its fruits, hanging between the scarlet leaves, were round and appetizing. It looked striking and majestic, a monument of life in a land of death.
But more than its beauty, it possessed a presence. A low, humming vibration that didn't just touch the ears — it seemed to whisper to the soul.
The effect was instantaneous.
Since the audience was not watching a screen, but standing physically within the projection of the memory, the mind hex washed over them like a tide of warm, syrupy water.
Rain's eyes glazed over. The horror of the Demon fight vanished, replaced by a sudden, parched thirst. She took a step toward the tree, her hand reaching out involuntarily.
"It looks... sweet," Rain murmured, her voice dreamy and thick.
She wasn't alone.
Professor Julius, usually the picture of academic rigor, let his glasses slide down his nose. He stared at the black fruits with a feverish, illogical hunger. Beside him, Kim and Luster — both seasoned Awakened — found their mental defenses crumbling under the sheer weight of the Terror's influence. Kim's hand went to the nonexistent hilt of her rapier, not to draw it, but searching for something to steady her as she drifted toward the roots. Luster, usually so full of bravado, simply stared upward, his jaw slack as he followed the swaying of the scarlet leaves.
Behind them, his assistant Beth began to stumble forward.
"Just one bite," Beth whispered, stumbling past the frozen form of Nephis. "I just need one bite..."
The heirs of the great vassal clans weren't immune as well.
Tamar of Clan Sorrow took a trembling step forward, her usual stoicism melting into a vacant smile. But before she could take a second step, a cold, pale hand gripped her shoulder.
Saint Sorrow, the patriarch of Clan Sorrow and a vassal of Song, stood behind her.
He was a tall man who wore austere armor, possessing a somber appearance and cold eyes set in a mature, handsome face. His tan skin and strange ashen hair made him a striking, undeniable figure against the burning landscape.
He didn't speak. He didn't need to.
As a Transcendent, his connection to the world was profound. He simply existed, and the world responded to his sorrowful weight. A wave of otherworldly presence washed over Tamar — a heavy, grounding melancholy that instantly dampened the feverish heat of the tree's hex. Tamar blinked, the vacuous smile sliding off her face as the cold reality of her patriarch anchored her mind.
On the other side, Telle of the White Feather Clan began to drift toward the precipice.
"Mother..." Telle whispered, not speaking to her parent, but to the tree.
Suddenly, the air around her changed.
The winds, which had been howling over the barrow, sang subtly lower, turning into a harmonious hum. The sunlight filtering through the gloom appeared to become a bit brighter, sharper.
Saint Tyris — Sky Tide — stepped in front of her daughter.
She didn't touch Telle. She simply allowed her presence to bleed into the environment. The very air seemed to bend around her, shielding her child within a pocket of absolute, aerial clarity. The mind hex couldn't penetrate the atmosphere of the Sky Saint. Beside her, Saint Roan placed a steadying hand on Telle's arm, his own presence solid and reassuring.
"Halt."
The single word crashed down like a hammer, shattering the trance for the remaining stragglers.
Daeron of the Twilight Sea did not raise his voice, but the weight of his Supreme Will was enough to snap the hex for the observers.
Rain, Julius, Beth, Kim, and Luster all gasped in unison, stumbling back as if they had been slapped. The "paradise" resolved back into an ominous, predatory threat. Rain blinked rapidly, her heart hammering against her ribs as the sweet aroma of the fruit suddenly turned cloying and rotten in her nostrils. Kim and Luster clenched their fists, their faces pale with the realization of how easily they had been led to the slaughter. Julius shook his head, looking around in confusion and shame, adjusting his glasses with trembling fingers.
Beside him, Beth doubled over, a hand pressed firmly to her mouth as she choked back a surge of bile. The obsessive, honeyed hunger that had almost driven her to her knees just moments ago was gone, replaced by a cold, hollow dread that made her skin crawl. She looked up at the scarlet canopy with wide, terrified eyes, the phantom sweetness in her mouth now tasting like the copper tang of old blood and stagnant water. She huddled closer to the Professor, her breath hitching as she realized she had almost walked straight into the roots of a living tomb.
The Serpent King observed the tree, his vertical pupils narrowing not with contempt, but with clinical precision.
"An Awakened Terror," Daeron stated, his tone factual and dry. "Physically frail, but spiritually corrosive. Against a Supreme, its influence is negligible. However, for a Sleeper, whose soul is unrefined and unprotected, resistance is statistically impossible."
There was a brief, heavy silence as the gravity of the situation settled in. Then, a polite cough broke the tension.
Saint Jest stared at the tree, then looked down at his own hands as if they had betrayed him. He let out a long, weary sigh.
"Remind me not to joke about a Great Devil next," the old man muttered, looking genuinely pained by his own accuracy. "At this rate, I fear I might conjure one out of thin air just by being witty."
"Impossible indeed," a husky voice agreed.
Beastmaster stepped past the confused civilians, walking right up to the edge of the illusion without fear. She looked at the tree not as a threat, but as a colleague. Her eyes traced the swaying red leaves with deep familiarity.
"Do not feel ashamed, little ones," Beastmaster crooned, ignoring Jest's accidental prophecy and glancing back at Rain, Tamar, and Telle, who were blinking away the confusion. "You cannot resist it because it does not attack your body. It attacks your desire."
She turned back to the tree, her scar twisting as she smiled.
"It has powerful mind hexes," she explained, her voice taking on a lecture-like cadence. "It subdues creatures, rewriting their minds until they want to spend the rest of their lives taking care of it. And in return? The tree feeds them. Those fruits..."
She pointed a gloved finger at the succulent black orbs.
"They are Soul Fruits. They replenish essence, heal the body, and saturate the spirit. The tree fattens its livestock, keeping them happy and docile. And when they finally die of old age... it traps their souls within the fruit to feed itself."
As she spoke, the memory fast-forwarded.
The audience saw the truth of her words. The Blur, Nephis, and Cassie were not fighting. They were sitting under the onyx branches, eating the fruit, smiling with vacant, lobotomized expressions. They looked happy. They looked peaceful.
They looked horrifying.
"They are rotting," Morgan observed, her voice sharp with disgust. "They are forgetting to survive. They have stopped being warriors and started being... fertilizer."
Beastmaster turned her gaze away from the tree and fixed it on the real Nephis and Cassie, who were standing nearby, looking pale and disturbed.
"I must admit, I am curious," the enchantress said, her voice dripping with false sweetness. "Mind hexes of this caliber are notoriously difficult to break. Once a victim eats the fruit, the trap is usually sealed. The victim does not want to leave. They will fight to stay."
She tilted her head, her dark eyes boring into Nephis.
"So, tell me, Changing Star... how did you escape? How does a Sleeper wake up from a dream that gives them everything they want?"
Nephis opened her mouth to answer, but no words came.
She searched her memory. She remembered the warmth of the tree. She remembered the taste of the fruit — sweet, addictive, perfect. She remembered the feeling of absolute safety, the desire to lay down her sword and rest forever.
But she didn't remember deciding to leave.
She didn't remember fighting the tree.
She looked at Cassie, hoping the Seer had the answer. But Cassie looked just as lost, her unseeing eyes wide with a dawning, terrible confusion.
"I..." Nephis stammered, her brow furrowing in pain. "I don't know."
"You don't know?" Ki Song mocked from the shadows.
"I remember the sweetness," Nephis whispered, clutching her head. "I remember the warmth of the sun and the desire to never leave. But then... there is only a void. I remember waking up on a boat made of bones in the middle of the Dark Sea, but I have no memory of the journey there. I don't remember choosing to leave that paradise at all."
The silence on the Ashen Barrow was heavy.
Mordret smiled, his gaze drifting to the glitching, indistinct figure of the Blur in the memory — the flickering young man, who was currently happily polishing a piece of fruit for Nephis.
"If the dreamer cannot wake," Mordret whispered, "then someone outside the dream must wake them."
◇ ◇ ◇
The memory blurred, the colors bleeding together as the Spell accelerated the flow of time. Days — perhaps weeks — melted into a stagnant, sun-drenched montage of peace. The trio was no longer fighting. They were simply... existing.
The audience watched with growing unease as the "rot" set in. The Blur, Nephis, and Cassie looked like shadows of their former selves. Their eyes were vacant, their movements sluggish, their skin stained with the ruby juice of the Soul Fruits.
Suddenly, the memory slowed. It was night.
The Blur was moving through the onyx branches of the tree, driven by a drugged, feverish compulsion. He was looking for a "gift" for Nephis — the perfect fruit to keep her from her growing melancholy. As he hauled himself up a particularly steep branch, he passed a small hollow where a memory of Cassie sat huddled, staring blankly at the red leaves.
She didn't look up as he passed. Instead, she was muttering, her voice a ghostly, dry rasp that seemed to bypass the ears and speak directly to the souls of those watching.
"Five..." the girl whispered. "There are five... remember... it is five..."
"Look at the girl," Beastmaster purred, her pleasant, husky voice carrying a sharp edge of clinical interest. She watched the memory-Cassie with a predatory tilt of her head. "She is unraveling far faster than the others. Without a True Name to anchor her soul to reality, her mind is being hollowed out like an empty vessel. The tree finds no resistance there — it is simply drinking her whole."
Rain frowned, looking at the blind girl. "Five what?"
Beside her, the real Cassie suddenly gasped, her hands flying to her temples. Her face paled as a sharp, spiritual headache lanced through her mind. The "seed" her past self had planted in the Blur's mind was blooming in the present, a psychic echo of a warning she had forgotten she ever gave.
"She knew," Mordret whispered, his eyes gleaming with intellectual delight. "Even then, she was trying to leave herself a trail of breadcrumbs."
The memory pulled the audience upward, following the Blur as he ascended into the highest reaches of the canopy. They stood precariously on branches that felt slick with an oily, foul substance. Finally, they reached the summit — a massive, bowl-like nest woven from black wood that were twisted and interwoven together in a chaotic pattern, creating gapless, onyx-black walls.
In the center of the nest sat a giant, ancient egg.
It was massive, its surface colored in various shades of grey that shifted and overlaid one another like moving clouds. The pattern was strangely beautiful, possessing a hypnotic, mysterious aura that felt older than the island itself.
The Blur reached out, his vacant smile still in place. But the moment his fingers brushed the stone, a shockwave of spiritual pressure hit the audience.
WHOOSH.
The vacuum was instantaneous and violent.
Rain felt the wind being whipped out of her lungs, but while she felt a crushing physical weight, the others suffered something far more intimate.
Professor Julius, Kim, Luster, Tamar, and Telle all collapsed. They let out strangled cries as their Soul Essence — the very foundation of their power — became a wild, ungovernable current. Kim clutched her chest, her face turning a ghastly shade of blue as she felt her Soul Core being physically tugged toward the egg, as if the Great Devil within was trying to rip it out of her ribcage. Luster clawed at the phantom branches, his eyes rolled back, feeling his life force leaking into the air.
The pressure did not stop at the Awakened, sparing no one.
Saint Roan and Ananke were the most visibly affected among the Transcendent. Ananke, her ancient soul weary from centuries of existence, trembled violently, her hands gripping her staff for support as her vision blurred. Roan was nearly on one knee, his teeth gritted so hard they threatened to crack, his face a mask of agony as he tried to protect Telle from the spiritual suction.
Just behind him, Sky Tide stood with her feet planted firmly, though the air around her seemed to ripple and thicken. Her golden hair whipped wildly in the phantom gale, and though she remained upright, her knuckles were white as she clutched the air, her eyes narrowed against the overwhelming gravity of the egg's presence. She looked like a bird of prey struggling to keep flight in a hurricane.
Saint Aether and Saint Sorrow stood in a middle ground of struggle. Aether, the promising heir of the House of Night, stood stiffly, his tan skin turning pale. He did not fall, but his muscles were taut as wire, his cold eyes fixed on the egg with a mixture of respect and dread. Sorrow stood near him, his mature face etched with deep lines of concentration, his somber presence acting as a partial anchor for Tamar even as he felt the egg clawing at his own core.
Even seasoned warriors like Saint Summer Knight and Saint Rivalen stood stiffly, their faces masks of grim concentration as they felt the predatory pull of a creature that shared the rank of their Sovereigns.
The Song Sisters stood in a formidable, overlapping formation. Moonveil, Silent Stalker, and Lonesome Howl stood with their eyes narrowed, their posture betraying the immense effort to remain upright. Just ahead of them, Revel stood with her chin high, her power radiating a fierce heat, yet even she seemed to be leaning against a heavy, unseen tide.
Only the strongest stood entirely unbent. Seishan and Beastmaster remained perfectly composed, their eyes filled with a dark, predatory alertness. Solvane stood with a cold, statuesque indifference, the pressure seemingly sliding off her as if it were nothing more than a light breeze.
Beside the stiff Valor Saints, Saint Jest of the Valor clan stood with his hands tucked casually behind his back. The theatrical, relaxed air he usually carried was gone, replaced by a sharp, focused stillness. His pristine coat didn't even flutter in the phantom wind of the suction. He stood like a pillar of iron, his eyes twinkling with a cold, appraising light as he watched the Blur.
"I truly must learn to keep my mouth shut," Jest murmured, his voice steady despite the soul-crushing pressure. He looked at the egg with a hint of weary exasperation. "Next time, I shall make a joke about finding a mountain of gold or perhaps a peaceful retirement. At this rate, I fear my wit is far more dangerous than I realized."
"A Great Devil," Noctis murmured, his eyes wide with genuine intrigue despite the pressure. "Even in its shell, it demands a tithe of life from everything that breathes."
"It is a leech," Solvane countered, her voice icy and unaffected. "A leech that will eventually choke on its own greed."
Nightwalker and Saint Bloodwave stood near the edge, their faces grave. They looked at the egg not with fear, but with the clinical respect one gives a natural disaster.
"He cannot survive this," Saint Naeve whispered, his voice strained. "A Sleeper's soul will be hollowed out in a heartbeat."
Ananke gasped, her voice a thin thread. "A Great Devil... atop a Soul Tree. It is a miracle they didn't die the moment they set foot on this summit."
Mordret laughed, a short, sharp sound of pure excitement that cut through the heavy atmosphere. "Survival isn't a miracle, Priestess. It's a design. Look at him!"
Morgan stood beside her father, her red eyes burning with a clinical, sharp intensity. She didn't buckle. Instead, she leaned forward slightly, her gaze tracing the cracks in the stone. "A Sleeper standing against that pull..." she whispered, her voice tight with a strange, burgeoning respect. "His soul should have been hollowed out. Instead, he's finding the weight to strike. To have such a weapon in the House of Valor... he would be the perfect blade."
Mordret's laugh turned mocking. "Always looking for a new sword to put in your rack, dear sister? You assume a creature like that can be held. Look at him — he isn't a blade to be wielded. He is the crack in the world."
Morgan's jaw tightened, her eyes flashing toward her brother for a fraction of a second. "Every crack can be filled with iron, Mordret. You simply lack the will to forge it."
In the audience, Nephis and Cassie stood paralyzed — not by the pressure, but by the retrospective horror.
"It was right there," Cassie whispered, her voice trembling. "Above us. All those days we spent eating the fruit, forgetting our names... we were sleeping in the shadow of a Great Devil."
Nephis didn't answer. Her knuckles were white, her eyes fixed on the memory of her companion standing alone in that nest. She remembered the listlessness that had claimed her on the island, the syrupy peace that had made her forget her own ambition. To realize now that while she had been drugged into compliance, a creature capable of obliterating Saints had been nesting directly over their heads — it sent a chill through her that no flame could burn away.
She watched the shadowy figure in the memory. He was still pressing his hand against the shifting, cloud-like patterns of the egg. Even through the distorted mist of the projection, the audience could see the violent ripples of power clashing between the Sleeper and the shell.
"How is he still standing?" Morgan muttered, her red eyes narrowed with clinical intensity. "We felt it. The pull was strong enough to destabilize a Transcendent core. A Sleeper's soul should have been hollowed out and turned to ash the moment he touched that stone."
It was this anomaly that drew the gaze of the Serpent King.
Daeron of the Twilight Sea observed the way the shadows clung to the young man's form — not as a defensive layer, but as his very foundation. While the rest of the audience had felt the egg reaching for the "white flame" of their life force, the Blur remained an immovable void.
"He is not losing his essence," Daeron rumbled, his Supreme Will acting as a stabilizer for those closest to him. "Observe. The egg is trying to drink his life, but it cannot find the stream. We saw him earlier, absorbing shadow fragments from the centurions and the scavengers... he does not have a soul core to drink from. He has a shadow core."
Anvil of Valor observed the scene, his eyes glowing with a heavy, calculating interest.
"A shadow core..." Anvil murmured, his interest sharpening into something heavier. "A body that rejects the logic of life. He is an anomaly, certainly. But anomalies are often the most effective tools for changing the course of history. If he survives this, he may be exactly what Valor requires."
Ki Song smiled thinly, her eyes fixed on the grey clouds of the egg. "An unhatched egg is already a Great Devil," she mused. "If the child is this potent, what terrifying rank would its progenitor be? What horror laid a seed like this?"
In the memory, the Blur drew the Midnight Shard, pouring his shadows into the steel. He swung with everything he had.
The egg exploded in a deluge of black, necrotic ichor. The Great Devil spawn died before its first breath.
The golden runes of the Spell hung in the misty air of the nest, glowing with an indifferent, mocking brilliance.
[You have slain a Great Devil, Vile Thieving Bird's Spawn.]
[Your shadow grows stronger.]
[You have received a Memory: Drop of Ichor.]
The silence that followed was more deafening than the egg's soul-crushing pull had been. On the illusory branches of the Soul Devouring Tree, the most powerful beings in the world stood frozen.
Eurys of the Nine, a man who had seen the fall of civilizations, could only stare at the shadowy figure standing amidst the necrotic gore of a god-like hatchling.
"A Dormant human..." Eurys whispered, his voice cracking like dry parchment. "Killed the progeny of the Thief. The hierarchy of the world is being spat upon."
But beneath the feet of the audience, hidden within the very shadow cast by Rain, a different kind of tension was coiling.
Sunny, currently a silent observer bound to his sister's shadow, felt a cold spike of genuine terror. He watched the golden light of the [Drop of Ichor] begin to manifest in the hand of his past self.
The secret he had kept buried in his marrow — the fact that he carried the blood of the Daemon of Fate — was seconds away from being broadcast to his greatest enemies.
As the memory-Blur reached out to grasp the golden vial, Sunny felt the strings of fate tightening around his current throat. The Loom was no longer a theater of the past. It was becoming a trap for his future.
He looked at the Sovereigns, then at Rain, who was still breathless with wonder at the "heroic" kill.
'Move,' he thought, his mental voice frantic.
'I have to move now.'