Sunny stood on the shore of Mirror Lake, the transition from the illusory city to the ghost of reality leaving a bitter, metallic taste in his mouth.
Behind the reflections lay a harrowing world that bore little resemblance to the "pretty" Bastion he had grown used to. There was no white stone shining under enchanted lights here, and no peaceful bustle of citizens.
True Bastion was a monochromatic graveyard of jagged stone, bathed in the haunting, silver radiance of a sky that filled Sunny with a deep, primal sense of terror.
Above him, the moon was viciously broken into countless pieces — jagged continents of rock and starlight vapor forming a heavenly river of shards that stretched beyond the horizon.
It looked as though it had been fractured from within, like the shell of a cosmic egg.
Looking away from the celestial river, Sunny gazed at the distant castle.
In the illusory world, Bastion stood tall and proud. Here, it was a mountain of fractured white stones and toppled towers, its ghastly crookedness barely recognizable as a citadel. Across the lake, where the thriving city should have been, a monumental wall of towering dark trees rose to the broken sky.
In the mirage, Clan Valor had waged war against that forest for decades, but here, the forest was untouched — a Death Zone inhabited by creatures far more terrifying than the Titan Anvil had once slain.
'I need to hurry,' Sunny thought.
The real lake was much more dangerous than its copy. He dove into the water without a splash, allowing his body to become as heavy as stone. He sank kilometers down, past the reach of the shattered moonlight, entering a world of immense pressure and stagnant rot.
At the bottom lay a drowned city.
Graceful white stone buildings stood in cold silence, their empty windows like dark eyes watching him pass. The streets were littered with human skulls that looked like pale fungus against the cracked cobblestones.
Sunny lightened his body, swimming through the ruins rather than walking. He did not want to disturb whatever doom had befallen the people here.
As he moved closer to the mountain peak where the castle ruins sat, grotesque carcasses appeared from the darkness — massive leviathans and deep-sea horrors, each impaled by a single, straight sword.
It was the King's work.
Anvil's domain extended even into this cold grave, his blades acting as silent sentinels. Sunny moved with agonizing care, twisting through the shadows to avoid getting near the swords thrust into the mud. He knew that each one served as the eyes and ears of the King of Swords.
To stand near one was to invite the Sovereign's gaze.
Finally, he ascended the steep slope and cautiously surfaced near the ruins.
There were lanterns burning high above on the remnants of the broken walls, and human silhouettes patrolling their length. There were no Sleeper or Awakened guards here.
These were the best of the best — Knights of Valor, each of them at least a Master.
Dismissing the Quintessence Pearl, Sunny pressed himself into the shadow of a toppled tower that lay on the ground, its roof protruding into the lake.
He observed the outer perimeter of the Royal Castle. He watched as a Master guard approached the heavy, iron bound gates of the keep. The guard paused before a Saint—a towering figure in ornate plate armor that seemed to drink the moonlight. The Saint, reached into a pouch and handed the guard a small obsidian sigil.
Sunny's eyes narrowed as he caught the detail on the charm: a straight sword thrust through an anvil.
Only after the Master clutched the sigil did the shimmering, transparent distortion of the runic defensive array allow him to pass.
'An invisible web of sensors,' Sunny deduced.
'Tuned to detect the resonance of a soul core. If I step through that physically, I might as well ring a bell to wake the entire mountain.'
He summoned Naughty.
The shadow detached from his heels, slithering across the pale rock like a liquid stain. Sunny remained behind the debris, his awareness splitting as he began to see the world through the shadow's monochromatic, low-angle perspective.
Naughty found its vehicle: a Valor Master named Balthazar who was beginning his rotation. As the man stepped into a patch of darkness between flickering enchanted lamps, Naughty lunged, merging seamlessly with the guard's own shadow. Using Balthazar's soul core as a "key" to mask his own presence, Naughty bypassed the runic sensors and slipped into the vaulted corridors of the keep.
As Balthazar turned a corner, he encountered the same Saint, handing out the sigils, again. The Saint looked unusually tense, his hand tightening on the hilt of his weapon as he stood vigil over the inner passage.
"Sir Kaelen." Balthazar saluted him with a knight's respect.
"Master Balthazar," Sir Kaelen rumbled, nodding to the guard.
"Sir Kaelen," the guard whispered, his eyes betraying his apprehension. "Is there... is there any word? From the King? Or the Princesses?"
The Saint remained motionless for a long moment, his voice heavy with fatigue when he finally spoke. "Silence. Anvil, the Changing Star, and Lady Morgan have not returned. Even the strongest of our order have vanished without a trace. Bastion feels... hollow."
Sir Kaelen paused, his head tilting as he scanned the corridor. His gaze lingered uncomfortably close to the shadow at the guard's feet. "The wind is sharper tonight," the Saint murmured, his hand tightening on his weapon. "Colder. And the shadows... they seem darker, as if they are stretching of their own accord. Something is off."
The Master guard flinched, looking around. "Perhaps it is just the absence of the forge's fire, Sir. It has been hours since we last heard the King's hammer ringing through the mountain. This silence is making everyone jumpy."
Sir Kaelen let out a long, slow breath. "The silence of a forge is the silence of a grave. Move along, Master."
He scanned the hallway, his gaze passing right over the shadow at Balthazar's feet.
"Maintain your vigil."
Master Balthazar, after saluting Sir Kaelen, left to patrol again, taking Naughty, and Sunny's awareness, deeper into the fortress.
Guided by Naughty's parasitic link to the guard, Sunny's awareness moved into the heart of the ruins. He eventually reached a tall, crumbling tower that rose into the broken sky.
Its walls were covered by a net of deep cracks, but the crumbling tower still stood straight and proud, much higher than any other structure in the vast ruin. Outlined against the pale radiance of the shattered moon, its dark shape was like a battered sword thrust into the ground by the hand of a celestial giant.
Based on the conversation he had just overheard, Sunny realized this was the Royal Forge.
This was where the King of Swords was supposed to be, forging the millions of swords that armed him and his legion.
But tonight, the tower was cold and desolate.
No light escaped its windows, and no sound disturbed the stagnant air. The forge was dead, its fires extinguished by the King's absence. The lack of that rhythmic hammering, which usually acted as the heartbeat of Bastion, was exactly why the guards were so jumpy.
The security around the tower was suffocating.
Dozens of Masters stood in tight formations, and a second Saint stood directly before the entrance.
Sunny pushed Naughty further, scouting the foundations beneath the main keep. He cautiously extended his senses outward, communicating with the ancient shadows
populating the ruin.
He could feel the dark hollows hiding under the rubble.
Some of them were simply the result of stone blocks falling on each other, some were halls and chambers that had been buried and forgotten in the devastation.
However, none of them were what he was looking for.
As Balthazar moved deeper into the ruins, the ghostly runes ignited on the weathered stones as they passed. The sigil on the guard's hand glowing warmly in response.
As they drew closer to the inner area of the ruined castle, Sunny sent his shadow sense down, into the mass of the drowned mountain below.
He was cautious, limiting its reach to a narrow… beam, of sorts.
Something like that had not been possible before, but after becoming a Saint, he learned how to control his senses better
The mass of stone beneath his feet seemed solid enough. Following Balthazar in his shadow, Sunny concentrated on the ancient ruins.
However... he felt nothing.
The longer he spent among the ruins, the less of anything he felt.
Suddenly, Balthazar paused and turned around, walking back to the outer area of the fortress.
'There has to be something!'
If it had been before, Sunny would have probably been drawn to a fateful location by his intuition, or simply stumbled upon it due to being Fated. But now, he was the opposite of that, and his intuition remained silent.
He didn't have much time with the guard walking back to the outer area.
'Nothing, nothing...', Sunny thought.
Outside the castle, Sunny smiled.
"Found it."
There was absolutely nothing below them. But that was exactly what gave away the hidden sanctum — even if the mountain was made from solid stone, there would be cracks and crevasses inside it.
And those would be populated by ancient shadows.
With how potent Sunny's shadow sense was, he would have felt their presence. But he felt nothing, which meant that something was blocking his senses.
'Deep, deep below…'
Sunny opened his eyes and took a deep breath.
He didn't need to navigate the corridors anymore. He focused on the coordinate of the void Naughty had discovered.
Sunny activated Shadow Step, merging with the darkness of the shoreline and reappearing instantly within the lightless, pressurized void deep beneath the mountain fortress, with Naughty at his heels.
Sunny materialized in the absolute silence of the underground void.
His first instinct was to inhale, but he found nothing but a vacuum. His lungs burned for a moment before his Transcendent constitution suppressed the reflex. He reached into his soul and summoned the Quintessence Pearl, a beautiful white orb that manifested a small, localized pocket of breathable air around him.
He stood in a small chamber that felt distinctly artificial.
The walls were smooth, polished stone with no visible seams, and the ceiling was unusually high. In the center of the far wall stood a door carved from a single piece of dark wood. It looked mundane at a glance, but the more Sunny stared, the more it unsettled him — the handle was placed too high, and the hinges were spaced in a way that suggested the door was made for something that resembled a human but was fundamentally not.
'A Daemon, perhaps.'
Sunny looked at the floor, his eyes narrowing.
There, pressed into the thick, ancient dust that covered the chamber floor, was a single set of human footprints.