Shadow Slave: Purgatory

It had been three more days since Sunny regained his vision, and he could finally move his body without pain. His right leg was broken, but if he stayed here any longer, he would die of hunger or worse, the invisible wraiths.

With a sigh, he used the midnight shard as an improvised crutch to prop himself up. During the past few days of immobility, his essence had been replenished, allowing him to travel at immense speed as a shadow or use shadow step.

He had subsequently managed to cover a decent distance, having passed many different dunes. To take his mind off the pain, he tried to distract himself with the surrounding environment.

Although repetitive, he had to admit it was quite mesmerizing. The dunes were each grand and unique in their own way, having formed from an unknown amount of time. Sometimes he would compare their height, length, width and finally if they resembled an object he could think of.

Only one had come to resemble the delicious bananas from the cafeteria in the academy, which he dearly missed.

The inky sand was quite appealing to the eye, some patterns formed by the winds briefly sparked memories of illustrations from old art he sometimes came across while scouring the bins for scraps that were his meal. It was quite unusual, coming to remember things he had deemed useless and inconsequential to his life and survival from his youth.

And yet here he was in an unknown desert filled with horrors, taking the time to admire the meaningless patterns.

At some point when taking a break to recover his stamina, he'd grasped a handful of the sand in his hands. It was pleasantly cool to the touch, and was somewhat calming to watch and let it slowly slip out of his grasp and back into the ground, like delicately spilled ink.

"Maybe having a poetic soul runs in the family.." he mumbled

In response Happy imitated what would be stroking his chin while nodding, seemingly in agreement. Gloomy was indifferent to the exchange, but he did seem attentive to the sand.

The darkness in Sunny's eyes seemed to lessen as his lips slightly curved up.

Things were finally looking good for him, but it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. With the pain gone, his mind constantly craved death. He was afraid of what he might do to himself, resorting to self-inflicted pain to keep his mind somewhat sober and sane.

'Sane?'

He shook his head with a chuckle.

During the time he had been recuperating Sunny had made a hard decision. He didn't know if Nephis was still alive or had managed to wake up and heal herself. As bitter as it sounded, if she hadn't saved herself by now, she would be dead. But on the brighter side, if she had survived, she was more than capable of taking care of herself—unlike the broken and heavily injured Sunny.

For the sake of damage control, he had dismissed Saint. It took a while, but she had managed to return and was currently in his soul sea. With a sigh, Sunny entered his soul sea, dreading the answer he would receive.

His soul sea looked just as ever, with the shadows of beings he had killed staring at him with hollow eyes. Two huge Shadow cores loomed above him. However, he felt there was a slight change.

It felt more...attuned? He couldn't quite explain it but the world of shadows in the soul sea felt different; how could he put it... content? Sunny did not understand how he could derive the feelings or emotions from the shadows in his soul sea, nor had he been capable of doing it in the real world.

The only shadows he could understand were Happy and Gloomy as they were specially connected to him, and made clear how they felt.

And yet somehow, he could feel as if the darkness were responding to something. Had something awakened a condition or caused a change?

The only cause he could think of was the [Destined Death] he had received from the vile wraith.

With a sigh Sunny shook his head, he didn't have enough information to make reasonable conclusions and Sunny didn't want to, his mind was already preoccupied.

With extreme reluctance, Sunny summoned his loyal helper. Saint materialized before him, hearing his command. Her armor was cracked in several places, and she seemed heavily injured, bleeding ruby dust and having lost her helmet along the way.

Her inhumanely beautiful face was fully exposed, looking at him with eerie indifference and a complete lack of emotion. Yet in her eyes, he caught a very hard-to-notice sign of relief—or so he thought.

Regardless, Sunny smiled at his beautiful shadow.

"I'm glad to see that you're alive."

Saint tilted her head to look at him.

With reluctance, he asked, his tone a mixture of fear and hope, "Is Nephis—is she alive?"

Saint tilted her head and gave him a single, decisive nod.

Sunny felt a mountain lift from his shoulders. He stood there for a few minutes as his shoulders shook, he whispered with barely contained emotion.

"...Thank you."

He hadn't realized how heavily this had been weighing on him. In a way, he had been responsible for them ending up here, and the very idea of Nephis dying had filled him with dread. Despite her insane personality Nephis was his first and best friend, after all.

Gathering his thoughts with a soft sigh, he tilted his head up to look at Saint with a warm smile.

"You can rest now. I'll find a way to get us back to her."

With a semblance of newfound hope, Sunny dismissed Saint to let her recover from her injuries as he left his Soul Sea. Now he had to decide what to do next.

His cognitive functions were back—not as sharp as before due to [Destined Death], but still sharp nonetheless. For the last two days, Sunny had used Gloomy and Happy to scout the area around him and had used the tall dunes to look for any noticeable landmarks.

To his relief, he did notice certain things. He was approximately a hundred kilometers away from the molten red river and quite far from the cave he had taken shelter in with Nephis. He could still vaguely make out the hill the cave formed. He had hated the idea of that cave, and weirdly enough, he had found himself missing the safety it offered.

Right now, Sunny had three options. He could choose to battle the ancient wraith again, but that was suicide. Sunny stood no chance against it in a physical battle. The beast was way stronger than him and probably outranked plus outclassed him too. Worse, it was smart and as devious as he was. In his current state, battling that would be suicide.

Logically, the best decision was the second one: to save himself by finding Nephis. But with the ancient wraith following him around, he would be leading it right to her. Even if they were stronger together, he also had to worry about the wretched [Destined Death] enchantment. He had to find a way to get rid of it.

With each minute that passed, Sunny could feel his vital organs growing sluggish. His body was shutting down, slowly but surely. So how was he supposed to save himself?

He wasn't sure if Nephis's healing flames would save him. He remembered the description of the enchantment:

[Destined Death]: "You've been dealt with destined death by one of Shadow's children. Your approaching death is slow and alluring but also inevitable unless purified"

"Inevitable."

This wasn't some physical injury or damage. This enchantment would bring him inevitable death eventually. His very being and body were dying—it wasn't an injury that could be healed.

So was Sunny meant to roll over and die?

'And what does purified even mean?'

Purification meant cleansing something, but how was he supposed to purify himself? What exactly was he supposed to purify? His body? His soul?

Sunny didn't know. It was impossible to know.

Well, he had the other option.

With a grim expression, he directed Gloomy to focus on the creepy molten river. It wasn't an option he had come to on a whim. No.

Sunny didn't want to go anywhere near the river—it gave him the creeps—but his intuition was screaming at him to reach it. Almost as if the river was pulling him towards it invisibly.

Sunny knew his intuition wasn't a simple thing. It was connected to his [Fated] attribute and the special properties his eyes had gained from Weaver's blood. Somehow, Sunny could feel the strings of fate around him trembling.

Something awaited him there—something connected to his fate, maybe something to do with Weaver or something to do with him. He didn't know what, but he could only find out by reaching it.

'Argh.. Crap. I'm doing it aren't I?'

With a grim, resigned expression, Sunny dissolved into the shadows. Sunny was heading for the river.

***

Someone said I just needed the fillers to go full on G3. well... here u go but its meaningful filler!