In the cold light of dawn, a gargantuan crimson tower was rising from the Labyrinth. From this distance, it looked like a bloodied sword that some primordial titan had thrust into the heavens.
Sunny looked up, at the endless expanse of the crimson tower, and paled. Upclose, it looked even more ominous and oppressive. He struggled to believe that this cyclopean structure had been built by humans.
Turning away, he glanced at the camp of the Dreamer army. For the past week, the seven hundred of them had traversed the Labyrinth to reach this place. Some had perished along the way, but not as many as he had expected.
In these days, they had slaughtered countless Nightmare Creatures and somehow managed to avoid attracting the wrath of the dwellers of the deep. They had seen the headless statue of the Lord that stood halfway between the Dark City and the Crimson Spire, and many other wondrous and terrible things.
And now, they had almost reached their goal.
Everyone was making final preparations. Some were checking their armor and weapons. Some were hurriedly building makeshift fortifications.
Some were praying, begging the dead gods to save their lives.
He looked around, but couldn't find any trace of Leon.
Nephis approached him, and asked:
"Sunny, have you seen Leon anywhere?"
Sunny shook his head. "I thought he'd arrive before I did."
Nephis frowned, but nodded reluctantly.
"Don't worry, I'm sure he's just trying to look cool in front of some people right now."
Nephis smiled, and eventually joined the others for the preparations.
Sunny exhaled a slow breath, and summoned his runes, already knowing what he was going to see.
Oath Key: [7]
He glanced around and looked at Cassie. She was also busy with the others, preparing for the upcoming battle.
Sunny smiled.
'How fast they grow up.'
Very soon, the sun rose higher, and the dark whirlpool surrounding the Crimson Spire became a little smaller. Several bridges of red coral rose from its depths, connecting the island to the rest of the Forgotten Shore.
Out there on the island, countless silhouettes suddenly began to move. They were the Nightmare Creatures guarding the cursed tower. All kinds of horrors were among them.
There were members of the carapace legion. There were colonies of carnivorous worms, giant centipedes, eerie vines that crawled on the ground. Creatures that looked like black masses of rotten bones, and creatures that looked like humanoids made of rock.
And many more that Sunny have never seen, fought, or could describe.
All of them moved together in strange harmony, devoid of the usual territorial aggression. They were subjugated by the Crimson Terror, and now served to guard the Spire.
Like a terrible wave, the horde of monsters rolled over the bridges of the crimson coral, and flowed toward the human army.
Effie's loud voice rolled over the rows of Sleepers: "Stand your ground, wretches! If anyone runs, I'll kill you myself!"
Strangely, her irritated shout calmed down the fear in their hearts.
A moment later, however, it was drowned in the cacophony of the approaching horde.
The battle for the Crimson Spire had begun.
***
Leon stood atop a tall coral spire, looking down at nothing.
Fog. Everywhere, fog. It pressed against him from every direction, swallowing the world below in pale silence. No matter where he turned his gaze, the mist gave nothing back.
"Birdie."
The spawn of the Vile Thieving Bird drifted a few meters behind him, its dark wings catching the still air. It flapped once. [Prismatic Abyss] stirred awake, and all the winds the Trace had swallowed during the Great Titan's battle were released — all at once, in one irreversible push.
The fog shuddered.
The winds tore through the land like a tide ripping through shallow water, stripping the mist from the earth.
He had been flying for over a week now. The fog covered a vast stretch of land — so vast that he had nearly lost himself in it more than once. The dark sea rising each night hadn't made things easier.
But now, his Shadow Sense pulsed outward, brushing against the countless presences marching below.
He could see countless creatures below him, walking forward with some sick pattern. Every single one just moved indifferently to the rest.
Carapace Scavengers. Centurions. Demons. Spire Messengers drifting slowly above the mass. Locusts, Blood Fiends, Iron Spiders. Every creature he had ever faced, and creatures he had no name for.
As Leon stared, Birdie dissolved into a scatter of blue sparks directly in front of him.
He narrowed his eyes, and summoned the runes.
[Claims Forsaken: 1/3]
[...Your Trace is evolving.]
Leon grinned. He looked at the distant, writhing mass of flesh, and raised a middle finger in its direction.
And then...
The marching stopped.
Every single creature — all at once — tilted its head upward and looked directly at him.
The wind swept coldly against his face. Leon held their gaze, his expression unchanged.
Below, the horde began to shift. Slowly, with awful, deliberate coordination, the creatures rearranged themselves. The mass contracted and spread, forming sharp angles and long curves.
Eventually, two words stared up at him from the earth.
Dreamspawn
Leon's lips curled upward.
He summoned the broken halo, shaping it into the form of a bow. He knocked an arrow into it.
Memory: Fracture of the Boundless String
Rank: Ascended
Description: [His arrows were few, yet his enemies many. He stood his ground, and fought them. He managed to defeat them all, with just one arrow.]
Enchantments:
Infinite Severance: [Upon release, the arrow divides. Each fracture demands essence, carving deeper into the wielder's reserves with exponential hunger.]
He raised the bow slowly, drew it back, and released the arrow.
The crown flared. The arrow shot through the air — then split. Two. Four. Eight. It kept splitting, branching outward like cracks in glass, until what had been a single arrow became a thousand, raining down on the horde in a curtain of whistling death, each one finding flesh.
The Spire Messengers hovering above the ground shrieked, and shot upward, flying toward Leon. Below, the creatures at the base of the coral began to climb.
"Where is my eye, you bastard!"
***
Effie grinned, then twisted and summoned her spear back. With blood streaming from her wounded neck, she dodged a powerful claw and laughed:
"Bastards! Are you... trying to eat me?!"
The Sleepers of the first line — those who possessed the most powerful combat Aspects and best Memories — had achieved their goal. They stopped the devastating wave of abominations in its tracks and tied it down with their blade and their lives.
This group was mainly led by Effie, Gemma and Caster — yes, he's still alive.
The massacre was not one-sided. For every human killed, several Nightmare Creatures were wounded, crushed, and cut into pieces.
Whatever creatures managed to get past were met and eviscerated by the Sleepers of the second line, led by Seishan.
Kai gritted his teeth.
"Second Mark!"
"Now!"
As his melodic voice rolled over the third line of the Dreamer Army, he drew his bow and took aim.
Letting go of his string, Kai watched the black arrow streak through the air and bite deep into the body of a tall carapace demon.
"Keep firing! Kill as many as you can!"
And above them... five black dots circled the sky.
Sunny stood at the peak of a tall coral, observing the battle that raged on below.
With mad grin on her face, Effie faced one abomination after another, crushing, breaking, and tearing them apart.
All around her, the first line of the Dreamer Army was slowly buckling under the pressure of the nightmare horde. So many of them were already dead, and more were dying every second. Their bodies were torn to pieces and devoured, disappearing into the mass of monsters.
Kai, had lost count of the number of monsters he killed. Because of the constant cycle of losing blood and magically getting it back, he felt slightly lightheaded.
There were so many of the flying Nightmare Creatures that it was impossible to count them all.
The Sleeper Army was besieged from two sides. One horde of abominations was slowly devouring its front line, while another had descended on them from above, stalled for now by the vast net of sharp iron wires.
Things were turning from dire to desperate for the Dreamer Army. The first line was almost gone, and the second was now completely engulfed by the horde of Nightmare Creatures. Seishan was still standing her ground, just barely.
"It's time." Sunny heard Nephis say.
He sighed.
He walked over to the edge of the coral, and jumped down. Softly landing on the ground, Sunny inhaled deeply.
In front of him, the desperately fighting Sleeper Army was intertwined with the nightmare horde.
He suddenly noticed a presence beside him. Glancing sideways, he saw Lyka appear out of the shadows. He smiled, petting the wolf.
Stepping into the darkness, he suddenly became invisible. The shadows embraced him as one of their own, hiding his figure and movements.
Sunny and Lyka ran past the tent of the makeshift hospital. Though... the tent was partially toppled, and engulfed in chaos.
Sunny moved through the deepest, darkest shadow, running past the line of siege engines. He avoided several skirmishes, and moved forward. Somewhere along the way, he noticed Seishan herself.
She fought with a darkly fascinating grace. The Sunlight Shard rose and fell, guided by her slender hand. Every time the war hammer struck, a Nightmare Creature was broken apart.
He ran past Kai, past Effie.
And after a while... an eternity, maybe... he finally broke free of the endless mass of Nightmare Creatures.
Behind him, Changing Star had just entered the battle.
'Saint.'
The marble demon appeared from the shadows, her ruby eyes burning with cold menace. Sunny took a few steps back, and dashed forward.
The Shadow raised her shield, allowing him to step on it, and then pushed him with all her strength.
Sunny launched himself off the shield, and shot into the air.
Twisting his body, Sunny hurled the Prowling Thorn at the crimson coral of the bridge. He forcefully pulled on the invisible string, changing the direction of his flight.
'Where is that bastard?!'
***
Leon steadied his breathing, and knocked another arrow.
He had lost count of how many he had fired. A hundred, maybe more. The horde below had not thinned. If anything, it seemed larger than when he had started.
The Spell almost sang a lullaby in his ears.
[You have slain an Awakened...]
[You have slain an Awakened...]
[You have slain a Fallen...]
[You have slain an Awakened...]
Leon gritted his teeth.
He switched Memories, drawing on the one Kai had lent him.
Memory: Bolt of the Last Horizon
Rank: Ascended
Description: [They called her the blessed of the Storm god. She was the bravest warrior, the disciple of Daeron.]
Enchantments:
Storm Acceleration: [The arrow devours essence and converts it into speed. It manifests at its destination in a violent discharge, leaving behind only a delayed thunderclap]
A Spire Messenger was already closing the distance. Leon drew, poured essence into the shaft until it hummed, and released the string.
The arrow crossed the gap in an instant and buried itself in the pale creature's skull.
The Messenger swayed. Then it dropped down, falling silently into the mass below.
[...Your Trace has been further defined.]
He summoned Birdie without hesitation.
Birdie screeched as it materialized. The Vile Thieving Bird Spawn's screech filled the area all around them, echoing through the Forgotten Shore.
Birdie was larger now. Its raven feathers drank the light around them, darker than the space between stars. It had not simply returned.
It had Transcended.
Leon kept raining arrows on the horde climbing the coral. Birdie flew toward one of the Spire Messengers flying toward him.
The spawn moved with sudden, terrible speed, crossing the gap before the Messenger could react, and drove its beak through the Cursed Herald's wings, tearing it apart without any resistance.
Leon watched for a moment.
He thought he understood now, what the Claims Forsaken meant.
He had forsaken the chance to stand beside his friends. The chance to be the one who saves everyone, who gets to go back to the Waking World. He had chosen to be somewhere else entirely, doing something no one would see.
He had forsaken being a hero.
Leon let out a slow breath. The bow dissolved. In its place, a katana settled into his grip.
"I swear," he said quietly, eyes fixed on the distant mass of flesh at the edge of the horizon. "I will kill that abomination today."
[Oathbound] stirred.
His body burned. Leon felt his strength triple. Around him, the screaming and roaring of the horde began to fade at the edges, as if the world had turned its volume down. He had lost most of his hearing.
He walked to the edge of the coral mound, and stepped off.
The katana shifted mid-fall, stretching and curving, and by the time the wind was screaming past his ears, it had become a scythe.
He directly fell on top of a Carapace Centurion, lodging its head off in a clean swipe.
With every slash, he had activated Soul Shear, directly chipping at the fog creature's soul.
The crown poured its essence directly into his muscles, and his strength climbed higher.
Jumping from one creature to another before it could catch him, Leon used them like a staircase, slaughtering dozens while he descended.
Leon hit the ground and kept moving. The coral peak above him had begun to crumble, the great formation slowly giving way, raining crimson shards down on everything below.
He didn't look up.
He lunged at the next creature, and the next. He danced through the horde of Nightmare Creatures.
***
Hidden behind a tall mound of crimson coral, a vast expanse of flat surface led all the way to the walls of the corrupted Spire. On it, arranged in a wide semi-circle, seven giant heads stared away from Sunny.
He recognised the heads immediately.
The Lord, the Priestess, the Knight, the Hunter, the Builder, the Slayer, and the Stranger.
Their gazes were aimed at the gargantuan gates of the Spire. And on the gates, were seven shining stars. Each star had a dark keyhole in its radiant center.
Summoning Saint to stand side by side with him once again, he also felt Lyka's presence slowly walk beside him.
"Lyka, where's Leon?"
The wolf huffed, and shook her head. Sunny gritted his teeth, and jumped down from the mound of coral.
'I don't like this...'
Walking forward, he passed between the giant heads and entered the empty space in front of the cyclopean gates.
Halfway through the gates, he stopped, and looked back at the stone heads. After taking a quick glance at the seven heads.
'…People. They were just people.'
Sunny turned back and kept walking.
'I won't judge you for what you have done. But I hope… I really that we will be able to do better.'
But he froze again.
Something had changed on the stretch of land between him and the gates of the Crimson Spire. A cold wind suddenly howled, throwing bits of coral into the air.
The pieces did not fall down. Instead, more and more of the crimson shards flew up, slowly forming into seven twisted silhouettes.
A few seconds later, seven golems of crimson coral stood in front of him, blocking the path to the star sigil.
He grinned, and walked toward the coral golems, the blade of his sword pointed downward.
"Seven of you? That's it?"
A fraction of a second later, he noticed a war hammer flying toward him at great speed. Sunny shifted and blocked it with his blade.
He saw the seven tall figures approaching him with steady, inevitable malice. Each of the golems was powerful enough to rip an entire cohort of Sleepers to pieces.
But he... was Lost from Light.
He had two cores, and a divine aspect.
To his side, Saint raised her shield and hit its rim twice with the blade of her sword.
Lyka howled, taking a step forward.
Sunny cracked his head, and took a step.
"Let's do this."
***
A bone scythe shot toward him. Leon dropped beneath it, drove his own scythe into the joint of a Carapace Centurion, and twisted. The creature crumpled.
A second scythe came from a Carapace Demon. He kicked it — used the rebound to launch himself upward — and swept through both Nightmare Creatures in a single arc. Two heads fell.
He didn't stop, and moved to the next creature.
Suddenly, it began raining. The cold water fell on top of his head, as Leon went from creature to creature, ripping them apart.
Around him, the horde pressed inward, indifferent to the dead at its feet. For every creature Leon tore through, three more filled the space it left. He moved through them with grim efficiency, his cape dark and heavy with rain, killing in silence.
Leon exhaled slowly.
Lightning struck somewhere in the distance.
He paused for a second, staring upward.
He sent Birdie the command.
The spawn of the Vile Thieving Bird shot upward, its silhouette swallowed almost instantly by the dark belly of the storm. Somewhere in the clouds above, thunder cracked once, then again, and then again.
Leon could feel the faint feedback through their bond. Birdie was moving from cloud to cloud, chasing each strike, letting the electricity crawl across its feathers. The dim blue light crackled across the black raven feathers, surging through each one.
The rain poured down harder. It hammered the coral, the ground, the creatures pressing in around him. Everything was drenched.
Leon kept fighting.
After it had nearly went through every single cloud, Birdie shot out of the clouds.
It descended in a wide arc, its black feathers blazing a deep, furious blue — every single one of them charged, electricity coiling and snapping along its wings and body as it plummeted.
Leon smiled, and used the crown to shoot himself up into the air.
He climbed the air with great speed, the wind screaming past him, rain stinging his face.
Below, the creatures looked up.
'Now.'
Birdie flapped its wings once.
SCREECH
The blue light erupted outward from its body in every direction all at once. The electricity hit the rain-soaked ground and ran everywhere, branching through the puddles, wet soil and pooled blood, threading between the creatures in a web of blinding blue light.
From above, it was almost beautiful. Like the roots of a tree branching outward in random, chaotic patterns.
But then the rain stopped.
Not slowed, but stopped, all at once.
Leon's head snapped up.
The fog creature... had surrounded them.
While he had been fighting, while Birdie had been hunting lightning through the clouds, the amalgamation had been closing in — surrounding the horde, surrounding him, an encirclement that he had not noticed until it was already done.
Now it rose.
The walls of flesh climbed upward on all sides, curving inward overhead, sealing the sky piece by piece.
A dome of flesh.
Leon gritted his teeth, and began falling back down.
***
Sunny was facing three coral golems, while Saint and Lyka faced two each.
The Knight, the Stranger, and the Hunter stood in a circle around him. He gripped the Midnight Shard tighter.
The Priestess, meanwhile, raised her hands to the skies. But before she could do anything, Lyka pounced at her, causing the rock golem to fall down.
Saint brought the rim of her shield right on the Priestess.
[You have slain an Awakened...]
Sunny's lips curled upward.
On the bloody battlefield, the remains of the Dreamer Army were besieged from all sides. They continued to fight with doomed determination, abandoning all fear and doubt.
Even though the black water was already high enough to reach their knees, the humans continued to resist the horde of the frenzied Nightmare Creatures.
"Where's the Mad Scythe?!" One of them screamed, lodging their blade into a creature.
No one replied, all busy with their own foes. But they all knew one simple fact.
None of them had seen him anywhere, not since the battle had started
Illuminated by the light of Changing Star, none of them tried to run.
High in the skies of the battlefield, Kai and the Quiet Dancer were flying through the nets of lighting, dodging the attacks of three relentless Spire Messengers. The terrible monsters were faster and more powerful, but had to rely on their wings to propel their massive bodies.
Both Kai and his graceful defender flew thanks to magic, and as such, menuevered better than the winged abominations.
Cassie was at the very back of the army, dealing with stray Nightmare Creatures that weren't too powerful.
She heard the clangor of steel and the sound of flesh being ripped apart.
She also heard countless human voices calling out to any kind of deity that could save them. Full of fury, agony, bravery, fear, resolve, sorrow, strength, helplessness, hope, faith, despair, disbelief.
She heard them dying.
Cassie shivered.
...Her terrible vision was coming true, and she couldn't find Leon anywhere.
As Cassie stood, listening to the sounds of slaughter, a sudden gust of wind rustled her beautiful blond hair.
She had to make a choice, and live with it. She had already made the choice...
Back in the Crimson Spire...
Sunny lunged forward, and delivered a swift thrust, aiming at the Knight golem. The creature moved to deflect his attack, but with two shadows wrapped around him, Sunny broke through the coral and shattered the golem.
[You have slain an awakened…]
[Your shadow…]
[You have received a…]
Spinning as soon as the remains of the Knight crumbled to the ground, Sunny dashed toward the remaining golems.
Allowing the Midnight Shard to slide along the blade of the enemy's sword, Sunny made a step forward and raised his hands.
The tachi changed its angle and easily moved past the Lord's defenses. Continuinig the motion, Sunny slammed his fist and the hilt of his blade into the golem's face.
As the coral fell to the ground, the Spell spoke once again:
[You have slain an Awakened...]
He had killed all the coral golems now.
His chest burned, and his limbs hurt, but Sunny didn't stop.
Turning around, he saw a bolt of lightning hit the gargantuan gates of the Crimson Spire. Arcs of electricity danced on its stone surface.
Clutching his burning chest, Sunny looked at the black water that was already up to his knees, and headed toward the Spire.
***
Leon's eyes burned.
He clutched the broken halo with shaking hands, and raised it at the Fallen Devil closing in on him.
He was already on his knees.
The strain had been building too long — the constant drain of healing himself, the weight of the dome pressing down on his thoughts, the endless tide of creatures that didn't stop and didn't slow. His body was a map of cuts and ruptures, half the crown's reserves already spent just keeping him upright.
The Fallen Devil lunged forward to attack him, but was soon turned to dust by an explosion from the crown.
Bright orange and white flames enveloped his body, easing his pain slowly. Leon looked around, and saw Nightmare Creatures everywhere. They kept coming, and the fog creature had already trapped him inside a dome.
They were everywhere. The dome pulsed above him, and within it, the horde pressed in from every direction without gaps, without end.
He pushed himself up.
"AGHHH—"
He hurled a spear at an approaching Carapace Scavenger. Using Caster's speed to dodge another monster, he dragged the weapon back through the creature's torso as he passed.
Birdie was still moving somewhere above the horde, threading lightning and flame through the mass of bodies. But there were too many. Two of them could only do so much.
'I hope...they made it out...'
He wiped blood from his mouth and kept moving. Then something caught his foot — a dead hand, a corpse he hadn't noticed — and Leon fell down hard.
A heavy tentacle swung at him from above. Leon barely rolled over, barely dodging it in time. He slashed the corpse holding his foot, and sprang up.
A bone scythe hit him across the jaw.
Leon hit the ground again, skidded, and lay still for a moment.
'Damn it...'
He stood up.
His armor had been reduced to fragments. His cape was shredded. The rhythm of it — shield, heal, move, kill — had become a grinding blur, eating through his concentration the same way the creatures were eating through his ember.
But something else was wrong.
The attacks weren't random anymore.
A subtle wrongness in their spacing, the timing. The creatures weren't swarming him anymore, they were reading him. Angling to cut off his exits before he chose them, pressing from directions he hadn't yet gone.
Leon's eyes widened.
'That bastard's using my eye!'
He rotated his blade, holding it in a comfortable grip, and stared upward.
The dome pulsed above him, slow and rhythmic. He couldn't hear it properly — his hearing had been dulled for a while now, the roaring of the horde fading to a distant murmur at the edges — but he could feel it. The whole structure breathed with a lazy arrogance.
Though the flesh didn't usually contain your aspect, the fog creature was a creature that dealt with souls. And it had been in his soul for a long time during the tree's enthrallment.
Next, humans began attacking him one after another. They were different from the Nightmare Creatures. Random aspects, a smaller build, making them a harder target. Swords, spears, axes, they came at him in a variety.
Leon parried a swing aimed at his neck, and dragged his blade across the attacker's chest in a deep diagonal cut.
The human didn't even flinch. Not even a stumble.
He knew they were puppets. It didn't make it easier to look at them.
He couldn't blow them apart. Every detonation spent here was ember he wasn't spending on healing, and the crown was already running three things at once — strengthening his muscles, activating Soul Shear on every strike, stitching him back together wherever he was coming apart. The reserves were dropping, and the creatures weren't.
Above, the dome shifted.
The tendrils shooting toward Birdie grew faster, more precise — aimed not at where the spawn was — which obviously it couldn't see — but at where it could be. Birdie flew through the air, trailing lightning and fire, and the flesh moved to intercept its trajectory rather than its position.
'It can see the distortion...'
But soon, a flesh bullet clipped Birdie's wing.
Birdie lost control for a split moment, and lost its aerial balance. But it didn't end there. Flesh bullets came in faster this time, one after another, each one correcting from the last. Birdie evaded two, three, took the fourth across the wings.
The fifth one hit cleanly, followed by a sixth.
The fog creature had the Gaze of Unmaking after all. So making it out wasn't too difficult.
The tendrils wrapped as they struck, and then didn't let go. They multiplied across Birdie's body — coiling, burrowing, spreading beneath the black feathers. Birdie fought it. Leon could feel it fighting, the electricity discharging in wild arcs, the flames surging and receding.
But the flesh didn't burn.
It blistered and kept moving. It absorbed the heat and the lightning and kept tightening, drawing Birdie inward, layering itself across the spawn's body like a second layer of skin. Birdie screeched — a sound that had nothing melodic left in it — and kept screeching, long, frantic and spiraling, as the flesh pulled it down out of the air.
It was calling out to his master.
Birdie hit the ground.
'NO—'
Leon felt it through the bond — the impact, the agony, the flesh invading the Trace itself. He watched the spawn convulse at the edge of his vision, discharge everything at once in a single massive, desperate explosion: wind, flame, electricity, all of it, all at the same time.
A huge explosion shot at every Nightmare Creature in its vicinity all over the place. Pangs of flames and lightning still lingered everywhere.
The nearest creatures were flung like debris.
But the flesh didn't move.
The bird screeched uncontrollably.
'Fuck!'
Scorched and crackling, it kept pulling Birdie apart. Leon reached for the bond and tried to call the spawn back into the soul sea—
Nothing.
No dissolution. No sparks. The connection was there but the command went nowhere.
The fog creature was a creature of soul. Of course it was.
Leon gritted his teeth.
But that lapse of distraction gave the opportunity for a human to swing its warhammer at his face.
The hammer hit him across the jaw. Leon was sent flying to the ground.
His vision doubled, then fractured. He tried to rise. The creatures were already on him, pinning his limbs before he could orient himself.
A human raised a spear above him. Not a normal spear — something enormous, carved for something much larger than a person, a weapon that was made for giants.
It was brought down.
The blade pierced through his stomach and pinned him to the ground.
Leon screamed in agony.
His stomach was ruptured. The sound was swallowed by the dome and the horde. Blood welled up around the shaft and pooled beneath him. He couldn't move, the spear pinned him to the ground.
The crown surged into overdrive, throwing everything it had at the wound, but there was too much damage and too little ember to close it fast enough.
He could feel the centipede creatures now. The ones that had cooler around his legs.
He wanted to use the crown to blow them all apart.
He couldn't afford to.
'Birdie...'
The bird screeched so loud, the entire dome was filled with its cries, a sound stripped of everything except agony. He could still feel the spawn somewhere to his left, fighting the flesh with everything it had. It was a standstill — an agonizing one.
Bright orange flames covered the raven feathers, easing its pain, fighting back against the fog creature.
The centipede ripped his left leg free. Leon's voice was gone. He was past screaming, lying pinned in the dark with the dome pulsing above him.
'Oh god... It hurts.'
Several more creatures covered his limbs, feeding on them, trying to rip them apart.
"AGHHH"
It was over. The fight against the undead army... was over.
***
A black tentacle suddenly rose out of the seething waves and blindly whipped the air. Crashing into a mound of coral, it easily shattered it.
Just a moment later, countless others followed the first one.
'Damnation!'
The tentacles were too close to his location. As the sea rose, they slowly started moving closer toward him.
Sunny dashed to the fourth star, already having inserted the first three keys.
The water was now even higher, forcing him to struggle against its weight.
As he put the fifth key into the keyhole, the tentacles felt alarmingly close.
'Curse it all!'
As soon as Sunny put the last Oath Key into the seventh lock, the whole Crimson Spire shuddered. An indescribable sound came from its depths, echoing through the darkness of the storm.
And then, the gargantuan gates opened outward, slamming into Sunny and dragging him through the mass of the block.
The whole Forgotten Shore trembled.
Out on the battlefield, the surviving humans froze for a second, startled by the sudden change that rippled through the world.
Even the Nightmare Creatures attacking them stumbled and paused for a moment.
The opening gates brought him away from the tentacles. Sunny stumbled onto a tall coral mound, and looked back.
What he saw made him open his eyes wide in disbelif.
The dark sea was being sucked into the Spire.
The black water was flowing in reverse, rushing into the enormous doorway. The twisting tentacles and the harrowing creature they belonged to were carried away by the current, disappearing into that blackness, too.
And in a few minutes...
The cursed sea was no more.
'Did we... did we do it?'
The world was bathed in sunlight. The surface of the Labyrinth suddenly became vibrant and bright, with stark shadows hiding under the jagged pillars of the crimson coral.
Laying on the ground, he allowed himself a few moments to rest.
'Leon... I swear I'm going to kill you when I see you, bastard...'
A short laugh escaped his lips.
'I actually did it?'
Unfortunately, he couldn't rest yet. The battle wasn't over. The horde of Nightmare Creatures was not defeated yet.
...And somewhere in the Spire, the Crimson Terror itself wasn't defeated yet.
Sunny pushed himself up, and sighed.
'Was it always so bright?'
He climbed onto the very top of the coral pillar. Standing on it, Sunny looked in the direction of the Sleeper army.
Something wet suddenly fell on his hand. Sunny raised his hand and wiped it across his upper lip. It came away wet with blood.
'...A nose bleed?'
Come to think of it, why did he feel so weak?
As Sunny stared at his hand in confusion, a violent ripple suddenly ran through his shadow.
Sunny swayed a little, and then looked down at his shadows.
The two shadows seemed to be in pain. It was slumped, clutching its chest with one hand. Gloomy waved its hand desperately, pointing at Sunny's chest.
Suddenly, his eyes widened.
The Soul Core.
With a shudder, Sunny dove into the Soul Sea.
Instead of the usual peace and quiet, he was met by ominous chaos. The dark waters that were always tranquil and still were now restless and turbulent. They rippled and surged, as though under the assault of the invisible winds.
Up above, the spheres of light that represented his Memories shimmered and blinked, as if about to be extinguished. The black sun of the two Shadow Cores were trembling. He could almost see tiny cracks appear on its transparent surface.
Only the silent shadows were still the same, not disturbed by the approaching disaster at all. They stood motionlessly, staring at him with no expression on their black, lifeless faces.
'...Soul damage. I am receiving soul damage.'
Escaping the unquiet sea in panic, Sunny wiped the blood off his face and looked around with a grim expression.
He looked up, at the blinding discus of the sun. The light was indeed much brighter than it had been before.
The skies of the Forgotten Shore, which had always been grey, were now almost white, full of merciless heat and radiance. It looked as though someone had erased reality itself.
The source of the light attack... It was sunlight itself!
Anywhere it reached, the souls of living creatures were being slowly eroded and destroyed. Spinning around, he peered at the moat.
'The army!'
Out there on the battlefield, the Nightmare Creatures had stopped their endless onslaught. Now, they were stumbling and swaying, as though drunk.
Their souls had been destroyed, and many were already dead.
The surviving warriors of the Dreamer army were staring at them in bewilderment.
Sunny lingered for a few seconds, and then raised his hand.
A moment later, a clear ringing of a silver bell spread across the Labyrinth, rolling over the Dreamer Army.
Nephis shot her head up, and saw Sunny waving his arm, ringing the loud silver bell.
Sunny then saw Changing Star immediately dash toward the Spire. The entire Dreamer Army rushed behind her. He could make out Effie, Cassie, and Seishan in the crowd of Sleepers following behind her.
Kai was flying above them, shooting arrows at whatever Creature could still move.
There was nothing he could do to help anymore.
'Good luck...'
He commanded Lyka and Saint to go outside and help as many of them as possible, and jumped down from the mound.
...However, before Sunny could relax, he was suddenly attacked by something.
He grimaced in pain, as he was shot back by a blow to his stomach.
Sunny looked up, and gritted his teeth.
'Caster...'
***
Leon writhed in agony. His flesh was being consumed from all parts of his body. His legs were already gone, and his arms were a pile of flesh and bone. The creatures were dismantling him piece by piece.
He couldn't move, and all he could feel was pain.
Suddenly, the world broke apart, and he was somewhere else.
His Soul Sea.
It stretched in every direction without a horizon, vast and impossibly still. The blue was deeper than any sky. Faint light filtered from nowhere and everywhere at once. The surface lay flat as glass in all directions.
He clutched his chest, falling to his knees inside the vast blue ocean.
Aurelia was already there. She knelt in front of him. He was still breathing too hard, still feeling wrong, still bracing for pain that wasn't coming.
"Leon."
He looked up at her. His face was pale, his eyes not quite focused.
"It's... over?"
Aurelia shook her head. She reached out and cupped his face in both hands, tilting it up toward her.
"Listen to me." Her voice was quiet and very steady. "Never give up on yourself. Or on others."
Leon's face twisted. "Wh — what?"
"You were," she said, "and always will be, someone really special to me." A tear ran down her cheek slowly. "And I forgive you. I could never hate you."
He stared at her.
"I..." He shook his head. "What are you saying?"
Why now? Why was she telling this to him now?
Aurelia's smile grew brighter. A slow warmth settled in his chest somewhere. He wanted to see her smile more. He wanted to keep seeing her smile.
"Goodbye." She leaned forward until their foreheads touched. Her voice dropped to almost nothing.
"My hero."
Leon's eyes went wide.
He tried to speak. The Soul Sea dissolved before he could.
The crown erupted.
The crimson glow came so fast and so bright, it erased everything else — no color survived it, no shadow, nothing but red reaching everywhere, flooding the dome from edge to edge.
Ember Charge: [2077/3500]
Ember Charge: [2027/3500]
A burst of concentrated detonations swept across Birdie's body. It burned through the flesh layer by layer, peeling it back. The tendrils recoiled.
Birdie tore free.
It took a moment to steady itself, wings unfolding and shuddering. It turned its head toward Leon and the screech it let out was hurried.
Ember Charge: [2027/3500]
Ember Charge: [2000/3500]
More explosions occurred on Leon, killing all the Nightmare Creatures in a small radius. His wounds began to close slowly and unevenly, the damage too severe and too widespread to heal completely.
The flames knit his flesh back together into something that resembled a human body.
Leon opened his eyes.
He understood what she was trying to do.
"No..." He tried to move his body, but still couldn't. "Please...Please don't."
The crown blazed hotter. The crimson at its center had gone almost white, the light humming against the inside of the dome like a second heartbeat.
Birdie moved.
It dropped out of the air and landed directly over him. Grabbing the crown on his head with its beak, it used all the strength it could muster to throw it away.
Birdie then folded its wings and covered his entire body with its feathers. The black feathers sealed him in from every direction. The noise outside fell away. The reaching hands of the creatures fell away.
"Don't—"
He remembered every time he decided not to talk to Aurelia. Every apology he had decided to leave until later, because later would always come.
Now it never would.
The crown was falling to the ground, and numerous Nightmare Creatures reached for it. They mindlessly piled on top of each other, reaching higher and higher. Each creature climbed the ones beneath it, scythes and claws and whatever remained of their hands all stretching upward, straining toward the pulsing light.
A dead human's fingers almost closed around it.
The crown went white.
White — a total, consuming whiteness that flooded the entire dome in a single breath. The ground shook. The dome recoiled. Every creature inside staggered back from the light as one.
For one instant, there was nothing in the world but brightness.
Ember Charge: [2000/3000]
Ember Charge: [0/3000]
Leon gritted his teeth, his eyes shut. His voice was broken and faint.
"I'm sorry."
[Your Memory has been destroyed.]