Sunny parried one of Caster's blows and pushed him back.
"What are you doing, fool?" Sunny shouted. "This isn't the time for your bullshit!"
Caster's face twisted in anger. "Where is he?! Where is Leonar?"
He remained quiet for a moment, but the pain of his flaw overwhelmed him.
"I don't know."
"Stop lying to me, Sunless!"
"He's not out there?" Sunny took a half-step back. "He never... he never came to the army?"
The green jian swung at him with terrifying speed, but Sunny parried it with ease.
Caster gritted his teeth. "Fine. I'll find him myself. And when I do, I'll gut him for what he's done."
And before Sunny could say anything, Caster had already left.
He stood there for a moment, without moving. Sunny then turned toward the gates of the Spire and looked into the light.
Seconds passed in torturous silence.
...And then, a human silhouette appeared out of the brightness. And then another, and another.
The survivors of the Dreamer Army had reached the island and dashed toward the life-saving darkness of the gargantuan tower. Soon, they crossed the distance separating him from the gates, and dove into the shade.
And the last one to arrive, was Nephis.
The battle for the Crimson Spire was over.
Now all they had to do was find the Gateway hidden somewhere inside the ancient tower.
Sunny took a good look at all them.
Everyone were exhausted, wounded, covered in blood, dirt, barely staying conscious. Their armor was broken and torn, and their faces were deathly pale.
Around two hundred Sleepers had survived the battle of the Crimson Spire. They were the strongest, the bravest... but mostly, the luckiest.
Nephis and Cassie were there. So was Kai. Effie was slumped against a wall, dressed only in her white chiton. Seishan stood slightly apart from the rest of them, surrounded by a dozen surviving Handmaidens.
But Leon was nowhere to be seen.
Sunny slowly widened his eyes, and grew still.
Nephis was peering into the growing brightness that drowned the Forgotten Shore. By now, the light of day outside was almost blinding. On her face, there was a strangely thoughtful expression.
"It's time to go. Gather your strength. We are almost there!"
The Sleepers looked at her with tired eyes, the light of hope igniting in them once more. Soon, the procession of humans headed deeper into the Spire. Nephis was walking at the front, holding Cassie hand by hand.
Sunny remained at the very back, his shadows constantly searching everywhere the sunlight didn't touch.
Soon, they passed through the barrier of coral, and approached the center of the Spire.
In front of them, a vast pool of black water. Its surface was perfectly still and flat, like that of a harrowing mirror made from true darkness.
Turning away from the eerie black mirror, Sunny peered into the darkness and frowned.
Hidden in the shadows, far away from the light of human lanterns, countless figures stood motionlessly. More coral golems. Countless of them, staring ahead mindlessly.
And then suddenly, the golems surged forward, moving toward the place where the Sleeper Army was hiding.
After letting Nephis know about the golems, she simply nodded and said: "Someone will have to attack the Crimson Terror directly to attract its attention."
Sunny gritted his teeth.
That was probably where Leon was right now. There was nowhere else that mad bastard would be.
"Go. I'll lead them," Sunny said.
Nephis froze a moment, but soon nodded and left.
Sunny walked to the front of the crowd, and raised his Soul Serpent in the form of a tachi. "Follow me!"
Using the protruding coral roots as a staircase, Sunny led the Sleeper Army up the Crimson Spire.
The two hundred Sleepers fought the coral army, while Sunny and his shadows were looking for the gateway. The battle was not too terrible. Not a single human had fell to their attacks yet.
The golems were slower and weaker than even the mundane humans whose visage they were meant to recreate, not to mention almost completely mindless.
And after a long while of searching, he finally found it.
Out there in the darkness, a vast balcony was built into the wall of the tower, reaching almost to the center of the gargantuan structure.
They led to a circular dais, with a wide iron ring submerged into its stone surface.
Around the ring, a beautiful pattern of runes was shimmering with familiar light. That was the gateway.
Sunny dashed toward a wide, spiraling coral root that reached high into the darkness above. He could hear the sound of footsteps following him from behind.
The Sleeper Army was on the move again.
"Those at the back, ready your weapons!"
Suddenly, the entire Crimson Spire trembled violently. Sunny fell from his feet. The rocks on the roof of the Spire, came falling down.
It was as if a huge explosion had just occurred somewhere.
Beside him, Sunny felt Lyka disappear into thin sparks of light. He widened his eyes.
'What...What's happening?'
***
Leon opened his eyes.
His gaze drifted around, slow and unfocused.
He found himself inside a cave — the walls jagged and close, the air cold and stale. Where the mouth of the cave opened ahead, a beam of sunlight carved through the darkness. It was blinding. Leon raised his arm just to look at it.
He couldn't remember what had happened.
He looked down at his body. His legs were fine. His arms were fine. Every wound, every fracture — gone, as if he had never broken at all.
The memory returned in an instant, like a stone dropped into still water.
Leon hurried to summon his runes. He reached for his Memories.
Memories: [Azure Scythe], [Verdant Mnemosyne], [Endless Spring], [Drop of Ichor], [Stillmind Shroud], [Codex of the Insatiable], [Halo of Cinders], [Fracture of the Boundless String], [Bolt of the Last Horizon]
'No...'
Leon checked again. And again. And again... but the Crown of Ember was nowhere to be found.
He checked for Birdie. The spawn was still there, quietly resting in his Soul Sea.
Leon lowered his gaze and sat there.
"Why..."
"Why what?"
He looked up.
A person stood before him. Long hair. One red eye, one grey. A thick fog clung to them like a second skin.
Leon gritted his teeth. "Fog..."
The fog creature chuckled. "I must say, Dreamspawn. Your luck is exceptional."
It lunged forward, and Leon — who was already exhausted — couldn't defend himself.
It easily threw a few blows at him, right where all his vital points were. Leon's face contorted with each blow. Each hit sent a wave of paralysis crackling through him, nerve by nerve, until his body simply... stopped listening.
And when Leon was unable to move again, the fog creature grabbed his hood, and dragged him deeper into the cave.
"First the crown kills itself to free you, and then at the same time the sun decides to act up." The fog creature shook its head. "Really disappointing."
Leon narrowed his eyes at that last part.
The sun decided to act up.
A soft smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
His friends had made it.
The fog creature laughed. "Fool. All that Earthly knowledge, and what do you do? Sacrifice yourself for a bunch of characters in a book?"
Leon huffed. "And you aren't one?"
The fog creature sighed, still dragging him deeper. "Child... you really are a fool."
"Where are you taking me." His voice came out hoarse and uneven.
"The sunlight bothers me. And I need to take your body — properly, this time."
Leon let out a short breath.
Tentacles of flesh shot out from the creature, coiling around his arms and legs like iron chains. "Don't even think about killing yourself."
As they moved deeper into the dark, his eyes wandered. His final move had always been clear — have Aurelia tear his soul apart from the inside. Leave nothing behind worth taking over. But now...
His body jerked, catching on something. Leon looked down.
A ring of runes, half-buried in the stone.
He widened his eyes, and in an instant, understood exactly where he was.
***
Sunny watched as the first human was placed in the center of the Gateway.
A moment later, the runes surrounding the ring flashed with shimmering light. The body of the Sleeper suddenly shone, too.
And then, the light dissipated, much like a Memory or an Echo would, leaving nothing behind.
An exhilarated cheer rose above the crowd of humans. The intensity of their emotions... no words could describe the complicated feeling burning in their chests.
Sunny lingered at the edge of the dais, watching the crowd of humans disappear one after the other.
They were going to survive.
This meant that his job here was done.
Lingering for a moment longer, Sunny turned back and stepped away from the gateway. He disappeared into the shadows.
Summoning the Weaver's Mask, Sunny made his way through the countless roots and coral protruding from everywhere. And then... he saw him.
Caster of the Han Li clan, rushing to the pinnacle of the Spire using his incredible speed to avoid being killed by falling debris.
Caster was getting close when suddenly, the light of his lantern fell on a motionless figure that stood in the center of a wide coral root, barring his way.
Slowing down and stopping a few meters away, Caster gritted his teeth.
"You..."
The wooden mask that Sunny wore resembled a demon.
Then, tilting his head, he stared at the proud Legacy and said: "Caster, how unexpected."
The serpent flowed from Sunny's arm and into a blade. Essence trickled at the edge of his arms.
***
The fog creature continued dragging Leon deeper into the cave. Leon remained quiet for a long time.
This was the cave of the symbiote. The place where Sera had died.
Leon's jaw tightened. If the fog creature had been this difficult to handle... then a creature with far more intelligence...
A small semblance of hope stirred in his chest.
Perhaps... He could let the fog creature and symbiote fight each other, and during the chaos, he could run away.
Leon narrowed his eyes ever so slightly.
'Yes... if they get busy... I can get away.'
As they made a turn across the cave, Leon's shoulder brushed the wall.
Leon widened his eyes.
He felt something.
He could feel a pulse. A thin, low sounding pulse.
The fog creature stopped walking. It simply froze, and stood there with an expression that wasn't quite an expression. It dropped Leon to the ground and stared ahead, still and blank.
Empty — is all he could describe. The fog creature's expression just went empty.
Leon glanced up, and saw the creature's eyes widen.
The creature's head had turned, slowly, toward the deeper darkness ahead. Its single red eye was wide. Its grey eye was wider. For the first time since Leon had encountered it, it looked like something that could feel afraid.
It flinched.
Then it turned back toward the destroyed entrance of the cave, as if checking for an exit it already knew wasn't there.
"Oh..."
The sound it made didn't feel like fear. It sounded like the fog creature realizing with perfect clarity, that it had made a mistake it could not undo.
BEAT
It turned back to the darkness in front of them, that looked eerie and ancient.
The fog creature didn't move. Its breathing had stopped. Or perhaps it had never breathed, and Leon was only now noticing.
"ዐ፱ዪዐየⶴልፏቹ..."
BEAT
Leon couldn't hear what the fog creature said, as he just stared into the creature's eye... His eye...
ሠⶴዐዐነⶴ
The fog creature just... disappeared.
Leon widened his eye. He was staring at the creature. He was looking right at it, with his Gaze of Unmaking... a sight more powerful than most.
And yet... he didn't know what happened.
One moment, the fog creature was there, and the next... it just vanished into thin air, like the flame of a candle going out.
Leon stared at the empty space where it had been.
For a long moment, nothing moved.
Then the blood returned to his body. He could feel it rushing back through his veins, warm and sudden and painful. He slowly pushed himself upright against the wall.
'Are they... Fighting?'
[You have slain a Corrupted Terror, Pale Hierophant]
[A new pattern has been completed.]
[Resonance Fragment acquired.]
[You have received a new Memory.]
And he felt it.
The wall... was beating.
No — the cave was pulsating. He simply hadn't been able to hear it before. But now—
His hearing snapped back all at once. Leon held both hands over his ears on reflex, overwhelmed by the sheer weight of sound flooding in. The cave breathed around him. Hummed.
The fog creature was dead.
BEAT
He shifted his gaze around.
BEAT
The sound was coming from his left. No, his right... above... even from near his feet?
BEAT
"Oh...fuck..."
The cave was the symbiote. The pulse was the symbiote's.
He knew that if he tried running toward the entrance, he would probably die sooner. So he summoned the broken halo in the form of a dagger, held it steady in one hand, and looked around in the dark.
Suddenly, he heard footsteps from the far end of the cave.
"Leon..."
He heard a voice. Soft and familiar.
'That voice...' It was Sera's.
"Did you tell Seishan I love her?"
Leon gritted his teeth, and held his dagger up.
***
[You have slain a dormant human, Han Li Caster]
[Your shadow grows stronger!]
Standing above Caster's corpse, Sunny tilted his head slightly. Despite his expectation, the fight was too easy. He hadn't even gotten too many injuries.
Caster... had to die. He was too vengeful. He was going to kill Nephis, and also Leon.
Sunny raised his head and glanced up.
The furious light of the Crimson Terror was gone.
Sunny dashed toward the edge of the wide root and jumped off of it. As he reached the wall of the Spire, another deafening crash resounded from behind.
The dome of the Crimson Spire seemed to be broken, letting in beautiful sunshine...
'Sunshine?!'
Panicking, Sunny looked around, searching for shelter... but then noticed that his shadow was utterly calm. Unlike before, when his soul was being destroyed by the artificial sun, it wasn't doing anything.
Raising his head, Sunny stared at the pinnacle of the Crimson Spire.
'They must have won...'
Pushing himself off the wall of the tower, Sunny went forward and landed on the inclined stone surface. Then, he lingered for a few moments and began climbing up.
The higher he ascended, the more sunshine surrounded him. Eventually, the whole tower was filled with nothing but stark beams of light and deep, dark shadows.
In the lair of the Terror of the Forgotten Shore... the Terror itself was dead.
The first thing he saw was Nephis, who was sitting on the floor, staring into the distance. The Starlight Legion Armor was practically destroyed, revealing gruesome burns and cuts on her ivory skin.
---
Nephis sat there, staring at the corpse of the Crimson Terror. Even though everything had finally succeeded — even though she could step through the gateway right now — there were two very significant problems.
The first was the new attribute she had suddenly gained.
[Soul Conduit]
There was no description to the attribute, but Nephis could guess what was happening.
The second problem, was Leon.
She hadn't seen him anywhere. Not while travelling to the Spire, not during the siege, and certainly not near the Crimson Terror.
Either Leon had already entered the gateway — which he would never do. Or he had never been in the Spire to begin with.
Nephis clenched her fists.
The [Soul Conduit] probably meant that someone had to stay behind to keep the gateway active. Leon disappearing meant that he was doing something else out there... probably to keep them safe.
She had decided.
She wouldn't abandon her brother in a Death Zone. But then again... the tower was collapsing. And the gateway wouldn't hold—
"You... you actually killed it."
Nephis flinched. She slowly turned her head and looked at Sunny with empty, lost eyes.
'Sunny...'
She bit her lip.
Nephis knew what she had to do. What Cassie had told her, and what she needed to do with Sunny.
After all, she was called the Star of Ruin.
***
Leon looked into the darkness ahead. He could hear Sera's voice, somewhere in the back of the cave.
Out of the dark, a silhouette walked into the light.
What had once been Sera moved with a slow, awful movements.
The body was ruined from the outside in. Skin had burned away in long, uneven strips, leaving wet, glistening red tissue underneath.
Where the char remained, it had cracked along the joints and knuckles, splitting open with each movement. The fingers of one hand had fused together entirely — a blackened, blunt thing at the end of her wrist.
Her jaw hung open at an angle that a jaw shouldn't, and the tongue behind it had swollen and darkened, pressing past the teeth like a creature trying to escape. One eye socket was sealed shut by melted skin. The other was open.
Watching him.
"I am... Sorry. I. Could not. Preserve her better. For you."
The corpse stared at Leon for a moment, and Leon just stared back.
It was Sera's corpse. He could have sworn he had burnt it.
The corpse tilted its head slightly. "Would you. Like to breed with it." It said in a voice that was just... Wrong. Like it was reading from a script, and not meaning any of the words.
"What the... fuck..."
"Ah. Must not be. To your liking."
BEAT
Suddenly, Leon was sitting.
He stared at the ground beneath him. He had been standing — he was certain of it — and yet he could not remember choosing to sit. Could not find the moment when it had happened.
He was already losing ground. And the fight hadn't started yet.
Did the creature stop time? Was it too fast? Or perhaps... he couldn't remember ever trying to sit down.
The creature then knelt before him. "I read your memories."
The cold that moved through Leon's chest then had nothing to do with the cave.
'When...?'
"Very. Fascinating."
Black miasma swallowed the creature's form, moving like smoke and water at once, reshaping it from the inside out. The process was quiet, and deeply wrong.
When it settled, Leon's mouth went dry.
It was Cassie. Every detail perfect — the blonde hair, the blue eyes, her lithe, tender figure — completely naked. And then, slowly, almost shyly, she brought one arm up to cover her chest. Her eyes gazed into his.
"D-Don't just look, Leon. Go ahead."
Cassie's voice. Her exact voice.
Leon summoned the broken halo into a dagger and threw it without hesitation. The blade sank into her stomach and stayed there, handle trembling.
Cassie didn't move for a while, and then slowly, the posture shifted. The face smirked.
"Fascinating. Your mind is stronger than I expected."
Then the cave went completely, utterly dark. The light around was completely swallowed.
And from somewhere in that darkness, something began to move. Circling around him. It sounded wet and enormous, like it had too many joints and muscles.
The pulse in the walls quickened.
BEAT.BEAT.BEAT
Leon turned slowly in the direction of the sound, dagger raised.
The darkness receded.
Then, from directly behind him, Sera's voice again — not the corpse, just the voice, soft and close, achingly familiar.
"I was so scared, Leon. At the end. I kept calling for you."
He didn't turn around.
Something moved behind him.
"I know," he said quietly.
If the symbiote felt anything in that moment, it didn't show it. But something changed. Like a scholar setting down one book and reaching for another.
The creature shifted again. It reformed.
Sunny stood before him. The dark clothes, the messy hair, the short height, the tiny hint of greed and arrogance in his eyes — everything, down to the last minute detail.
BEAT
Leon crawled back, trying to exit the cave, but Sunny just took a step forward.
'Why am I crawling? How did I—'
"We are more alike than you think, Leon. You don't feel fear." He tilted his head, curious. "So would you like to feel it once more?"
'Fuck. Fuck. FUCK!'
The creature had already read his entire mind? When?! How?!
Sunny knelt and took Leon's face in both hands, and stared directly into his eye. Close enough that Leon could see his own reflection in them.
"The best way to feel something you've lost," he said softly, "is to find it again. Let me show you."
And Leon's mind went blank, as something vast and ancient and patient poured itself into him.
BEAT
---
The first thing he saw was darkness.
Not the darkness of a cave, or a dimly lit room. True Darkness.
Before the Crimson Spire rose from the seabed. Before the first human ever crossed a threshold in their sleep and opened their eyes on that pale, haunted coast.
Before the true darkness, before everything...
He saw the first fire.
A small group of things that were almost human, crouched in the shadow of a stone overhang. One of them — barely upright, hands still shaped more for gripping branches than tools — held a burning branch and stared into it.
And in its eyes, for the first time in the history of the species, something moved that had not been there before.
Curiosity.
He saw the first killing.
One primate and another, in a clearing. When it first picked up the rock, it knew almost instinctively, what it could be used for.
It used the rock.
The other primate was on the ground, still and unmoving. The one still standing looked at the corpse. It didn't run, just looked. Trying to understand what it had done, and whether it was afraid of itself.
He saw the first Awakening.
Humans manipulating essence.
The Horrors circling at a distance, curious, cautious, uncertain what this new, fragile, burning thing was — and whether they should be the ones afraid.
He saw centuries collapse into seconds. Civilizations built from nothing.
And through all of it — the fire, the blood, the first deaths and the first births and the first moments of terrible, luminous understanding — Leon felt nothing.
No fear. No horror. No grief.
He felt curious.
Each vision crashed into the next and he drank it. The first fire — what had sustained it? The first killing — what had the surviving one done afterward? The first Awakening — what had the Aspect been?
What came next?
He reached for the next image before the last had finished, pulling at it, consuming it, and somewhere very far away, he was dimly aware that this was wrong, that this was a trap, that the hunger in his chest had nothing to do with survival.
The symbiote — wearing Sunny's face, standing perfectly still — watched him.
It had tried fear. It had tried the dark. It had tried grief, guilt, intimacy — had worn the faces of everyone Leon had seen, and trusted — and each time, he had pushed his thoughts and feelings inward, and kept standing.
Burying every single emotion down, and forgetting about it.
The symbiote tried to create fear in him from scratch, but soon got distracted by Leon's peculiar curiosity.
Now it had shown him death, ruin and the grinding weight of epochs, and Leon had leaned forward.
His Omen of Insight had simply opened wider, like a second mouth, and started eating.
So the symbiote made its decision.
It began to feed him faster.
The visions stopped being sequential. They came all at once — stacked, layered, simultaneous, a thousand years of history arriving in a single breath. The weight of it was immense. Leon's vision whited out at the edges.
Somewhere distant, he was aware that his nose was bleeding. That something behind his eyes had begun to hurt.
And he still reached for more.
"Fascinating," the symbiote said. Very softly.
The creature had existed for longer than most things, but it had never once encountered something that responded to being drowned by trying to breathe harder. It didn't want to destroy Leon. Destroying him would be wasteful.
It wanted him. All of him. The body, the soul, the terrible and singular hunger sitting at the center of it.
The information came faster. And faster. And even faster.
***
"Go... Lost from Light."
Sunny's eyes widened. Deep within his soul, something moved and rose from slumber.
Before he knew what he was doing, his hand shot forward, the ghostly blade of the Moonlight Shard appearing in it.
"Stop."
His hands froze, the tip of the stiletto mere centimeters away from Neph's eye.
Trembling, he looked at his arm, and willed it to move forward. But it didn't. It didn't move at all.
"H...how..."
A sad smile appeared on her lips. "Cassie told me..."
Sunny gritted his teeth, as anger boiled within him.
Nephis sighed and looked away.
Sunny stared at her, too shocked to say anything.
"So, then. I guess... I guess this is goodbye. Ta... I hope that you'll take care of yourself, Sunny. Now, go. Escape before it's too late."
Even though Sunny didn't do anything, his body moved on its own. Standing up, he turned around and walked toward the shining ring of the Gateway.
Step. Step. Another Step.
'Stop. Stop!'
But his body would not listen. It just continued to move forward, indifferent to his commands. A dull ache settled somewhere in the center of his heart.
"And please — if Leon managed to go back to the Waking World... take care of him."
Sunny slowly walked up the steps of the dais and approached the circle of runes, then crossed the iron ring without slowing down. As soon as he did, the runes shone with intense light.
His body began to glow, too.
'No! I refuse!'
The ethereal radiance grew brighter and brighter, until it became hard to discern the human figure in its middle.
He turned around, slowly, and looked at Nephis one last time.
She was smiling.
'No.'
"After all, he is actually my brother."
Sunny's eyes widened—
—And then, suddenly, he was gone. Leaving only emptiness behind.
Sunny was gone, finally free of this long and arduous nightmare. The journey back to reality that had taken him more than a year was now over.
He made it out alive.
Just a few seconds after he disappeared in a flash of light, the crack in the stone reached the circle of runes and broke it.
The shine of the Gateway grew unstable and swiftly faded away.
At the same time, the artificial sun of the Forgotten Shore ignited one last time with a bright, intense explosion of light, and then extinguished.
…Left alone in the collapsing tower and with no more light to shine upon her, the beaten, broken figure of Changing Star disappeared into the shadows.
***
Leon stirred. He had probably lost consciousness twenty times by now. And each time, he had dragged himself back from the edge — refusing, through nothing but sheer stubbornness, to let go.
Not to this thing. Whatever it was.
"Earth... Weaver... Shadow...Slave"
The symbiote — wearing Sunny's face, Sunny's voice — stood before him. Leon himself sat leaning against the cave wall, bleeding slowly from more places than he'd bothered counting.
He forgot why he was bleeding at all...In fact, he forgot why he was in this cave in the first place...
The sheer volume of information in his head made him push away everything else. He was like an addict, wanting more and more.
It was already inside him. Slipping through every opening it could find, threading itself through his body like roots through stone
"Am I... not real, Leon?" Sunny tilted his head, the face expressionless. "Am in a book?"
Leon's chest burned. He couldn't hold on much longer. He couldn't feel his limbs. He couldn't feel anything.
Then the symbiote laughed, looking down at his bloodied body like a scholar examining something that had exceeded expectations. "I see now why that fog thing tried to take you. Pity it was so weak."
"What the fuck... are you?"
Sunny crossed his arms and hummed softly, as if genuinely considering the question. "Well, according to your rankings..." He tilted his head the other way. "Something like a Corrupted, perhaps. Or a Great Terror?"
Leon let out a shaky breath.
"This world is so vast." Sunny nodded slowly to himself, as if discovering something he was still learning to appreciate. "This person — Sunless. No. Lost from Light. Heir of the Shadows. Bastard son of fate." A quiet smile. "I would like to eat him. Did I say eat? I meant meet."
The symbiote fed more into him. The Omen of Insight pulled and pulled and pulled, each fragment of memory crashing into the next like a tide that never broke and never receded.
"That curiosity of yours," Sunny said, his voice almost gentle, "will be what kills you. Your brain will simply stop — overwhelmed, consumed by its own hunger." He paused. "It is a beautiful flaw, really. We really are alike."
Leon drooled.
The information kept coming and he kept taking it, because he couldn't stop, because the part of him that knew how to stop had long since gone quiet. His chin was wet. He didn't notice.
Somewhere far away, his body was bleeding, and his nose hadn't stopped running, and his one good eye had gone glassy and fixed on nothing.
He didn't notice that either.
Leon's thoughts slowly began drifting away.
'...So tired.'
He had been tired for such a long time. And the information would still be there when he woke up. It would always be there. He could rest for just a moment and then—
Runes appeared in front of him.
[You have acquired a drop of ichor. Do you wish to consume it?]
Leon stared at the words. He didn't know what a drop of ichor was. He wasn't entirely certain, in that moment, what his own name was. The letters meant something. They were arranged in a way that was asking him something.
He kept staring at the runes for a while.
A question. What do you say to a question. There were two options. What were they?
"Y..es." The words came out of his mouth before he could think.
[As you wish.]
A golden sphere suddenly materialized in front of them, in slow sparks. And before the symbiote could do anything, the the golden sphere suddenly separated into two streams of beautiful, radiant liquid.
The symbiote froze, and just stared.
The streams flowed into through the air, and approached Leon's face. He felt a gentle touch caress his cheeks.
The streams found his eyepatch.
The golden liquid passed through it without resistance, and entered through the pupilless eye beneath.
Soon, it was gone.
[You have acquired a new Attribute.]
Something stirred deep within him, as if it were awoken from a deep, eternal slumber, never meant to be stirred awake.
ዐ፪ረጎህጎዐክ
[End of Volume 2: Hubris]