Shadow Slave

Sunny let out a long sigh and tossed the broken communicator away.

'I see.'

He felt a strange mix of profound relief and tense apprehension.

The reason for being relieved was obvious. Sunny did not know how many cycles it had taken them to conquer the Nightmare, but from what he had seen in the Estuary, it was at least thousands. Therefore, he had been secretly afraid to return to the waking world only to find out that humans there had gone extinct thousands of years ago.

That Rain, and everyone else he knew, were long gone.

Alternatively, the strange nature of the Great River could have resulted in them leaving the Nightmare in the time corresponding to where they were in relation to the Estuary — namely, in the Age of Gods. Which would have been terrible in its own right.

So, the fact that their Third Nightmare had taken no time at all, from the point of view of the waking world, was one of the best possible outcomes.

However...

It also meant that Sunny and the other members of the cohort had been sent to a continent where an unknown number of Great horrors were currently roaming freely.

Now that they were Saints... did they stand a chance in a battle against the terrifying creatures that had entered the waking world during the Battle of the Black Skull?

That was the reason Sunny felt tense.

'I wonder if we'll meet Skinwalker again...'

He smiled somberly, and then dissolved into shadows once more.

'At least I didn't miss years of Rain's life.'

himself like that, Sunny

After a while...

finally reached the

on the slope of a vast crater, under a stormy grey sky. Even though the situation was more than a little ominous, he suddenly felt a strange

about, to have a familiar sky above their

wasting any time, Sunny scaled the slope and escaped the embrace of shadows at the top of the tall mound formed by the crater. Standing there, he looked around, at what he had expected to be the ruins of

To his surprise...

siege capital did not look

Valor's stronghold seemed to have sustained the worst damage. Most of the city was still intact, and there were crowds of people moving through the streets in an orderly manner, escorted by

scene, two details attracted

him to the

Gate pierced the sky, dwarfing the tallest building in the siege capital. It was like

'Here, too? But why...'

there was something

was entirely, utterly

looked like tears in reality, revealing nothing but vile darkness in their depths. But this one was different. ŽĘXØŞ. Not only did Sunny not feel an instinctive revulsion toward the strange Gate, but there was also no darkness

he could see to the other

through the fracture of the Gate, a beautiful lake sparkled under bright sunlight.

It was Bastion.

to comprehend that stunning sight when he noticed something else. There

He shuddered.

'That... that is impossible...'

one way — from the Dream Realm into the waking world. Therefore, anyone trying to pass through a Gate from that side was destined to fail. More than that, approaching a Gate was lethal... Sunny had briefly brushed against one himself, in Falcon Scott, and it was a memory he

could countless refugees be passing

it even a Nightmare Gate? Or something

questions were, perhaps, connected to the second detail Sunny had been