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 continued

After a while...

reached the

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

thought about, to have a familiar sky

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 an obliterated

To his surprise...

capital did not look particularly

signs of destruction here and there, with a few buildings having collapsed... but Valor's stronghold seemed to have sustained the worst damage. Most of the city was still intact, and there

this scene, two details attracted

him to

where a large park sprawled. There... a giant Gate pierced the sky, dwarfing the tallest

'Here, too? But why...'

there was something

entirely, utterly

Gates looked like tears in reality, revealing nothing but vile darkness in their depths. But this one was different. ŽĘXØŞ. Not only

could see

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

It was Bastion.

sight when he noticed something else. There was an orderly column of refugees

He shuddered.

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

through a Gate from that side was destined to fail. More than that, approaching a Gate was lethal... Sunny had

refugees be passing through the

even a Nightmare Gate? Or something else

questions were, perhaps, connected to the second detail