Chapter 39: Dark Reunion
[Sunny's POV]
The cohort moved as one like a machine honed by months of surviving hell.
Nephis's sword materialized in a flash of silver light, its edge settling into a perfect guard. Caster's own blade, less grand but no less sharp, appeared a heartbeat later. Effie planted her feet, her spear and shield a solid wall of defense. Kai's bow was already drawn, a glimmering arrow of crystallized blood nocked and aimed at the abomination head.
Only Cassie did not move to arm herself. Instead, she summoned her Echo, the graceful silver rapier floated behind her, a poised and deadly promise of death.
Sunny was no slower. From his shadow, the Marble Saint erupted, her stone feet cracking the ground as She slammed her sword against her shield with a sound like a breaking mountain, her crimson eyes fixed on the colossal bird with tenebrous killing intent.
But Sunny wasn't done. A second, more fluid shadow surged from his skin—the Carapace Demon. It flowed over the ebony plates of his [Mantle of the Underworld], seeping into the gaps, hardening and reinforcing until he was clad in a second skin of living, chitinous darkness granting him a Raw, potent strength that flooded his limbs.
Shadow: Carapace Shadow
Shadow Rank:Awakened
Shadow Class:Demon
Shadow description : [A fallen soldier of a long forgotten legion brought back by the treacherous lost from light]
Shadow Abilities:[Shadow Carapace], [Changeling]
[shadow carapace] ability description: [This shadow can bond with it's Master granting them strength]
[changeling] ability description: [This shadow can change it's body]
Through his shadow's ability, sunny managed to achieve a false state of awakening.
Finally, he called upon a third shadow. The Soul Serpent unwound from his arm, its liquid form solidifying in his grip into a sharp onyx blade, its edge humming with silent malice.
He didn't wait for the creature to strike. With a burst of augmented speed, Sunny lunged forward—a black dart aimed to cripple the giant bird's tendon-laden leg.
The abomination —which sunny assumed to be the next evolution of Spire Messenger— reacted with an uncanny speed as One of its massive wings swept out like a scythe, releasing a gust of wind strong enough to force Sunny to break his charge and retreat. The same wing forced Effie to leap back and Caster to duck under its arc with his incredible speed.
Kai's arrow shot true, aiming for a glittering, greedy eye.The creature's head twitched, and the projectile miraculously missed by a hair's breadth.
Nephis darted in under the wing-sweep, her blade sheathed in corrosive white flames. It licked out, slashing at the creature's underbelly. The sword bit true but shallowly, scraping against what felt like stone beneath the feathers. Strangely, her divine flames which usually seared corruption seemed to have little effect.
The Herald's other claw lashed out at her, but the Marble Saint was there. A deafening clang echoed as the onyx knight intercepted the blow with her shield before countering with a shove that slammed into the bird's chest, staggering it backward.
In that opening, Cassie's Echo shot forward like a silver needle striking a joint in the creature's limb.
It shrieked horribly, a sound of rage and pain creating the opportunity for Caster and Effie to press the attack, their weapons finding purchase in its feathered hide.
Sunny played a lethal game on the periphery. His serpent-blade was a flicker of darkness, seeking joints, eyes and the soft spots beneath it's armor, all while his mind raced studying the creature's shadow and it's movements for a fatal weakness.
But something was wrong.
The creature fought with a bizarre, frenetic intelligence that felt alien for a Nightmare Creature. Demons and higher-class beings had a cunning intelligence, yes, but this was… calculated. It wasn't just lashing out, it was prioritizing Targets.
Its vile, glittering eyes kept darting past their weapons, past their defenses, fixating with a covetous hunger on two points: on Nephis, and more intensely, on him.
A deep, unsettling familiarity prickled at the back of Sunny's mind as used a wing to expertly parry Saint, blocked Nephis with shocking deftness, all while its gaze burned with a hunger that felt unnervingly personal.
Sunny does not remember ever meeting such a creature which made the feeling he was having even more bizzare...
'Why does this feel familiar?'
He grimmiced as He saw an opening. As Effie's spear-thrust forced the Herald to rear back, Sunny poured his shadow essence into his blade—courtesy of the Serpent's [Shadow Guide] ability—and aimed a devastating cut at its supporting leg. The creature shifted at the last moment, taking the blow on its thick, feathered thigh. Dark blood flew but the cut wasn't deep.
In that moment of contact, as his shadow-enhanced blade bit into the creature's essence, Sunny made a decision. He fell back a step and activated the hidden power of his [Blood Weave] attribute.
His perception split into two.
The physical world blurred at the edges as his sight plunged into the river of essence peering into the deepest parts of the abomination's soul.
He expected to see the familiar, polluted darkness of a Corrupted creature soul.
But What he saw stole his breath.
There was no corruption. Not even a tiny drop of it.
Instead, blazing within the creature's soul were four magnificent, shimmering cores, That glowed with a clean, potent and utterly familiar azure fire.
A fire that spoke of defiance, of a will unbroken, of a purity that burned all the brighter then any other darkness...
His blood instantly ran cold as his grip loosened slightly on serpent. His eyes snapped back to the physical world to the creature's chest, racing to find something, to confirm that he was mistaken.
And eventually he found it.
the familiar, sleek blue design of an hourglass symbol.
The impossible truth crashed into him yet he still couldn't believe it.
"That's impossible..."
———
[Hugo's POV]
Madness.
If Hugo had been in full control of his thoughts, that was the word he would have used to describe what he was feeling in this moment.
It was a whispering, shrieking tide rising from the depths of his own soul drowning out all reason, all strategy and all basic self-preservation.
He was a fool.
He had catastrophically underestimated the true harrowing potential of his Flaw when paired with the Blessed Herald's deranged mind.
The world had narrowed to a single fake tunnel and At the end of that tunnel were two dazzling, golden threads. One was wrapped around the fierce, white-haired girl whose sword stung like a divine wasp. The other—brighter, more intricate and infinitely more shiny— was anchored to the one clad in shifting darkness who moved with a frustrating slippery grace.
He did not know what they were not did he care.
They were perfection.
They were the most beautiful things he had ever perceived.
And most importantly, they were shiney
they needed to be his and his alone.
Despite the madness he was feeling now, there was still A sliver of his true self that was screaming in the back of his mind, But its voice was faint and distant like a shout from the other end of a long, lightless cave utterly drowned by the roaring impulse:
'SHINY. TAKE. MINE.'
The greed was practically a physical thing, a hollow need that he never knew existed. It directed his every movement, his every thought with an uncanny amount of control.
He didn't want to kill these scurrying creatures as they were merely obstacles guarding his prize, instead he wanted to take what was theirs, the thing they held most dearly in their lives.
He batted the stone woman away with a pained grunt. He parried the unusually fast creature and ignored the searing pain of the blood arrow. The jabs of the spear and the dancing needle also felt like mere annoyances.
His entire being was focused on the dark-clad one and the white-haired one. His talons reached for them to pluck the metaphysical threads nestled within their souls with his [theft] ability.
But they were good. Too good even.
They moved as one, a seamless unit, covering each other's weaknesses like a master and it's shadow, their teamwork a flawless dance of survival.
The dark one's shadow-blade bit into his leg again causing a pinprick of pain that barely registered through the consuming greed.
Then, the dark one did something once again causing A ripple to pass through Hugo. It was a strange, invasive sensation as if something was peeling back the layers of feathers, flesh and madness to stare directly into the core of what he was.
For one fraction of a second, the greedy haze tore revealing
In that sliver of agonizing clarity, Hugo saw them not as obstacles but as people. He saw the white-haired girl's unwavering burning eyes and not just as blind fury.
He saw the blind girl's head tilted, her expression one of dawning horrified recognition.
And he saw the dark-clad one too, The specific, efficient recovery after the cut followed by the pivot on the ball of the foot, the serpent-blade held in that unique, guarded stance. A move he'd seen practiced a hundred times before, now refined to lethal perfection.
Sunny.
The name exploded in his mind like a thunderclap as if a lighthouse had just been ignited in his mind
'WHAT AM I DOING?!'
The internal scream was pure undiluted horror, but His Flaw fought back against it.
the tunnel of greed trying to drag him under again, But he had already faced corruption and madness before, he had known madness all too well
And He would not fall to it ever again.
With a wrenching effort that felt like tearing his own spirit in two, Hugo exerted his will.
He focused on the three words that were his anchor and the centre of his existence, his true name.
Paragon of Purity.
He fought against the instincts of the Herald imprint, against the ache in his soul for the shiny threads.
He was not a beast of greed. He was an awakened.
He was the Paragon of purity.
He was Hugo...
He forced his reaching talons to curl back arresting his lunge mid-motion as his muscles screamed in protest.
Hugo staggered backward, disengaging completely creating a dozen feet of empty, dusty space between them.
The cohort, sensing the sudden, shift hesitated for a moment, Their weapons remained raised, but their relentless assault bad paused.
They watched, tense and utterly confused as the terrifying bird-creature shuddered violently. Its great head drooped, and a strained, guttural sound emanated from its throat, almost like a groan of profound agony.
Then, with a trembling limb, it moved one clawed hand to its chest and pressed the blue hourglass symbol.
In a flash of brilliant, familiar azure light, the twenty-foot terror of feathers and hunger was gone.
In its place, standing unsteadily on the crimson Coral was a fifteen-foot-tall monstrosity of a different kind wearing Dark, segmented armor.
Writhing sensory tentacles and Piercing, red-slitted eyes.
It was a form that haunted the edges of Sunny's memory all too well.
How could it not?
After all it was a living monument to one of his greatest failures.
The creature—Hugo in his Chimera Sui Generis base form—lifted it's injured arms in a universal, gesture of surrending
"Sunny… Neph… it's me. Stop…"
The words ended in a choked gasp. Then, the massive figure swayed, its legs buckling before collapsing to the ground with a heavy thud.
Silence descended upon the labyrinth broken only by the ragged breathing of the cohort.
Caster, Effie, and Kai slowly turned their heads from the fallen giant to Sunny and Nephis.
Their expressions were a mix of shock, suspicion, and sheer bewilderment.
Then, It was Effie who broke the silence, her voice uncharacteristically hesitant. "Doofus. Princess. Why did that… that thing… know your names?"
Sunny, still reeling, the image of those four pure azure cores burned into his mind, remained silent for a long moment untill The pressure of his Flaw built in his chest becoming almost unbearable.
He finally let it out, his voice low and uncertain.
"Remember the friend I told you about?" he said, his eyes never leaving Hugo's unconscious form. "The one who died on the journey to the Dark City?"
Effie nodded slowly, her grip on her spear loosening just a fraction.
"That's him."
Kai's eyes widened. "You didn't say your friend was a monster..."
Nephis shook her head, her own gaze analytical and sharp as she took a cautious step toward the unconscious Hugo.
"He's not. Or, at least not always, His Aspect allows him to shapeshift to an extent But we… we saw his dead body... We buried him." A faint, uncharacteristic note of confusion touched her usually stern. voice.
Caster's measured eyes scanned the surroundings, his years of training as a legacy warning him that something was wrong...
"With all due respect, Lady Nephis, that is precisely why we must be cautious. We encountered parasitic swarms on our journey. It's only rational to suspect his remains could have been… inhabited by something similar..."
His reasoning was sound and made perfect sense, It was what Sunny himself would have deduced if not for what he had seen inside Hugo soul.
Before he could voice his thoughts, a low, certain voice spoke from behind them.
"No. It's him..."
The cohort turned meeting Cassie sightless eyes that seemed to look right through each of them, focused on a truth only she could see.
"I can see his runes," she stated quietly. "His attributes are still there just like the day we met, A parasite or an Echo would not have them... And One of his attributes… has evolved... I think… I think that is what saved his life. ."
Sunny's breath hitched as he took in her words.
The final piece clicked into place with dreadful certainty.
"Oh, gods..." he whispered.
The others might not have fully grasped it, but Nephis and Cassie understood instantly.
Their faces paled as they had the same thought process.
They had buried one of their friends leaving him broken but not quite dead under the roots of the harrowing Soul Devourer tree.
And they had left him there, alive.