Chapter 2693: Void Chamber |
‘Cold...’
The vacuous chamber was filled with nothing but stark light, shadows, and unbearable cold. Even Sunny, whose Supreme body was encased in the soulbound carapace of the Jade Mantle, could feel all warmth swiftly draining from his body.
At the same time...
He raised a hand. His palm was drowning in impenetrable darkness, while the back of his hand was shining with radiant light. It had turned luminous in the fierce torrents of blinding radiance that poured between the shadows, on the verge of turning to ash.
Feeling his skin starting to blister beneath the sublime jade, Sunny grimaced and hid his hand in the shadows.
The vast spherical chamber was drowned in the radiance of a fierce silver conflagration that burned in its center, suspended in the vacuum like a miniature star. In fact, perhaps it was a star, just like the one imprisoned inside the Lighthouse — if so, this one was even smaller, so much so that Sunny could easily grasp it with his hands.
Of course, he would be incinerated long before reaching its radiant halo.
The vast emptiness of the chamber, the deep shadows, the luminous flame burning in the center of the dark void like a beating heart...
It was like a miniature model of the Void and the Flame of Desire, almost.
"Ha..."
He wanted to chuckle, but no sound escaped from his lips. After all, there was no air in the chamber, so nothing could carry his voice.
‘So the old man was right, after all:
Back at the Lighthouse, Nightwalker joked that the Demon of Repose drew inspiration from the curse Shadow God had placed upon Kanakht when designing the Eternal City. He turned out to be more right than any of them had imagined.
‘This is her sorcery!"
Kanakht had been denied death, cursed to exist forever devoid of its final embrace — therefore, he did not have a shadow. Shadow God had taken it away.
So, this was how the Demon of Repose had created her immortals, as well. She had separated them from their shadows and then sealed the shadows in the heart of the Palace, preventing them from both returning to their owners and making the journey to the Shadow Realm.
That was why the prisoners of the Eternal City were immortal. They could not die because their deaths existed somewhere else.
Their deaths were in front of Sunny. Of course, he had no idea how the Demon of Repose had managed to sever living beings from their shadows without killing them. Neither did he know how she had been able to trap the orphaned shadows and overcome the pull of the Shadow Realm. Apart from that, Sunny could only guess why the buildings of the Eternal City endlessly restored themselves, as well. What was sustaining the dome above the city? How was the destructive heat of the imprisoned stars contained? Was it harvested? And what means had the Demon of Repose used to realize her sorcery? Sunny did not know any of these details. However...
He did not need to know all the answers to make a mess of things. Destroying something was far easier than creating it, after all.
Especially because Sunny was uniquely suited to destroy this particular manifestation of divine sorcery.
Before that, though, he had to solve another problem.
A very serious problem.
‘Ah, damn it all.'
The void chamber had been created to trap shadows.
And Sunny... was a shadow.
His shadow sense was flawlessly contained within the sphere of starlight and darkness, so he could not use Shadow Step. He could not travel to the waking world, either. He could not summon his Shadows or call upon his shades. In fact, he could not do anything to leave this empty place at all.
The void chamber had been created to cut off a part of the world from the universal laws of existence, after all. It was a place that barred passages to the Shadow Realm, so how was a mere Supreme supposed to escape it?
Sunny remained motionless for a short while, then walked across the metal surface of the chamber's wall by alternating the adhesive nature between the soles of his boots. Reaching the nearest shadow, he reached out to it.
Nothing happened when he touched it. Nothing happened when he commanded it to enter his soul and submit to him, either. However, when he cajoled and soothed it quietly, it hesitantly turned to him, and then vanished without a trace.
Anew shade was added to his legion.
That was promising enough... sadly, it was also not going to help him make the dreadful immortals mortal once again quick enough — simply because there was a myriad of them in the void chamber, and he could not afford himself the luxury of convincing each one to submit individually.
Sunny walked among the orphaned shadows, looking around intently and absorbing them into his soul one after another. He was searching for something, but at the same time, he was thinking fiercely about how to escape this place. Eventually, Sunny stopped and lowered his head for a moment.
Then, he glanced up with a dark smile. ‘Alright, then.'
It was not a problem.
He figured out how to destroy the sorcery of the Demon of Repose, and the solution was simple.
Since the orphaned shadows could not travel to the Shadow Realm...
He was going to bring the Shadow Realm to them.
As the light of the star burning in the center of the void chamber grew a little dimmer, Sunny raised a hand and summoned a particular Memory — of course, it was the Shadow Lantern.
‘Thus spoke Weaver: they will open the gates...’
Grasping the Shadow Lantern in his hand, he opened its gate — the Gate of Shadow — drew his arm back... and then tossed the lantern toward the center of the chamber. As soon as the Gate of Shadow opened, it was as if an invisible ripple spread through the vast, vacuous expanse. As if a cold wind blew across the space that had no air.
A powerful pull descended upon the spherical chamber like a reverse Crushing. Of course, it only affected the shadows.
All of them turned to the delicate stone lantern simultaneously.
And then, the first of them was suddenly sucked into its open gate.
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