Sunny was falling.
Surrounded by a radiant halo, Sunny plummeted into the darkness.
His breath was ragged and hoarse and the piercing shine of the immolating ocean of white flames beneath him blinded his eyes.
'Hot... it's so hot...'
He was drawing closer and closer to the remains of the divine inferno, and as he did, the stonelike metal of the Mantle of the Underworld was growing hotter and hotter.
Soon, its outer layer turned bright red.
Then, it started to melt.
As the onyx melted and cracked, causing him excruciating pain, the Mantle began to repair itself.
The damage was undone before anything could fully breach the incandescent onyx surface.
For now, the enchanted armor could heal itself faster than it was being destroyed.
In large part due to being augmented by both of his shadows, perhaps.
Sunny encountered another problem, though.
It was getting harder and harder to breathe.
Not even because the air was scalding, but because there was not enough of it.
Fire fed on oxygen, after all.
He needed to find the rift.
He carefully opened his eyes a little and glanced into the blinding inferno beneath.
'Almost! I'm almost there!'
But in the end, it turned out to be just a little bit too far.
Sunny plummeted toward the obliterating stars.
Sunny would have screamed if there had been any air in his lungs.
Half-blind from pain, Sunny did the only thing that could save him now he dismissed the onyx armor.
And then, he felt cool wind touch his blistering skin.
Sunny fought through the terrible pain and opened his eyes.
Behind him, there was a wall of ruthless radiance.
But in front of him, there was nothing but darkness.
...He had reached the rift.
'Everything hurts. Crap! This is so unfair!'
Sunny summoned the Dark Wing and commanded it to turn his fall into a glide.
But was the transparent cloak even going to endure for long enough?
At the last moment, however, Sunny turned into a shadow and dove into the deep darkness enveloping the island instead.
'Safe!'.
Sunny thought triumphantly.
Reluctantly going out of the shadows he appeared on the ground of the Ebony Tower.
Immediately he summoned Saint.
One of his shadows surged outward.
Then taking the shape of a tall taciturn onyx knight with two ruby flames burning in its visor Saint took form.
Saint looked down at him with an unreadable glance.
Sunny suddenly felt much smaller than he actually was.
Pitiful even.
Sparks danced as a new Memory formed around Sunny's body.
"Ouch!".
Sunny couldn't help but yelp.
The [Puppeteers' Shroud] softly wrapped around his burned skin.
Looking around Sunny managed to finally regain his bearings.
He had looked up, gazing towards the Ebony Tower.
Slowly making his way towards it he noticed something.
'The door is already open'.
Was he not the first one here?
Or was it an abomination here?
Questions ran through his mind.
He immediately summoned Soul Serpent and morphed it into a beautiful obsidian otaki.
Walking in the Ebony Tower, he looked around expectantly.
He had already noticed a few things.
Once it seemed as though two people were here.
There was a set of footprints that looked like they came from a person's bare foot.
While the other well..... Sunny guess he should change his statement.
The other set of prints was made by a foot that was much too big and far too alien to be human.
An Awakened might have been chased by an abomination into the Ebony Tower.
Sunny however, wanted to know how it ended.
It took Sunny about an hour to fully explore the first level of the ancient pagoda.
Some of the doors in the outer corridor had collapsed and turned to dust.
Some remained standing but sadly seemed immovable.
Not finding anything interesting on the first level, Sunny decided to explore further.
Unlike the ground level, the basement of the Obsidian Tower turned out to be one giant hall.
And in it...
Doll parts.
It was littered with dismembered parts of dolls that had a similarity to Saint.
Could the Prince of the Underworld have created prototypes here?
Losing interest in the dolls Sunny delved further.
He then came to a room and froze.
In the room, a man stood.
The man's back was towards Sunny, but he could still make out a few things.
The man had shoulder-length black hair that seemed dirty, mired with blood, ash, and dirt.
He also had two things, one in each hand.
One was a Soul Shard.
And the other looks like a single piece of pristine alabaster bone shining with blinding gold radiance.
A sole phalanx of a finger.
'I can still see that stuff, huh?'.
Within the Forgotten Shore Sunny had an Attribute named [Blood Weave] a partial lineage of the Demon of Fate.
But when they went to retrieve the crown he obtained Shadow gods' lineage from his Aspect Legacy.
He had absorbed it.
But then the two winning lineages within his body begin to fight for dominion over him.
And of course, Shadow gods lineage was the victor and pushed out the incomplete forbidden lineage.
Strangely enough Shadow gods lineage, couldn't devour the forbidden one.
Sunny had felt the fragment of the forbidden lineage being forcibly torn from his body and thrown out.
Although he didn't know where it went, as he had felt it flowing out through his eyes through the pain he had his suspicions.
After that, his [Blood Weave] Attribute was replaced with [Umbra].
Yet strangely enough effects of [Blood Weave] were not completely canceled out.
It seems his eyes and blood were still altered to a certain extent.
He could still perceive the strings of Memories and his blood was still viscous but it had all been deluded.
The power that it once had became weaker yet it never left.
The reason Sunny had begun to reminisce about that time was due to the man in front of him.
Sunny felt the hostility deep within his being flowing from the Shadow god's lineage.
It was Weaver's....
"...Isaac?".
Sunny called out.
The man didn't turn to him.
He simply opened his mouth and....
Through the phalanx into his mouth!!!
In the same moment, his fingers tightened around the Soul Shard.
As it cracked and streams of essence flowed into the man's palm his form began to shudder.
And then he vanished.
Leaving Sunny, in complete bewilderment.