They pressed on through the hostile terrain, their pace steady but cautious. The ground beneath their feet grew increasingly uneven, riddled with shallow pits and jagged ridges that forced them to watch every step. The black grass thickened as they advanced, each blade stiff and sharp, brushing against their legs like a field of half-buried spikes. It whispered when disturbed, a dry, rasping sound that made the silence feel fragile, as though it might shatter at any moment.
Nephis walked at the front, posture straight and unyielding, one hand holding the golden rope with measured care. The Memory glimmered faintly, its soft radiance a fragile line of certainty in the gloom. Cassie followed closely, her steps cautious yet surprisingly confident. Her head was slightly tilted, as though she were listening to the world rather than seeing it, every sound catalogued and weighed. The absence of sight had sharpened her hearing to an uncanny degree; the scrape of stone, the distant groan of shifting coral, even the subtle movement of air through the broken terrain did not escape her notice.
Sunny lingered a few paces behind, his expression dark and thoughtful as he divided his attention between the waking world and the shadow slipping ahead of them. Through Gloomy's eyes, he watched the land unfold—collapsed stone slabs half-swallowed by the earth, coral-like growths piercing through ruined masonry, and the occasional skeletal remnant of structures that might once have been roads. Whatever civilization had existed here, it had not merely fallen; it had been dismantled, erased with intent.
The Stone Statue loomed closer with every step. What had once been a vague silhouette now revealed its unsettling craftsmanship. The figure was undeniably human, carved with a mastery that captured the tension of muscles beneath stone skin, the folds of clothing frozen in motion. Yet the neck ended in a jagged break, the head violently removed. Sunny's gaze lingered on the wound, his unease deepening. This was not decay, nor the work of time. It was execution, repeated again and again.
They passed beneath the statue's shadow, and even Nephis seemed to slow, her eyes flicking up briefly before returning to the path ahead. Cassie frowned faintly, as if sensing something amiss in the air, though she said nothing.
They continued on, the terrain gradually sloping upward. The black grass thinned, replaced by cracked stone and scattered rubble. The silence grew heavier, pressing in on them until even their breathing felt too loud. Then, without warning, Sunny stopped.
Nephis halted at once, tightening her grip on the rope. Cassie nearly bumped into her back, catching herself just in time.
"What is it?" Nephis asked quietly, already shifting her stance, ready for combat.
Sunny did not answer. He stood perfectly still, eyes unfocused, his attention pulled inward as he reconciled what he was seeing through his own eyes and his shadow's. Seconds stretched on, taut and uncomfortable. Cassie turned her head slightly in his direction, her brow furrowing.
"Sunny?" she prompted gently.
He swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. His hand rose slowly, trembling despite his effort to steady it. For a moment, it seemed he might lower it again, as if afraid to confirm what he had seen. Then he extended his arm and pointed ahead.
"I think…" His voice came out rough, hoarse with disbelief and something dangerously close to awe. He cleared his throat and tried again. "I think… I see the city."
Nephis followed the line of his finger, her eyes widening almost imperceptibly as the distant horizon resolved into shape and structure. Cassie, though unable to see, still sensed the atmosphere and her expression changed.
For the first time since they had crossed the Dark Sea, the dead land before them seemed to offer something other than despair.
Suffice to say, entering the Dark City was a lot harder than they had thought.
The trouble began long before they ever reached its walls. The moment they crossed some invisible boundary—roughly a mile from the city's outskirts—the sky itself seemed to come alive. A shrill chorus echoed overhead as shadows peeled away from the clouds and ruined spires in the distance, resolving into a swarm of flying monsters that poured toward them like living shrapnel.
They were small, lean creatures with leathery wings and hooked limbs, closer to skeletal gargoyles than birds. Their bodies were wiry and aerodynamic, built for speed rather than brute strength, and their eyes glimmered with a cruel, dim intelligence. Individually, they were nothing special—Dormant Monsters, barely worth noting under normal circumstances. Together, they were a nightmare.
At first, they had attacked recklessly, diving in clusters, screeching as they slashed and clawed. Nephis had answered with overwhelming force. Silver flames bloomed into the air, turning half a dozen of the creatures into falling cinders in the span of a few breaths. Their charred remains rained down on the blackened ground, sizzling as they struck.
That should have been the end of it.
Instead, it was the beginning.
The swarm adapted with alarming speed. The monsters spread out, no longer attacking en masse. They began to harass instead—two or three at a time, darting in from blind angles, striking once before retreating beyond reach. They learned Nephis's reach, learned the cadence of her movements, learned to veer away the instant her silver flames flared.
Minutes stretched into an exhausting procession of interruptions. Every few moments, wings would beat overhead, claws would scrape stone, and Sunny or Nephis would be forced to react. The monsters never committed fully, never risked annihilation. They simply refused to let the trio advance in peace.
Sunny's patience frayed by the second.
He swatted one out of the air with the flat of his tachi, the Midnight Shard humming as the creature's body snapped in half and tumbled away. Another raked its claws across his shoulder an instant later, tearing fabric and drawing a thin line of blood before darting off again.
Blood Weave sealed the wound almost immediately, but Sunny barely noticed. His glare followed the retreating monster skyward, eyes dark with irritation.
"Neph," he snapped between breaths, "can't you just fry them all?"
Nephis glanced at him briefly, silver hair whipping in the wind as another pair of creatures circled overhead. Her expression was calm, but there was tension beneath it.
"They're smarter than the average beast," she replied evenly. "After I burned a dozen of them, they stopped grouping up. Now they dodge whenever I point at them."
As if to mock her words, one of the flying monsters shrieked and veered sharply away the moment her gaze lifted, only to loop back seconds later from a different angle.
Sunny cursed under his breath, craning his neck to track the swarm. There had to be close to a hundred of them, maybe more, their silhouettes dotting the sky like living shrapnel. Individually weak. Collectively relentless.
If Nephis hadn't incinerated the first wave, Sunny was painfully aware of what would have happened. They would have been dragged down, overwhelmed by claws and teeth, stripped to bone before they even realized the danger. Death by attrition, slow and humiliating.
Cassie walked between them, guided by the golden rope, her head tilted upward as she listened intently to the air. Every dive was announced seconds in advance by the shift of wind and the subtle change in wingbeats, and she called out warnings with quiet urgency. Even so, the strain was beginning to show in the tightness of her posture.
Sunny clicked his tongue and glanced toward the distant skyline. The Dark City loomed ahead now, no longer just a silhouette but a mass of jagged towers and broken walls rising from the gloom. It felt impossibly far despite how close it looked.
"How much farther?" he asked, forcing the irritation out of his voice.
Nephis spared another quick glance at the city, then the sky. "Not much. Twenty minutes, maybe."