[Prepare for appraisal…]
Sunny found himself between dream and reality. It was an endless black void illuminated by a myriad of stars. Between those stars, countless strings of golden light were woven into a beautiful and inconceivably complex net.
'This… This is real. Unlike the dreamscape facade.'
Sunny narrowed his eyes, trying to grasp its sorcery.
"There's something wrong with it, it's…
It's shaking. Is this a good sign or a bad one?"
[You have received a Memory: Puppeteer's Shroud]
'I'll ponder later.'
Now it was finally time to check his harvest.
[Aspirant! Your trial is over.]
[A forsaken slave ascended the Black Mountain. Heroes and monsters fell by his hand. Unbroken, he entered the ruined temple of a long-forgotten god. He refused fate and became what Weaver tried to avoid. He ordered his Guardian to aid him against corruption and spilled his blood on the sacred altar. The gods were dead, and yet they listened.]
[You have defeated four Dormant Beasts: Mountain King's Larva.]
[You have defeated three Dormant Humans, names unknown.]
[You have defeated an Awakened Human: Auro of the Nine.]
[You have defeated an Awakened Tyrant: Mountain King.]
[You have received the Shadow God's blessing.]
[You have achieved the impossible!]
[Final appraisal: Unbelievable! Your treachery is bound by nothing!]
A childish grin was pasted on Sunny's face.
'Unbelievable… not even Nephis or Mordret could achieve this one.
Well, of course not.
I cheated.'
[You have been bestowed a True Name: Vicar of Mercy.]
Sunny stared at the runes.
"My True Name… It changed! My True Name has changed!
Vicar of Mercy…
It seems I'm not here to save people.
I'm here to be the one who puts them down before they become something worse.
I'm the executioner who calls himself a priest."
At least that was how the Spell saw it. To the world, a "Vicar of Mercy" sounds like a saint. But Sunny knows the truth: to be the representative of mercy in a nightmarish reality, you have to be the most efficient killer in the room. It's a title that masks a grim, bloody duty with a beautiful name.
"This means my aspect will be different, Right? Surely.
I did get carried away before with Shadow God…"
[Your Aspect is ready to evolve. Evolve Aspect?]
'This is it, all my life will depend on the next runes. Not only mine but those around me as well.'
Sunny wished for the best and said "yes".
[Dormant Aspect Forsaken Slave is evolving…]
[New Aspect acquired.]
[Aspect Rank: Divine.]
[Aspect Name: Shadow's Heir.]
Sunny started laughing.
"He really did it! He finally made me his heir."
The irony wasn't lost on him. To become the Prince, he had to tear down the very foundations of the laws that sought to keep him a slave.
"Honestly, I'm impressed I didn't become a Supreme immediately."
Aspect: [Shadow's Heir].
Aspect Rank: Divine.
Aspect Description: [You are a miraculous shadow carved by a dead god. As a divine shadow, you possess plenty of strange and wondrous powers. Unlike all shadows but the first, your existence is complete; you're capable of casting yourself and need no master.]
Innate Ability: [Equal's Bond].
Ability Description: [You grow stronger while in the presence of your kin. Should you wish, you may find a worthy ally and let them cast your existence. Once you tether yourself to their soul, a bond of mutual respect will be born.]
He clutched at his chest, his fingers digging into his torso as if trying to find the spot where the invisible chain had been anchored. It was empty. The silence that followed was the loudest sound he had ever heard.
"This… this is all I've ever asked…"
For years, the bond had been a real weight, a hook buried in his very soul that tethered his will to another. Now, as the shimmering runes finally unraveled, the hook was gone.
He looked at his hands and realized they finally belonged to him. The realization was paralyzing.
Sunny didn't stand tall. He collapsed.
He wept for every moment he had been forced against his own volition, and for the sheer, exhausting terror of being a "thing" rather than a person.
Here, Sunny was alone; he didn't have to look strong in this place.
Even the spell was silent. It too knew what had happened.
"After Nephis died, I was forced to…"
He let out a jagged, broken laugh that dissolved back into a sob. He was free.
He wasn't crying because he was happy; he was crying because he finally had the right to feel the weight of his own misery.
"That is in my past," he repeated, his voice no longer cracking.
It was a rasp of dry stone. "I have buried those memories, and nothing can bring them afloat again."
Sunny had a feeling he wouldn't be allowed to use the bond immediately. This time, his True Name had nothing to do with it, and the spell specified the word "tether".
The bond seemed to be locked until an ascended rank or higher.
[The First Seal is broken.]
[Awakening dormant powers…]
For the second time today, Sunny's physique continued to improve. His soul was being shaken awake, infused with strange new energy. Under that heat, his bones, muscles, organs, and blood vessels were being rebuilt and revitalized.
He entered his soul sea. Just beyond the periphery of his vision, hidden in the darkness, shapeless forms were standing still.
It was dark and lightless, with only one black sun instead of seven, and three spheres of light orbiting it.
Memories: [Silver Bell], [Puppeteer's Shroud], [Mighty Resolve].
He opened the runes for Auro's memory.
Memory: [Mighty Resolve].
Memory Rank: ???
Memory Type: Weapon.
Memory Description: [Two souls once sat amidst the ruins of a dying age, separated by the vast river of time, yet bound by the same hollow sky.
One was a young soldier, his shoulders crushed by an oath so heavy it had become a physical weight, a duty no mortal was meant to carry.
The second man was a traveler from a future already lost. He, too, bore a mission that tasted of ash and iron, a burden that left no room for his own soul to breathe.
In a final act of mercy, the traveler granted the soldier the only gift left to give: the cold, quiet embrace of shadows.
As the soldier's duty finally ended, his unshakable spirit bled into the very steel that liberated him.
This blade does not hunger for blood, but for the weight of a conviction that refuses to falter.]
"It didn't just give me his weapon. It gave me his 'Why.'
An act of mercy…
A Rankless weapon too, I'll have to wait for [Blood Weave] to understand its true meaning."
Sunny summoned the blade.
An elegant longsword of translucent, scarlet crystal. Dark, vein-like maps of a lost kingdom etch its surface, while the hilt is bound in obsidian silk. Its crossguard is shaped like two skeletal hands meeting in eternal prayer.
"It radiates... exhaustion. It's like the sword is tired of existing, yet it refuses to shatter until the job is done.
It looks similar to how we felt in that river, does it not?"
He was thinking of Nephis, his Nephis—the one who no longer existed.
[Awakening Aspect Ability…]
[Aspect Ability acquired.]
[Aspect Ability Name: Shadows Control.]
'Shadows? This is different too.'
Aspect Ability Description: [Ambient shadows can answer your call. Your shadow is more independent than most. It is an invaluable helper.]
'I see. I can't yet manifest them, but what if I need a room to be covered in darkness?
I'll have to explore this carefully.'
Attributes: [Fate Defier], [Flame of Divinity], [Prince of Shadows], [Death].
[Fate Defier] attribute description: [You have delivered a heavy blow to the tapestry of Fate. The cost of such damage is not yet fully tallied.]
[Prince of Shadows] attribute description: [Shadows recognize you as the rightful heir of death.]
[Death] attribute description: [Death was created to cleanse corruption. Your soul and mind can never succumb to it.]
[Flame of Divinity] attribute description: [Your soul is aflame with the light of divinity.]
Sunny was a strategist who had seen the end of the world once.
He is now in possession of a brand-new set of tools he didn't have in his previous life, and so he began coldly calculating the benefits and whatnot.
"So, the tapestry is already tearing. Since I'm still connected to Fate, it didn't collapse like last time.
The 'cost' is just another resource I'll have to manage. If I'm going to rewrite the future, I can't afford to keep worrying about a bill that hasn't come due yet.
Absolute immunity to corruption…
It's a massive variable. It means I can tread into places like the Estuary of Time without a worry. It also means I'll never have to deal with the Mad Prince.
My authority with shadows has increased exponentially. I'm not entirely sure what the full scope of this 'inheritance' means yet, but the implications are undeniably beneficial."
[All power has a price.]
[You have received a Flaw.]
'Flaws are a universal law. They are needed to grow stronger. A perfect being cannot improve.'
[...You possess forbidden knowledge.]
[Your Flaw has evolved.]
These runes didn't just shimmer; they bled.
The voice of the spell felt fatigued, as if it had tried its best not to make it a reality.
"Damnation"
The evolution of his Flaw wasn't a cosmic judgment—it was a stabilizing measure. By travelling to the past, Sunny had become a great anomaly. The Spell was forced to confine him to the world's logic again.
Sunny prepared and looked at the end of his runes that were still open.
Flaw: [Cursed by Truths].
Flaw Description: [You cannot say what you know is false, knowledge is a heavy burden, and so a piece of Dread hunts you.]
The realization hit him with a cold familiarity. He didn't need to see the creature to recognize its signature. The needle-sharp malice, the obsession, the relentless pursuit of his sanity.
It was the Sin of Solace.
Reincarnated, or perhaps simply reshaped by the paradox of his regression to haunt him again.
Slowly, the foggy form of the wraith manifested. It was a mirror image of Sunny, but draped in the tattered, regal robes of a fallen prince, its skin the color of polished bone.
It stared at him with a furious, mad gaze, remembering how Sunny had bested him in their past.
Then, suddenly, a harrowing, impossibly wide smile found its way on his face. Sunny felt something deep inside him recoil at the image.
"You ran all the way back to the beginning just to find me waiting at the finish line. How... poetic."
"Of course, you couldn't just stay gone." Sunny said, annoyed.
"Vicar of Mercy, how cool! Oh, and it is just so fitting, too.
Do you think it's because of how you treated Song of the Fallen? Honestly, that witch deserved every moment of it. Well done, really! A shame I wasn't there to watch."
Just then did Sunny truly understand the curse that had been given to him. His hands, usually so steady with a blade, began to tremble, not with the weakness of a novice, but with the bone-deep shudder of a man seeing his personal executioner rise from the grave.
"Or do you think it's because of what you did to poor Nightingale? That was low even for a tiny cockroach like you. Weren't you two best friends? How sick of you to-"
Sunny interrupted him before he could continue.
Should the Sin of Solace continue the phrase, Sunny was sure he would collapse immediately. None of the composure gained before could be found now.
"SHUT UP!
DON'T YOU DARE TALK ABOUT IT!"
"Oh, look at those eyes," the wraith purred, its voice a razor-sharp caress. "The 'Prince' is trembling. The 'Heir of Death' is afraid of a ghost."
He opened its mouth, ready to tell Sunny truths that the mind could not withstand.
Confusion.
Understanding.
He stopped abruptly before beginning, staring with the same mad, furious eyes as earlier.
[Death] attribute had just saved Sunny from corruption.
"You're a phantom limb," Sunny said, his voice flat.
"A piece of Dread that survived the jump back with me. You can scream, you can mock, and you can try to tear me down, but you can't touch my soul. You're only a passenger I can't kick out."
The Sin of Solace grinned, a jagged, terrifying expression.
"I am not a limb, Sunless. I am the Truth you're trying to outrun. You can't lie to the world, and with me here, you certainly can't lie to yourself now. We're going to have such a wonderful time watching you fail all over again."
The silence of the area was deafening, broken only by the sound of the Spell.
[Wake up, Vicar of Mercy!]