Shadow Slave - Chapter 2969 Broken Eternity

The cold waters of the Estuary Lake embraced Sunny as he plummeted into their depths, clinging tightly to the Thieving Bird’s neck.

A moment later, the water wasn’t cold anymore.

The loathsome Terror was wreathed in an immolating mantle of blindingly white flames that devoured its feathers and scorched its impenetrable hide. The moment the flames came in contact with the cold depths of time, an unfathomable amount of water was instantly vaporized, causing a titanic plume of boiling foam to explode into the sky somewhere far above. Here in the depths, however…

Sunny was blinded by the flash.

Sunny was deafened by the indescribable roar of countless tons of water being violently displaced.

Even his shadow sense was temporarily rendered useless, since no shadows existed in the immaculate abyss of pure white light. He barely endured the devastating heat and pressure of the underwater explosion…

The Estuary Lake itself, however, did not. What surrounded them was not mere water, after all. It was the material embodiment of time — the heart of the river that the Demon of Dread had created from the blood of an Unholy Titan.

It had endured an eternity of timelessness, the death of the Great River, and the burden of becoming a Cursed Terror’s nest. However, when Thieving Bird plummeted from the sky and crashed into the cold depths of time, locked in a ferocious battle against two Supreme Titans… time finally reached its breaking point.

Time shattered, and space shattered as well.

Sunny, Nephis, and the Thieving Bird were lost among the fragments, in the dark space between now and before, between here and somewhere far away.

That space was not something the human mind could fathom, let alone describe. It was alien and eerie, existing beyond all the preconceived notions of what reality should be — the universal laws of existence were strangely twisted here, and nothing Sunny had known made sense anymore. However…

That did not mean that the battle was over. In fact, it meant the opposite. The Thieving Bird seemed less confused by the bizarre reality of fragmented time, so Sunny and Nephis had to keep up — they had to adapt and keep fighting if they wanted to survive. Luckily, adapting to eldritch oddities was a necessary skill all humans living in the Age of the Nightmare Spell had to master. And both Sunny and Nephis excelled at adaptability above all else.

So, even if Sunny could not quite describe what he was doing, he continued to fight. As the loathsome Terror plummeted through the dark expanse of broken time, Sunny released his human form and manifested himself as a vast, formless shadow. His nebulous body covered the giant frame of the cursed deity like a fluttering shroud, and myriad maws opened in its dark expanse, sinking sharp fangs into the flesh of the Thieving Bird.

At the same time, Nephis abandoned the suffocating limitations of a human body, as well, unleashing her true form — a boundless mass of living flame, its pure white expanse emanating a heat so intense that the fabric of the world itself began to melt around it.

The fire she had unleashed by detonating her soul had been extinguished by the waters of the Estuary Lake, but now, a roaring ocean of it swallowed the Vile Thieving Bird anew, scorching it.

Together, Sunny and Nephis — a formless mass of darkness and a radiant expanse of blinding light — enveloped the Cursed Terror, ravaging its hideous body and slowly destroying the very foundation of its profane life.

The Vile Thieving Bird shrieked.

Its ghastly voice resounded across the expanse of timelessness, sending a devastating wave of vibrations spreading through the broken eternity.

And then, fissures appeared in the darkness that surrounded them.

The world shattered, and enveloped by shadows and flame, the Vile Thieving Bird flew through one of the fissures.

Suddenly, time flowed normally again.

And they weren’t underwater anymore. Sunny felt a different kind of heat then… the nurturing warmth of the sun.

A myriad of onyx eyes opened in the dark vastness of his nebulous shape, and he beheld the world that was both familiar and strange.

All around them was a clear blue sky. Above them, the seven suns moved languidly across its azure expanse. Below them, the Great River flowed endlessly, as if Cronos of Fallen Grace had never dispelled the sorcery that sustained it.

There was a city resting on the currents far below. Sunny recognized it, even if the city did not look like it was meant to…

It was Verge.

However, its streets were not reduced to rubble, and it was not buried under a sea of bones. There was no grotesque expanse of loathsome flesh permeating it like an endlessly expanding tumor, either.

Instead, the ornate buildings stood among verdant gardens, and people wearing garments of vibrant hues crowded the thriving streets, their souls untouched by the Defilement.

They were all standing still now, looking up and pointing at the sky…

Where a vast seething mass of burning darkness moved across the sky, leaving a trail of scorched black feathers and devastation in its wake.

‘How…’

It was Verge before the birth of the Defilement… before Aletheia of the Nine had reached the Estuary.

Perhaps she was down there right now, among the people looking up.

Before Sunny could comprehend what he saw, the Vile Thieving Bird’s talons tore into him, slicing his material shape, his soul, and his spirit apart. The blinding pain of its vicious attack was both dire and paralyzing…

But instead of being paralyzed, Sunny only grew more consumed by the murderous fury, pouring all of that suffering into a dark and vicious desire to maim and destroy the enemy.

He tore into the hide of the loathsome Terror with a thousand maws, a thousand claws, a thousand piercing tendrils.

And finally, he sensed it…

The Vile Thieving Bird’s ichor flowing into his countless mouths.

A spark of vicious, frenzied glee ignited in the cold darkness of his mind.

A moment later, another fissure opened in the fabric of the azure sky, and they left the visage of untainted Verge behind.

Instead, a different view met them…

It was the same sky, the same river, the same brilliant suns.

Only far away, and thousands of years later. Moving through the different fragments of broken eternity, Sunny and Nephis continued their desperate fight against the loathsome Terror.