Savior in Shadow Slave

A soft hiss rose as the white mist flowed outward from Gloomveil's dissolving form — slow, delicate, almost peaceful. But when this seemingly delicate mist...

Touched the golden remnants of Murphy's divine light, the light shrank away.

Touched the Orb of True Darkness, the darkness recoiled.

Not shattered.

Not burned.

Not even absorbed.

They simply… faded, as though afraid.

Like light and darkness had never been there.

The mist didn't burn or melt or corrupt. It simply... transformed.

The air around it dimmed in memory. The warmth of Sacrifice, the stifling cold of the Orb of darkness— it all faded, not into silence, but into nonexistence.

Like pages being torn from a book that no longer remembered it had pages.

Murphy staggered backward, heart thundering.

A soundless pressure pressed against his thoughts — not pain, not madness.

An absence.

Like something was peeling the wallpaper off his mind.

"W-What is this…?"

His voice came out wrong.

The words he spoke didn't echo in the cave.

They simply dropped, vanishing like stones into a well with no bottom.

"Mist of Nothingness," he thought, the phrase forming as if gifted to him.

The words echoed in Murphy's soul — not from memory, but as if the truth of them was being written into him now, etched in the language of terror.

"Nobody can exist in the mist."

"Nothing can contain the Void."

"And nobody exists within it."

Words spoken by Nether, the Daemon of Destiny — a being so high above the world that even Divine and Unholy beings speak its name with reverence.

And yet…

Here it was.

A shred of that very nothing, drifting in front of him.

Not metaphor. Not vision.

But real.

Fearing whatever Gloomveil was doing, Murphy struck.

He poured all of his fear and instinct into the swing.

The blade shimmered with layered enchantments:

— one to disrupt spiritual essence,

— one to disrupt vitality,

— and the deadly force of the Moonblade, gleaming like silver wrath.

With a roar, he let it fly.

And…

Nothing happened. And yet,

Something did.

The white mist, that dreadful, erasing veil of non-existence, suddenly lurched — as though drawn toward a point in the air just above the broken ground.

It swirled, coiling in on itself, spinning faster and faster, until it was no longer mist but a dense mass, compressed unnaturally tight.

A shape emerged within it — small at first, the size of a head, then growing rapidly, shifting, solidifying.

A sphere. No...

An egg.

Pale and slick, its surface was semi-translucent, veins of glimmering light and inky void running across it like the fractures of time and space themselves. It hovered in silence, pulsing with unnatural stillness — paradox in motion.

And then…

CRACK.

A jagged line tore through the shell, sharp and sudden — like a scream with no sound.

Then another.

And another.

A cobweb of cracks appeared.

Hairline fractures webbed across its surface, the internal glow intensifying, now throbbing with a rhythm that did not match reality — or heartbeat — or life.

Something within was pushing out.

Not struggling.

Just... emerging.

The shell began to peel, flaking away in delicate, deliberate segments, like a flower opening its petals in reverse.

And what lay beneath… Wasn't light. Wasn't darkness.

It was wrong.

So utterly, profoundly wrong that Murphy's eyes refused to focus, as if his brain couldn't agree on what it was seeing.

And still, piece by piece, it came out.

A baby.

Or at least, something that had chosen to wear that shape — a mockery of innocence wrapped in paradox.

It stood… towering, despite its infantile form —Three meters tall, unnaturally lean and elongated, with a strange one-meter width to its body.

Above its head hovered a crown — not forged, but formed.

A ring of sacred light, too bright, too pure, so violently holy that the mere sight of it hurt Murphy's soul. It shimmered with the weight of judgment, like something meant for kings or gods... or those that devoured them.

But then —Behind it…

Six wings unfurled.

Not feathered, not soft, not divine — but made from True Darkness, each feather sharpened like blades, polished until they glinted with terrifying clarity.

They didn't flutter.

They cut the air.

Like weapons disguised as reverence.

The eyes were the worst.

Large, infant-like, but utterly void of expression.

Reflective, like smooth glass — not blinking, not emoting, but absorbing.

They reflected Murphy's every movement, every tremor, as if watching not just the outside, but the thoughts stirring beneath his skin. But something was weird within the reflection. Murphy looked weird.

And when it tilted its head —

A gentle, fluid motion, like a mother seeing what its child is doing —

A chill deeper than death crawled up Murphy's spine.

A voice resounded—bright and sharp as a child's, yet warm with pride, like a mother murmuring praise to her own.

"Thank you, my child. Or—ah, perhaps I should call you 'young youth' now. No matter. Thanks to you, I may pass beyond that door and behold what He left in waiting."

Suddenly confused by her words—especially the term "young youth"—Murphy looked down at himself. What he saw left him shocked and terrified. The realization struck him:

Murphy stood there, utterly shocked, not caring about The Entity.

"So, that's what I sacrificed for this miraculous ability," Murphy whispered, voice hollow with dawning horror. "Moments of life. Years shaved from my soul."

His reflection stared back at him — not the boy he remembered, nor the teen he'd barely been. But something in between. A young youth. Awkward, unfinished.

It hit him like frostbite. Each time he invoked Sacrifice, it hadn't merely drawn on stamina. No — it took from him, robbed him of something else.

When he had annihilated the minions in that blinding wave of purity, what he had offered up in exchange was time itself.

Desperately, Murphy clutched at his own face — his jaw sharper now, the softness of youth gone.

His fingers traced unfamiliar angles and ridges.

His eyes, once wide with wonder, now held a depth he hadn't earned — a tiredness that belonged to older men.

How many more uses until he was no longer Murphy at all?

Just a husk. A phantom of himself, power echoing in a body too old to contain it.

And yet, the power... the sickening thrill of it, the purity of that golden light — it lingered.

Calling him.

Promising salvation.

At a cost.

Murphy wanted to deny it—desperately, violently—but alas,

The change was undeniable. Where once there had been the slight frame of a teen, now stood the wiry build of a young youth—not quite a man, yet no longer a boy. Murphy traced the unfamiliar angles of his face with trembling fingers, each contour a testament to stolen time.

The sacrifice he had used now had sheared away his adolescence like a husk.

Murphy's breath hitched. The terror still coiled in his chest, but beneath it pulsed a sickening understanding—this power, monstrous as it was, remained his only path to survival.

But that doesn't mean he was suddenly free of its fear.

Murphy gritted his teeth and howled—a raw, guttural sound, as if he could force the panic and terror out of his body through sheer will. His voice tore through the air like a blade.

"WHO ARE YOU!?" he demanded, his words laced with fury and desperation. "Why do you wield a fragment of nothingness alongside an orb of true darkness!? How can a mere Awakened—or even a Fallen—possess something like this!?"

His hands trembled, not from fear alone, but from the dawning horror of what this meant.

At Murphy's outburst, the being of wrongness turned its head toward him—a motion too smooth, as if its neck had no bones. Its voice, when it spoke, dripped with the cloying patience of a mother humouring a stubborn child:

"Oh, my furious little spark. You still think in such… small ways."

Her voice darkened, full of twisted reverence.

"Meant to fuse within you. To reform you. Reforge you into something not mortal… not even divine… but a force."

She smiled.

"A being that could slay even the lofty Transcendents — and you would have done it all as a mere Awakened."

Her eyes burned with envy and triumph both.

"But alas… I appeared."

"And I took what should have been yours."

"You see, centuries ago, a being of immense power and holiness descended into this very cave. He left behind three relics: a shard of mist, a fragment of darkness... and something else."

The entity's voice grew distant, as if recalling a half-forgotten dream.

"I was also there—though at the time, I was but a Dormant Devil, weak yet possessing the power to separate and integrate. I was mere material, fit only to be forged into something greater. Survival was impossible for one like me."

A pause. The air grew heavy.

"Then, a voice—soft, feminine—whispered, 'I knew he was up to no good. Did he think he could deceive me like this? How should I take my revenge?' She wasn't speaking to me, yet her words alone unraveled my very being. And then… she turned to me and said, 'You… you should be perfect.'"

The entity's voice shifted—no longer wistful, but honed to a blade's edge.

Its head tilted, a grotesque mimicry of maternal concern.

"Poor Murphy," it cooed, voice thick with mockery. "Why are you listening so intently? Did you think this was a confession?"

A chuckle followed—cold and jagged, like glaciers splitting under pressure.

"It's a warning."

Then—

The air screamed.

He blinked.

And it was ten paces closer.

Murphy's body moved faster than thought. He swung his sword, the Moonblade carving a silver arc through the darkness along with Essence Disruption enchantment crackled along its edge—an enchantment meant to harm ghosts.

A shriek—not of pain, but mild annoyance—rippled through the air like broken glass grinding on stone.

The entity staggered a half-step, then straightened, smoke curling from the shallow gash across its torso. It looked down at the wound, then at Murphy, amusement glinting in its hollow eyes.

"Oh dear," it said with mock sympathy, "Was that supposed to hurt?"

One moment it was ten paces away, the next its claws were on his face.

He barely twisted aside, the hem of his cloak shredded as he tumbled backward.

Breathing hard, Murphy planted his feet, heart pounding like war drums.

The entity hissed, low and gleeful. "Let's see how long you last before your courage turns into screams."

It lunged again.

This time, Murphy couldn't retreat.

Murphy barely raised his arms in time. The entity's strike landed like a bull—the sheer force sent him hurtling backward, his body smashing into the cavern wall with a crack of fracturing stone.

Dust rained down as he slumped forward, ribs screaming, vision swimming. His arms were numb, the bones singing with damage. His hair drooping down on his face.

Murphy closed his eyes—a single breath, a final choice—then opened them again, his resolve hardening like forged steel.