Savior in Shadow Slave

Sun had just started rising from over the horizon.

The village, serene and still moments ago, slowly stirred to life.

In the manor of Head Elder of the village.

All was peaceful—until the silence shattered with screams echoing from one corner of the manor.

Murphy had awoken from the cursed dream(?), and the moment his eyes opened, he erupted into chaos—screaming, clawing at his skin, vomiting as though trying to expel the horror he had witnessed.

As if the only comfort left in this place… was suffering itself.

Murphy felt as if his mind was fractured into millions of pieces.

Then, all at once, the torment dulled.

It was as if some unseen force had reached into his shattered mind, gently gathering the broken pieces and fitting them back together—one fragment at a time.

Then came another wave of torment—a cycle of being broken, mended, and broken again.

Over and over. His mind shattered and reassembled four times a second, as if some cruel force was testing how many fractures a soul could endure before it ceased to be whole.

This process continued for an hour and finally he found a moment of respite from that never ending madness.

His mind didn't shatter because of the eyeless heads strewn across the ground, nor because of the cryptic words whispered by his younger self, not even because of the thing sealed beneath that ancient seal.

Each of those could drive a man to madness—one more harrowing than the next.

But none of them came close to the last thing he saw.

Death.

Hundreds of millions of deaths.

Death of every single being that lived in this village.

He experienced the death of every living being that had ever existed in the village.

Sometimes, he was burned; sometimes, stabbed.

Sometimes, he died before he was even born.

Sometimes, he was crushed beneath a human's foot.

Sometimes, eaten alive by a predator.

Sometimes, he died during childbirth; other times, of old age—or from a nameless illness that hollowed him out from within.

But even they were not as horrifying as the last one.

That voice… it had been shackled for over two centuries. Used. Violated. Broken in ways that words could never fully contain. What began with the First Elder's men became something far worse—a cycle of torment passed down through blood and flesh.

There was no mercy, no end—only the silence between each scream. And even that silence was soaked in madness.

Just remembering those moments made his stomach churn.

These lives weren't like fleeting nightmares, buried in the subconscious or lost to time. Each one clung to him—vivid, immediate—like a memory he had just lived through.

Fresh wounds, still bleeding.

What made it all the more unbearable was that he could still hear their screams.

Some echoed with aching loneliness, others with hollow longing.

There were screams laced with betrayal—raw, broken, unforgiving.

Some twisted with unnerving pleasure, sharp and manic.

Others thundered with rage, burning and relentless.

And some… some wept with such deep despair, it clawed at his soul.

He heard every single one of them—clearly, vividly—as if they were being screamed directly into his mind.

The mere sight of that twisted amalgamation of dead shadows was enough to shatter his sanity.

And yet, there his younger self had stood—calmly weaving from the very darkness that had broken him.

And then there were the runic sorceries crafted by the Second Head Elder, Griesha—one forged to seal, the other to gather. Perhaps they were tied to the breathtaking dancing maiden he'd glimpsed at the start of the First Nightmare, when the world was consumed in battle against a horde of Nightmare creatures(?).

He had thought her a fairy, delicate and ethereal.

But she was no fairy. Not even a demon.

Something far older. Infinitely more powerful. And unspeakably worse.

A Terror draped in grace.

Both the weave and the two runic sorceries lingered somewhere in his mind—ready to be recalled at will.

But even this endless cycle of life and death wasn't without its boon.

With the help of his Attribute, [Perfect Sorcerer], and by watching and absorbing countless sorceries— Some spells were born of ecstasy, others of agony. Some bend space itself, while others to seal—he possessed an immensely large collection of sorcery.

But sadly, almost all of them required either his own essence or for him to be put in place.

Also, through the torment, he uncovered the buried rot beneath the so-called utopia—a dark history long hidden and forgotten, and with it, a hint of how to survive the nightmare…and grow.

In most stories, a main character who endured such torment would awaken to overwhelming power. But sadly, what accompanied was not a power up but the maddening screams.

Murphy, with remarkable calm—and no small amount of shamelessness—chose to forget the so-called boons entirely.

The screams, though, continued to grow more ethereal, as if something was slowly suppressing them into silence.

Strangely, this power seemed to be coming from within himself.

But no matter how hard he looked, he possessed neither a Memory, nor an Attribute, nor even an Aspect that possessed some similar power.

'Wait, do I possess 4th wall like Kim Dokja? How cool would be?'

Just then, a voice called out from beyond the door—soft, with a faint tremble.

"Young Master, I've brought your clothes, your cleaning equipment and some food."

It was Shen Xi.

'Poor girl. She's probably still shaken from what happened yesterday.'

Now that he had lived the life of Shen Xi's mother—maybe during his 738th death—her actions from yesterday finally made sense. He understood her now.

She was just a pawn—shaped and used by her mother(me), before she(I) died.

Her life had only one goal: to climb the social ladder.

But with no real talent, the most she could manage was the Awakened level, and even that came without an Aspect.

She sold her body to senior officials—again and again—until she reached the place she stands now.

In fact, she wasn't truly his maid, but a spy who had infiltrated the manor—tasked with keeping an eye on him, and potentially killing him if the order came from a certain official.

Although this didn't really concern him, he knew her weakness—her three-year-old daughter.

She had hidden the child away in the village orphanage and sent monthly donations to support her.

And if push came to shove…

Well, a three-year-old suddenly jumping in front of a moving carriage wouldn't technically be his fault.

What Murphy failed to realize was just how warped his thoughts had become.

Perhaps it was inevitable—no one could die a million deaths and expect their sanity to remain whole.

Not even him.