Shadow Slave - Time Dilation

In a quiet café,

on a street too peaceful to be remembered,

two souls sat beneath the fading light.

Not the awkward kind of quiet.

Not sterile.

Not stained by the weight of forced presence.

But still.

And slow.

Like time had exhaled and chosen to pause here.

Steam curled from two cups of coffee.

Between them:

a Sovereign.

A Saint.

Kai had called it a "date."

Effie had seconded with such loud joy that Nephis had finally relented.

Sunny, of course, said nothing.

He never did.

His gaze now drifted beyond the window,

where warm dusk light danced across brick and glass,

while inside, the glow settled on porcelain skin and pale robes.

Nephis sat across from him.

Her back straight. Her hands cradling the cup.

Still not drinking.

Still observing.

The Serpent lay curled in Sunny's lap,

its body draped across his forearm,

its head nestled against the bend of his elbow—

as if guarding something small and sacred.

Or perhaps remembering how.

Sunny's other hand never moved.

Not out of tenderness.

Not out of sentiment.

Just… instinct.

The café air smelled of cinnamon, of faint roasted beans,

of things soft and human.

A chime rang—soft.

Not the door.

Sunny's hand moved, precise and quiet,

setting the cup down with barely a sound.

The liquid within trembled,

then stilled.

His free hand moved to the communicator.

Across from him, Nephis mirrored the gesture.

Two slight shifts, simultaneous.

Silent.

They both glanced down.

Then up.

Their eyes met.

No words passed.

They didn't need to.

The screen read:

EMERGENCY ALERT

GATE ACTIVITY DETECTED IN YOUR PROXIMITY

ETA: 31 SECONDS

EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY

They didn't read the rest.

Or rather—Sunny didn't.

His gaze moved past the communicator,

as though the glass could no longer hold his attention—

or perhaps, his hatred needed no confirmation.

A silence fell, thick as oil.

The shadows around his feet…

twitched.

Hesitant.

Then bowed.

Something was coming.

He could feel it.

Not as a ripple in power.

Not even as danger.

But as wrongness.

The kind that made breath still in the throat before the lungs could understand why.

Reality quivered.

Not broke. Not bled.

Just tensed.

As though the world itself had taken a breath—

and decided not to release it.

Nephis lowered her cup.

The porcelain barely clicked against the saucer.

Even she, the flame that never flickered, shifted slightly in her seat.

Sunny stood.

Slowly.

No words passed.

None were needed.

The Serpent slipped from his lap,

twisting down his side, curling around his wrist.

They stepped outside the café.

And there it was—

a crack in the world.

A fissure blooming open in the skin of reality.

It pulsed like a wound,

black and deep and wrong.

A forming Gate.

"Category 5…"

Nephis said it aloud.

But her voice held something it never had before.

Uncertainty.

Sunny didn't reply.

He raised a hand.

And the shadows came.

They gathered around his arm like old soldiers,

wrapping and weaving,

until the familiar weight of the tenebrific odachi solidified in his grip.

The Serpent twined around his arm.

Clung to it.

And still—

the Gate widened.

Not alone.

Two more.

On either side.

Category 4s.

Then—

a flicker.

A new presence.

Not arriving.

Manifesting.

Lucien stepped forward from a flame that burned cold,

his hair like ink in motion,

his white eyes catching no light, only ending it.

The fire followed him,

not like a weapon,

but a companion.

Like it belonged to him.

Or perhaps, he belonged to it.

Behind him—

the moon…

Luna.

Not radiant like sunlight.

But pale, like moonlight on untouched snow.

A beauty quiet, blinding, and beyond.

Lucien moved.

No flash.

No step.

Simply appeared at the Gate's edge.

The flames surged.

They spiraled along the fracture—

clawed at it, licked it,

tried to close it.

And for a heartbeat…

it worked.

But the Gate did not close.

Instead,

it fought.

The Will of the Other Side struck back.

Not physically.

Existentially.

Something inside wanted to be.

Something ancient.

Something hateful.

The flame raged.

The Gate held.

And in that clash,

the world screamed.

Then—

talons.

Massive.

Obsidian.

They burst forth from the crack,

clutching its edge like a hand dragging open a ribcage.

Sunny saw them—

and remembered.

The same talons that had once gripped his soul.

Tried to rip his self from himself.

His pupils narrowed.

His breath stilled.

Hatred bloomed.

He dismissed the sword.

The Serpent shifted—

its body uncoiling midair,

twisting, reforming—

until it became something darker than before.

Not just an odachi.

A reaper's scythe in waiting.

Death, given edge.

He stepped forward.

Lucien saw him.

Did not speak.

But—

Smiled.

Sunny raised the blade.

And the shadows moved.

Six of them.

Six Supreme Titans.

They rose from the earth,

wrapped around the odachi,

tightening like muscles around bone.

Then—

The flames moved.

Lucien's black fire crawled over the steel,

not burning, not biting—

but merging.

Becoming part of it.

Part of him.

Not by accident.

Not by invitation.

But under command.

Together—

Shadow and Flame,

merged on a single edge.

And waited.

Sunny's Will surged through the hilt.

Through every molecule.

Not loud.

But absolute.

His hatred wasn't explosive.

It wasn't wild.

It was cold.

Sharp.

Refined by time and torture.

Hammered by centuries in the dark.

Given purpose only now.

You cast me down.

Let me return the favor.

He struck.

The sword cut air.

Then space.

Then meaning.

It arced like a sentence long withheld.

And when it met the talon—

when it met the being that had once stolen his existence—

The blade sang.

A scream not heard,

but felt.

And the talon—

that monstrous, immortal claw—

was cleaved in half.

Not broken.

Denied.

Undone.

…

"Not bad…

for a traitor."

They came—

not like soldiers,

but like a flood rupturing through a dam made of stars and bone.

A pack of nightmare things.

A wolf, its body bristling with obsidian thorns.

A lizard, skin like molten glass, steam rising where it stepped.

Dozens more.

Some galloped.

Some crawled.

All hunted.

They burst from the mouth of the Category 4 gates—

howling, shrieking, unraveling the very light around them.

Nephis moved first.

No war cry.

No flourish.

Just motion—like a blade sliding free of its sheath.

She met them mid-rush,

her form wreathed in white fire so bright it bled gold at the edges.

Her sword—simple, radiant—sliced not with elegance, but with will.

And her will was death.

A fang tore across her shoulder.

She didn't flinch.

The flesh parted.

Then sealed again—

the radiant blaze consuming both wound and attacker in a flash of holy ruin.

She fought like she had both nothing and everything to lose.

Each swing was punishment.

Each step, a dare.

Each flame, a hymn to the girl who once waited to be saved—

and instead, became the end.

Luna followed.

Across the broken avenue, her gate howled open—

and the cold tide of monsters flowed toward her like moths to moonlight.

She stepped forward.

Light gathered beneath her feet—

a misted sheen of pale petals,

each footprint blooming into silence.

A blade formed in her hand.

Slim. Curved.

A Taijijian

Silver and gold—

not ornate, but sacred.

She did not strike.

She moved.

Her sword was breath.

Her form, a tide.

The lizard-thing lunged—

and missed,

not because it was slow,

but because she had never truly been there.

She turned with the motion,

a half-step, a wrist twist—

and the blade whispered across the beast's throat.

No roar.

No gush.

Just a cut so clean the head blinked twice before it fell.

Around her, monsters died without ever touching her.

Not because she was fast,

but because her presence folded around theirs like water around stone.

Soft.

Inevitable.

Impossible to grip.

A wolf howled and leapt—

she raised a hand, palm flat.

Its body froze mid-air,

a circle of pale energy ringing from her wrist like moonlight shattered through water.

Then she moved again.

Three steps.

Three arcs.

Three deaths.

Her blade trailed silence,

but its shadow left cold scars on the world.

And somewhere between that rhythm,

where fire devoured and moonlight danced—

the battlefield sang.

Of two women.

One, a Saint cloaked in ruin.

The other, a Supreme sculpted from serenity.

Both beautiful.

Both deadly.

Both carving poetry into the flesh of monsters.

And behind them—

the Gates still yawned.

Not closed.

Not bleeding

Before the Category 5 Gate—

Sunny stood still.

Odachi raised.

Shadow coiled tight around the blade like reverence waiting to become violence.

His Will gathered—

a storm condensed to a single edge.

The black flames obeyed.

The Serpent hissed.

And then—

the world halted.

Not in silence.

But in anticipation.

The kind that made even the shadows forget how to breathe.

A sound—

not a roar,

not a shriek—

but a rustle,

like dead leaves stirred by an unseen breath.

Then—

wings.

Two of them.

Vast.

Decayed.

Clad in mangled black feathers,

each one slick and heavy as though soaked in centuries.

They pushed through the crack in reality—

slowly.

Like a thing that wasn't entering the world,

but returning to it.

The gate shuddered.

The world bent.

From the depths of the fissure,

a shape crawled forward—

slouched.

Twisted.

Terrible.

A bird.

If such a word could still apply.

But this was no creature of sky.

It was a carrion god,

draped in ruin.

Its mantle was a tangle of feathers,

filthy and fractured,

each one crooked like knives forged by grief.

Its beak—long, brutal, yellowed like ancient ivory—clicked once.

The sound echoed.

And windows shattered miles away.

Its hunched back dragged shadow like a funeral train,

its talons scraped the air itself.

And still—

it had not fully emerged.

Lucien stood nearby, still cloaked in quiet flame,

eyes white, voice low—

as though speaking not to the world,

but to the thing that crawled through it.

"Old chick with feathers sewn from sin…"

"You never did love what you stole, did you?"

"The Eye of Weaver—"

"You stared too long, and saw the thing behind the stars."

"Now you croak in riddles you can't even eat."

The bird did not answer.

Because it did not need to.

The Gate tore wider.

The pressure in the air sank,

as if the atmosphere itself was kneeling.

And Sunny—

for all his power,

for all the shadows he commanded—

felt something stir beneath his skin.

Not fear.

Memory.

The talons.

The same ones that once reached into him and tried to unmake his name.

He tightened his grip.

The odachi flared.

Lucien turned slightly,

his voice a murmur of reverence and contempt braided together.

"Greedy thing… still hungry."

"Still dreaming of golden ichor."

"But your beak is empty now, isn't it?"

"Tell me—"

"Did you scream when you dropped it?"

Then the creature's head began to rise.

And the world forgot light.