It was going to take Aiko so ti to prepare the new mories for Sunny to peruse. In the anti, he hesitated for a while, looking at the shimring runes with a bit of trepidation.
By now, he already explored those of his mories that he had either personally crafted or altered. Two more remained, though.. Weavers Mask and Shadow Lantern.
Sunny was a little afraid of them.
He had already seen their weave, after all — and it was unlike anything he had ever witnessed. Even the most powerful mories he had possessed in the past, Estuary Key and the Crown of Twilight, seed like toys ant for an infant when compared to the unfathomable complexity of the weave hiding within the Divine mories.
Sunny had almost killed himself a couple of tis by witnessing more than mortals were ant to perceive — like the endless tapestry of fate that Weaver's Mask could show him.
He had not been hard by rely looking at the weave of Divine mories, sure. But there was a vast difference between taking a look at them and becoming one with them — fusing with the Silver Bell was already a shock, so Sunny was hesitant to do the sa with either Weaver's Mask or the Shadow Lantern.
Still, the temptation was too strong.
Finally gathering his courage, Sunny sighed and summoned the Shadow Lantern. Soon, a palm-sized lantern appeared in his hand. It was made from a black material that felt like stone, but wasn’t stone, engraved with intricate patterns that resembled the scales of a serpent. A short chain was attached to a tal ring at its top, similarly black.
The lantern's gate was carved from glossy black morion—needless to say, there was no light shining through it. Instead, the darkness around Sunny suddenly seed to grow deeper, colder, and more impenetrable.
Shadow Lantern was beautiful, but unassuming—not at all like a relic left behind by a god. Then again, maybe it was exactly the kind of thing that the elusive Shadow God would leave behind.
It also only had a single enchantnt... which was both quite simple and dealt with such absolute concepts and endlessness and infinity—
Enchantnt: [Gates of Shadow]
Enchantnt Description: [This lantern devours light and can contain, and then release, an infinite amount of shadows].
That enchantnt had served Sunny well in the past. In fact, it was one of the most useful and irreplaceable tools in his arsenal.
He remained motionless for a while, studying the dark mory, then sighed again and controlled his gloomy incarnation to wrap itself around the serpentine stone lantern.
In the next mont...
Sunny let out a horrified yelp and tossed the lantern away. Of course, that did not do anything, so he belatedly rembered to separate himself from the Divine mory by allowing his trembling shadow to dash away.
The Shadow Lantern fell on the floor and rolled a few tis, its chain ringing in the silence.
"Ah... goddammit..."
Sunny found himself laying on the floor, having hit it hard with his forehead. Of course, his head was quite sturdy, so he wasn’t even bruised... the Marvelous Mimic, however, seed to have received so damage. The floorboard was cracked, slowly repairing itself.
A brick cottage could not really express emotions, but sohow, Sunny felt that he was surrounded by an aura of resentnt.
He let out a shaky breath.
"Yeah... I'm not doing that again any ti soon."
Just as he had expected, fusing with a Divine mory was not sothing a re mortal like him was ant to do. His mind was too small, fleeting, and fragile to contain the vastness of the Shadow Lantern's weave, the weight of its enchantnt, and humbling scale of its unseen expanse. The Divine mory might have appeared no larger than a palm on the material plane, but truly... its essence was far too imnse to fathom.
Sunny slowly sat up and let out a low groan.
"At least I didn't start with Weavers Mask."
Shadow Lantern was a Divine mory of the First Tier, while Weavers Mask... it was a Divine mory of the Seventh Tier. It had more than one enchantnt, as well, woven by Weaver’s own hand.
Sunny was suddenly thankful that he was a little scared of his mask, having been traumatized by its [Where is my eye?] enchantnt a long ti ago. He had used it on several occasions — the last ti already as a Saint, to see if he was really free of the Strings of Fate and disconnected from its tapestry. Rembering those tis consistently made him shudder.
Of course, fusing with Weavers Mask would be far more rciful than witnessing fate without the privilege of looking away. His mind would not lt, shatter, and collapse under the pressure... it was just that becoming one with sothing so much greater than himself posed a high risk of his sense of self being substituted by that thing entirely.
Sunny had no plans of spending the rest of his life believing genuinely that he was in fact not a person, but a wooden mask instead.
He had co really close to being irrevocably convinced that he was an intricate stone lantern, already.
Shaking his head, Sunny closed his eyes for a mont, then threw a dark look at the Shadow Lantern.
"That was close."
The experience of fusion with the Divine mory had indeed been perilous... but not entirely useless.
Slowly, Sunny's expression changed.
That said, it had not been useless.
Rembering that short mont of being one with the Shadow Lantern, he scrutinized his feelings intently.
He had not really managed to fathom the nuances of the spellweave of the Divine mory, but he did beco briefly aware of its true essence. That impression, although montary, imparted a much deeper understanding of the Shadow Lantern to him.
And of its single enchantnt.
Suddenly, Sunny's eyes widened, and he stared at the glossy morion gate of the stone lantern in utter disbelief.
"No... it can't be."
And yet, it could.
He was paralyzed by shock.
"The Gates of Shadow?"
Long ago, soon after receiving the Shadow Lantern, Sunny had wondered how it was able to contain a literal infinity of shadows. Where did the shadows he sent into the Lantern really go? He had even sent one of his own shadows inside, learning very little as a result.
He had also tried to store the Fragnt of the Shadow Realm in the small stone lantern, attempting to test if its capacity was really infinite. The Fragnt could indeed be sent into the Shadow Lantern — sadly, no matter how hard Sunny tried, it could not be retrieved.
There was no reason Sunny knew why the Shadow Realm's Fragnt would not return from inside the Lantern, like all other shadows would, but that was what he had discovered on Alethea's Island. The discovery had crushed his hope of being able to move his piece of a Divine Domain freely wherever he wished.
But now... now, Sunny had a strong suspicion about what the reason was.
It was because the na of the single enchantnt of the Shadow Lantern was much more literal than he had thought.
Gates of Shadow... not of the Shadows, but of Shadow.
"Made pale and feeble by the radiance of day. Shadow laughed and rose from the ground."
That was what the Nightmare Spell called Shadow God in the description of the Lantern.
So, the Gates of Shadow were really the Gates of Shadow God.
Where would the Gates of Shadow God lead?
Sunny stared at the small stone lantern and its tiny morion door with an expression of horror.
There was only one logical answer.
They would lead to Shadow God's Realm.
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