Sunny stood in the endless space between dream and reality, in here there was nothing except a boundless void illuminated by a myriad of bright stars. Between those stars, countless strings of silver light were woven into a beautiful and inconceivably complex pattern. This was the inner workings of the nightmare spell, he had just cleared his first nightmare and was shocked after looking at the runes it had displayed in front of his eyes.
Flaw: [Clear Conscience].
Flaw Description: [you can not lie].
Sunny looked at the other set of runes
Aspect: [Shadow Slave].
Aspect Rank: Divine.
Aspect Description: [You are a miraculous shadow left behind by a dead god. As a divine shadow, you possess plenty of strange and wondrous powers. However, your existence is empty and lonesome; you mourn the passing of your former master and long to find a new one.]
Innate Ability: [Shadow Bond].
Ability Description: [Find a worthy master and let them know your True Name. Once they recite it out loud, you will be bound to their will, unable to disobey any command. It is improper for a shadow, let alone a divine one, to walk around without a master.].
Was the spell mocking him? He had received a divine rank aspect, something never heard of in the history of the nightmare spell, and it came with a innate ability that would turn him into a slave, and the cherry on top was the flaw that made it unable for him to conceal his true name.
This could not have happened, something was wrong surely, he checked his runes again
Name: Sunless.
True Name: Lost From Light.
Rank: Dreamer.
Shadow Core: [Dormant].
Shadow Fragments: [12/1000].
Memories: [Silver Bell], [Puppeteers Shroud].
Echoes: -
Attributes: [Fated], [Prince of Shadows], [Flame of Divinity], [The Shadow].
Aspect: [Shadow Slave].
Aspect Rank: Divine.
Aspect Description: [You are a miraculous shadow left behind by a dead god. As a divine shadow, you possess plenty of strange and wondrous powers. However, your existence is empty and lonesome; you mourn the passing of your former master and long to find a new one.]
Innate Ability: [Shadow Bond].
Ability Description: [Find a worthy master and let them know your True Name. Once they recite it out loud, you will be bound to their will, unable to disobey any command. It is improper for a shadow, let alone a divine one, to walk around without a master.].
Aspect Ability: [Shadow Control].
Aspect Ability Description: [Your shadow is more independent than most. It is an invaluable helper.].
Flaw: [Clear Conscience].
Flaw Description: [you can not lie].
He looked at the two newly evolved attributes as to distract himself from his innate ability and flaw
[Prince of shadows] which had evolved from [Child of Shadows]
Attribute Description: [Shadows recognize you as royalty].
Previously it used to say that shadows recognized him as one of them, now he was royalty, the attribute probably evolved due to him awakening his divine lineage [The Shadow] which he inherited from his father. Speaking of his divine lineage he looked at the runes describing it.
Attribute Description: [You have inherited the lineage of shadow god].
Previously the runes for his lineage memory were grayed out but now it shone with a slight ethereal silver light telling him that the attribute had awakened.
greyed out or not the description did not tell him about anything the lineage did, he would have to experiment with it himself to find out
Sunny's gaze drifted back onto the accursed runes that had just ruined everything
Flaw: [Clear Conscience].
Flaw Description: [you can not lie].
He had to figure out what to do with his flaw, he could not reveal his true name to anyone… he had to find a way to work around it, but before he had time to come up with anything he heard the spells voice
[Wake up Lost From Light].
Sunny opened his eyes to find himself looking at the armored ceiling of the police station's vault where he had surrendered himself. The sudden feeling of being back into the real world had teared his thoughts away from the horrible flaw he had received, Sunny was not necessarily fond of the waking world, but now it seemed like the best place in the world, it was safe and familiar. The cold of the black mountains were not killing him slowly, there was no threat of an awakened tyrant looming over him, he was truly safe here.
He looked down to see a beautiful woman sitting on a cheap plastic chair beside him.
She had short, raven-black hair and icy blue eyes. Her pale skin was smooth and flawless, she was almost as pale as Sunny himself, which was a rare occurrence, actually Sunny had only known of one person as pale as him and that was a woman in the Shadow clan with the nickname "Soul reaper".
***
The Shadow clan was a great legacy clan established by his parents, working closely with the government to get rid of threats from the shadows. The clan was so secretive that only couple of people outside their ranks knew of its existance.
Though smaller than the other Great clans and even the government it was just as fearsome and deadly. Shadow clan members were masters of spying, espionage, infiltration and assassination. That did not mean that they were bad at direct combat though, the opposite actually, a cohort of Shadow Clan warriors was something only few nightmare creatures in existence could face and come out on top. They moved like a well-oiled machine, each motion carried out with terrifying precision. On the battlefield, it was hard to tell whether the cohort was a single entity or many, they flowed as one, perfectly synchronized, as if possessing a telepathic link.
Shadow clan was a secret blade that the government possessed to keep the world in check, corrupt leaders, rampaging awakened and even the terrifying nightmare creatures in the dream realm. The clan would gather information and then strike from the shadows, by the time anyone had realized what had happened it was already too late.
The Clan was well off despite its small size, until everything started going downhill that is. After the death of Sunny's parents the clan stopped growing in size, it seemed fine at first, there were enough Shadow clan members to carry out missions and they were going as smoothly as ever.
But Sunny was no fool, he knew things would not stay that way.
That is because His one and only friend, Nephis of the immortal flame clan had already survived many assassination attempts, at first Shadow clan and by extension Sunny did not who was behind them.
That soon changed.
When Sunny had visited the immortal flame manor, another assassin had revealed themselves in hopes of killing two birds with one stone. As expected, they failed. But this time it was different, and that is because this time they left something behind.
A dagger etched with a crest: an anvil struck by a blade.
The mark of the Great clan Valor.
On that day Sunny and Nephis had understood the harsh truth. The Great clans —once their allies, had betrayed them and now wanted to get rid of the latent threat they embodied.
After that fateful day, both of them had changed forever. The realization of it all had filled them with rage. It did not take long to figure out, the Great Clans they were the ones behind their parents deaths. Their so called friends had betrayed them and now they were going after their children.
And on that day two children had made a vow. fueled with new found conviction. To see the Great clans burn… revenge against the traitors: 'Aster, Song, Vale' their names kept repeating in their head —they were going to be the one to destroy them, watch them burn. Nephis and Sunny, they were going to be the ones that came out on top, the ones that survived, and the Great Clan's would fall.
In the following years the attempts on their life got more relentless. The assassins had a hard time trying to get past the Shadow clan, but day by day it was getting more difficult to keep them at bay, and one day it reached a breaking point.
The Shadow clan tried to salvage the situation as much as it could. The clan was disbanded, all the shadow clan members transferred to the government forces, Sunny's sister —Rain was adopted by a government agent. Sunny did not have such luck though. The demand on his life was too high, and the only safe place for him was The outskirts.
And that is how Sunny was forced to leave his life as a prince of a Great clan and become a outskirts rat, he sealed off the Shadow clan manor and left his previous life behind. 'Soon.' He thought 'Very soon, only four to six years in the outskirts… Soon I Am going to be infected by the nightmare spell, I Am going to conquer the first nightmare, the second nightmare, the third nightmare and the fourth nightmare and free myself from the hold of the sovereigns. What is the thing Nephis keeps repeating? IF THAT IS MY WILL WHO DARES TO STOP ME!'.