For a single, suspended instant after the word left his mouth, nothing happened at all.
Sunny remained standing before the motionless Echo with his hand still resting lightly on her shoulder, half expecting the Spell to retract the offer, to inform him that he had made a mistake, or that converting a mundane woman into one of his Shadows was somehow impossible. The Soul Sea lay perfectly still beneath his feet, its black surface unbroken and mirror-smooth, reflecting the eclipsed glow of the Shadow Cores overhead like a sky drowned in ink.
Tingyun's empty gaze did not waver, her body remaining as lifeless and unmoving as a statue carved from polished obsidian.
Then his fourth Shadow Core stirred.
Until now, it had been the only one without a resident Shadow Creature, orbiting above him in silent emptiness like a hollow star waiting to be filled. A deep tremor passed through it, subtle at first but rapidly intensifying until the surrounding air began to vibrate with a low, resonant hum that Sunny felt more in his bones than in his ears. The darkness around the Core thickened, condensing into a dense halo of shifting shadow that churned like a storm gathering behind a veil.
Two beams of absolute black descended from its depths.
They were not light, nor the absence of it, but something stranger — columns of condensed shadow so dense that they seemed to devour the space they occupied. One beam struck Tingyun's Echo squarely, engulfing her from head to toe in a cocoon of dark radiance. The other lanced downward toward the endless ranks of silhouettes scattered across the Soul Sea and settled upon one particular figure standing among them.
Her shadow.
Among the countless forms of those Sunny had slain, Tingyun's shadow had stood quietly ever since her death, indistinguishable from the rest except to the one who had created it. Now it responded, lifting its head as though summoned by an unheard command before dissolving into wisps of black mist that rose upward in a slow spiral. The mist flowed into the second beam and was drawn inexorably toward the Echo, as if the two halves of a broken existence were being stitched back together by the authority of the Shadow Core.
Sunny watched with unblinking intensity as the streams of darkness converged.
When the shadow finally reached Tingyun's form, it did not simply merge with her.
It was devoured.
The black radiance surrounding her pulsed once, violently, and the last remnants of her former shadow vanished within it as though consumed by a starving void. Immediately afterward, her Echo began to change.
Wisps of shadowy vapor seeped from beneath her skin, leaking through pores that should not have existed as though her body were unraveling from within. Dark flames erupted across her surface, silent and smokeless, clinging to her form without consuming it while swallowing every trace of reflective sheen that had defined her as an Echo. Her hair blackened first, the pale luster fading into matte darkness that drank in the dim light of the Soul Sea. Then her skin followed, shifting from pale gloss to pure, featureless shadow that revealed no texture at all.
Even the sclera of her eyes darkened, swallowing the whites until only faint, dull emeralds remained where her irises had been.
As Sunny leaned forward slightly, intent on studying every detail of the transformation, a new set of runes ignited before his eyes with startling abruptness.
[Human Spirit detected and analyzed. Unseal Aspect?]
His breath caught.
For several seconds, he simply stared at the words in stunned disbelief, struggling to reconcile what he was seeing with what he knew to be true. Tingyun had never been an Awakened, never entered a Nightmare, never touched the Spell in life. She had been an ordinary woman, one with influence and wit — if the Nightmare Spell's descriptions were to be believed — but no supernatural power of her own.
And yet…
If the Spell recognized a sealed Aspect within her Echo, then something had been there all along, dormant and inaccessible, like a door that had never been opened…
Which made Sunny wonder — was this the truth for all humans? Did they all innately have Aspects, lying in wait to express their carrier's souls?
Sunny's expression hardened with sudden resolve.
If she had even the slightest chance at agency, at strength, at something resembling a real existence rather than a hollow imitation, then he would not deny it to her.
"Yes."
The moment he spoke, the transformation deepened.
The changes that followed were not visible in the ordinary sense. To an outside observer, Tingyun would simply appear to be engulfed in darkness, her form consumed by the black flames pouring from the Shadow Core above. But Sunny's special vision revealed a far more intricate metamorphosis unfolding beneath the surface.
The luminous weave that constituted the Echo's inner structure trembled violently. Previously, it had resembled a constellation of threads without a central anchor, its integrity maintained only by the residual imprint of a life that had once existed. Now those threads began to reorganize themselves with mechanical precision, folding inward and knotting together as though guided by an unseen hand.
At the center of the collapsing pattern, a single speck of light ignited.
It was tiny, barely brighter than a distant star, yet its presence altered the entire structure around it. The threads spiraled toward it, tightening into an orderly formation that resembled the embryonic shape of a Soul Core — crude and incomplete compared to the radiant orbs of true Awakened, but unmistakable nonetheless.
Then the light dimmed.
Not fading into nothingness, but draining of brilliance until it became hollow and transparent, like a glass sphere emptied of substance. It resembled a Shadow Core rather than a Soul Core, defined more by absence than by presence.
Darkness flooded the structure.
Not the inert darkness of empty space, but something alive, purposeful, intelligent. It seeped through the weave like ink soaking into paper, replacing the luminous threads with living shadow that molded itself into the precise contours of Tingyun's form. Where the Echo had once been held together by strands of Spellweave, it was now sustained by a cohesive entity of darkness that behaved less like matter and more like a will given shape.
At the heart of that darkness, a spark ignited.
It flickered uncertainly at first, like the first hesitant breath of a newborn flame. Then it brightened, swelling into a small, steady fire that cast golden light through the surrounding shadow without dispersing it. The fire grew rapidly, intensifying until it became a roaring inferno contained within a space no larger than a fist.
The flames twisted.
They stretched outward, coalescing into a distinct silhouette that towered within the darkness like a myth made manifest.
A fox.
Not a gentle creature, not a symbol of cunning grace, but something vast and feral, its nine tails lashing behind it in arcs of blazing gold that carved trails through the surrounding void. Its eyes burned with predatory intelligence, its jaws parted in a silent snarl that revealed teeth formed from pure incandescent light.
Sunny's eyes widened as the vision seared itself into his perception.
Then it collapsed.
The inferno imploded inward, the brilliant flames compressing into a dense node of darkness identical to those possessed by his other Shadows. The transformation completed with a final pulse that rippled outward through Tingyun's entire form.
Her eyes ignited.
Where once there had been dull emeralds, two blazing orbs now burned within the void of her face, their fiery glow framed by pitch-black sclera that made the light appear all the more intense. The rest of her body had become a perfect silhouette, featureless and matte, as though carved from living night itself. From the delicate points of her Foxian ears to the long curve of her tail, she was both unmistakably Tingyun and something entirely alien.
Most unsettling of all was the awareness in her gaze.
It was faint, fragile, but undeniably present.
The Spell responded immediately.
[You have created a Shadow Beast: Tingyun.]
Sunny had barely processed the notification when the impossible happened.
She screamed.
The sound tore through the Soul Sea like a blade, raw and piercing and utterly human in its terror. It was not the mindless cry of a beast nor the hollow echo of a construct, but the anguished shriek of someone who had abruptly become aware of her own existence under horrifying circumstances.
Sunny screamed back.
The reaction was pure instinct, a startled shout ripped from his throat before his mind could catch up with reality. Panic surged through him as every survival instinct demanded distance from the unpredictable entity he had just created, especially one tied so intimately to a memory he would have preferred to bury forever.
Without conscious thought, he reached for the connection to the physical world while simultaneously commanding the Shadow Core to reclaim its occupant.
Darkness surged around Tingyun, pulling inward like a collapsing vortex.
Her burning eyes widened as understanding dawned.
"Wai—!"
The word was cut off as she vanished, drawn back into the depths of the Core before she could finish speaking.
Sunny reemerged in the hotel room with a violent gasp, his body lurching forward as though he had narrowly escaped drowning. His heart hammered against his ribs, breath coming in sharp, uneven bursts while cold sweat prickled across his skin. For several long seconds, he could do nothing but sit there and stare at the floor, trying to convince himself that what had just happened was real.
He looked down at the Silent Mist. Sunny had kept in on due to the belief that Tingyun wouldn't be able to speak. She was a Beast, and should have lacked the intelligence her superior Demons and higher would have. Maybe her origins as a human changed her progression as a Shadow Creature?
Eventually, he raised a trembling hand and smacked himself across the face.
The sharp sting grounded him, though it did little to calm the storm of emotions churning inside his chest. He dragged both hands down his face and exhaled shakily, acutely aware that he had just created a sentient being out of someone he had personally killed — someone he had never wanted to harm in the first place.
Tingyun was different from the others.
The collateral damage of the Second Nightmare had been illusions, echoes of long-dead people whose suffering had already ended long before he arrived. Plus, he had been consumed by the dopamine of having outsmarted Mordret, which certainly helped. The men and women he had killed before his First Nightmare had been the kind of people that were completely fine with taking advantage of a child — himself. Naturally, they either met the end of his knife or the barrel of his gun. Not even worthy of being a sacrifice. He practically did the world a favor while benefiting from it, looting their corpses in order to save money as he looked to Rain.
Every life taken afterward had been in the context of survival or necessity, grim realities of a world where hesitation often meant death. That, or a simple grudge.
But Tingyun…
She had been collateral damage in the purest sense.
A hostage whose body had been turned into a weapon by an enemy far beyond her control.
Sunny leaned back against the wall, staring blankly at the ceiling as guilt settled over him like a leaden shroud. If he had trusted others, if he had sought help instead of acting alone, perhaps there might have been another way. Perhaps someone with deeper knowledge of the Xianzhou Alliance's technology or of Lord Ravagers could have separated her from Phantylia without destroying her in the process.
Perhaps.
The word was useless now.
What had happened could not be undone.
All he could do was decide what came next.
Sunny closed his eyes and let out a long, exhausted sigh, the tension slowly draining from his shoulders as resignation replaced panic. Somewhere within the depths of his soul, Tingyun now existed as one of his Shadows, alive in a sense that defied both life and death, bound to him whether either of them liked it or not.
Awkward did not begin to describe the situation.
"…Sucks to suck."
He lowered his head into his hands, already dreading the inevitable moment when he would have to summon her again and face the consequences of his decision.