Shadow Slave novel Chapter 2869

Cassie and Nightwalker faced each other on the emerald grass of the Ivory Island, no more than a dozen metres between them. The air around them was suffused with volatile energy, the space itself bending and twisting like a sheet of fabric fluttering in the violent wind. Despite the utter chaos and the devastation ravaging the meadow around them, neither of them moved.

And yet, a transcendent battle was raging in the crackling air between them, hidden from sight.

Nightwalker was commanding space to rend Cassie apart, while she was wielding the power left behind by the Demon of Desire to thwart him. Her body kept breaking and being mended by the white radiance spilling from beneath her skin, and her golden hair danced in the raging wind.

In her mind's eye, the future and the present fused into a blood-soaked kaleidoscope of torment and death, countless possibilities blooming like a vast web of silk threads. All of them inevitably converged into a single outcome, though — her defeat.

Cassie could withstand Nightwalker, for a time... but she could not overcome him. Her mind was slowly buckling under the pressure of wielding the Crushing with an increasingly sophisticated measure of precision, while a small and meticulous part of it was coldly contemplating how to cut the ruthless adversary down — sadly, Cassie was coming up empty.

If she were to have any hope of defeating Nightwalker, she had to get close to him first. The distance between them was small — especially so in a battle between Saints. Usually, she would have been able to close it in the blink of an eye, but her adversary made that impossible.

Every time Cassie tried to get in melee range with Nightwalker, he simply expanded the space between them, stretching it so that she had to traverse a vast distance simply to take a single step — there might as well have been many kilometers separating them. She could not make use of her dagger or force him to look her in the eye, kept at bay by his power.

And every time she tried to retreat, he twisted space so that she ended up exactly where she had started, as if to tell her that there was no escape from him.

All she could do was make sure that none of the ghastly ways in which her body was being broken was instantly fatal. Even that was only possible because of her Supreme charm.

Consumed by pain, Cassie gritted her teeth.

'What a devious Aspect.'

There had to be some drawback to Nightwalker's powers... an Aspect as potent as that had to have equally grave limitations. However, there was more to the martial prowess of an Awakened than the power of their Aspect — learning how to wield it more effectively and efficiently was just as important, if not more so.

Nightwalker had already been a legendary figure before his disappearance, and then spent decades in an endless, relentless battle against beings who were vastly more powerful than him on top of that. Even if there were grave limitations to his Aspect, his mastery was most likely unmatched, and therefore, these limitations had little influence on how deadly he was.

If Cassie were to wager a guess, she would say that commanding space in such a forceful manner was quickly depleting his reserves of essence. But even then, time was not on her side — there were five more Saints and an entire army of Awakened behind Nightwalker, after all, and by the time his essence ran out, they would be here.

Rain was going to open the pathway soon — if Cassie was not near the arch when that happened, all hope would be lost.

So, then...

'Think.'

If she could neither win nor retreat... then she had to make Nightwalker give up on the battle.

Cassie's tunic had turned entirely red from the blood she had lost.

She inhaled deeply and then spoke in a strained, hoarse voice:

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