Shadow Slave novel Chapter 2906

At the same time, far away, cold winds were assaulting the world, and a murderous blizzard was raging across a desolate wasteland.

Far in the distance, the outskirts of a tall mountain chain were barely visible, rising above the horizon like a thin black line. They were shrouded in clouds of ash that rose from the depths of ancient volcanoes, their boundless heat keeping the blizzard at bay.

There were the lands west of Ravenheart, where lethal cold reigned.

On the very edge of the frigid wasteland, a chain of outposts had been built from ice, guarding the lands of the humans from the beings that dwelled in the snow. They had been home to transient garrisons of Awakened warriors and sheltered the scouts who would dive into the blizzards from time to time... but now, the ice strongholds stood empty and forlorn, dead silence shrouding their battlements.

Everyone had answered the call of war and followed their golden-eyed Sovereign east, abandoning the defensive line of outposts that used to protect the Citadel Cities from harm. Now, only snow and wind moved inside the abandoned fortresses...

And the creatures that they had been supposed to stop moved between them, traveling toward where human souls emanated a maddening scent.

A swarm of such creatures had just passed through a desolate army camp, bringing the blizzard with them. The snow flowed with the swift wind, and the abominations moved under its veil.

None of them made it in sight of a human settlement, though.

Instead, they died unseen and unnoticed, the blizzard hiding their corpses while the winds drowned out their death cries.

Soon enough, a scattering of ghastly corpses was being slowly buried by the snow. Eerily enough, the corpses bore no wounds, no visible signs of having been harmed by claw or by a weapon.

It was as if their lives had simply ceased, extinguished by the hand of a merciless deity.

But no one seemed to be around...

Unless one looked really closely.

The blizzard raged, and in the swirling drifts of snow, a ghostly figure could sometimes be seen, walking east with measured steps. Its contour was drawn not by the snow, but by its absence — apart from that negative presence, nothing betrayed its existence. Not breath, not warmth, not heartbeat, and not the sounds of her steps.

The ghostly figure belonged to a woman with blue eyes who carried a black scythe in her hands.

Stopping for a short moment, Jet assumed her human form and inhaled deeply, enjoying the vicious bite of the murderous cold.

Her hair was in disarray, and her armor was tattered. Snow and ice clung to her like a frigid cloak, and her porcelain skin was as white as the snow that surrounded her. There was no color to her bloodless face — except for her eyes, which burned like two piercing, ferocious blue flames in the pale inferno.

Jet looked like a corpse... or perhaps like death itself. However, she was undoubtedly alive — as far as that word could be applied to her, at least.

Having entered the frozen wastelands from the Forgotten Shore, she dove into the blizzard in order to hunt down snow wraiths and survive. The world was enveloped in snow, and since the sky was hidden from sight, she quickly lost track of time. Day and night lost all meaning, and after a while, time lost all meaning as well. All Jet could use to differentiate the past from the present was the number of fierce battles she had fought and the number of vicious Nightmare Creatures she killed.

But even then, she eventually lost count. The world narrowed to the extent she could see in the blizzard, and the scope of her life narrowed to only two things — hunting down Nightmare Creatures and being hunted by Nightmare Creatures in turn. There were moments that broke the murderous monotony, of course. Sometimes, the blizzard would die down all of a sudden, and Jet would see the flawlessly white world stretch endlessly in all directions. Sometimes, the ground beneath her would crack, and she would realize that she was walking across a frozen ocean. Harrowing things dwelled beneath the titanic layer of ice, and she would flee from the deep cracks, terrified to sense the giant beings watching her from below.

There were only two constants in that stark and harrowing white void. One was the suffocating, deadly cold. The other... was the Hollow Mountains.

The Hollow Mountains were to her left, shrouded in white mist. At times, the mist and the blizzard were almost indistinguishable from each other, but in reality, there was little in common between the two. The snow was murderous... but the mist far more dangerous. So, Jet avoided drawing too close to the Hollow Mountains as she traveled west.

Jet did not have a lot to do, except for killing and surviving, so she set a goal for herself. She wanted to find where the Hollow Mountains ended.

...And now, gods knew how many weeks or months later, she had arrived at the outer edges of the human territories from the west. She had discovered the termination point of the mountain chain that had seemed endless, crossed to the other side, and made her way back to human civilization.

"I can't believe I actually made it."

Jet had somehow managed to achieve her goal.

So, now...

She looked east, where a different mountain chain rested under an ashen sky.

Where Ravenheart was.

Releasing her corporeal form, Jet continued moving east.

"I've been gone long enough. Now, it's time to see what they did to the world in my absence..."

Somewhere else, in a dark cell, Effie opened her eyes. They were slow to focus, but eventually, she could see again... it was just that what she saw was the same stone ceiling as before.

For however long she had been in the dungeons of the Castle.

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