Shadow of Death (SOD)

Chapter 22

"No, no, no, no...." Asher repeated in confusion as he tapped the phone a few times.

As if doing so would somehow fix the damaged phone.

The device had been smashed so badly that it looked as though it had fallen from a great height before being crushed beneath a heavy boulder.

Nothing he did could revive the broken device.

Asher stared at the phone in shock.

"But how? How did thi—"

His words trailed off as he recalled being tossed around by Nuel several times.

If even his body could be broken under that kind of force, what was stopping a flimsy phone from suffering the same fate?

Staring at the phone, his brows knitted together.

"No, wait. This couldn’t have happened from just that, though."

He turned the phone over several times, staring at it as if doing so would somehow reveal exactly what had happened to it.

"This looks like it was done purposely. But who could have done so?"

His mind instantly flashed back to the mysterious woman who had saved him.

She was the last person near him, and it seemed like she knew almost everything about him and his family.

So something as little as knowing that he had been recording couldn’t have been hidden from her.

’But how? And most importantly, why?’

He recalled being informed about the Nightmare and the whole situation surrounding the city.

’If she could tell me about all these things, then why would she stop me from getting evidence? That doesn’t make sense.’

He sighed and fell onto the bed with a deep frown, staring angrily at the phone.

With a loud hiss, he tossed the damaged device away.

It bounced once before sliding across the floor, eventually colliding with the wall and splitting into two.

With a saddened sigh, he cradled his head in his hands as he tried piecing together everything he had learned so far.

"So we are basically trapped in this city, huh? And it is being overrun by Shadow beings? The stronger they are, they could potentially inhabit a body, get used to it, and grow stronger?"

He thought for a few seconds, trying to recall as much information as he could from the previous night.

".... A month after settling into this city, one has to go into a Nightmare? What sort of Nightmare is this? What even is it? Failure to complete the Nightmare would result in the loss of one’s soul and body while your Shadow roams free?"

He frowned.

"What is even the essence of letting Shadows roam free if they essentially behave like souls?"

He lifted his head as a gnawing headache began to form.

"From what happened in school yesterday, I finally realised why information hasn’t spread outside of Vespers. All we knew about this city was that it was good and thriving.

Nobody told us about this whole mess of a thing."

His teeth clenched tightly as he began grinding them back and forth.

’My family. How do I save them? If escape is impossible, how will they survive the Nightmare if the survival rate is so low? This is a mess.’

His head ached, but most especially, his heart ached at the thought that his family was essentially only a few weeks away from possible death.

Yes. If the strangely powerful woman could say that death was inevitable, then that meant his family would die.

He would have to watch his family die one by one, powerless to do anything or stop it.

Then what happened next?

Would their Shadows begin wandering aimlessly like lost souls?

They wouldn’t even be able to rest in peace.

Clutching the sides of his bedsheet, Asher’s teeth grated loudly.

His eyes grew moist as a pang of pain crept into his heart.

"No. I refuse to believe that there’s no escape or survival. There must be a way to save them. Yeah."

His eyes shone as a thought crossed his mind, causing his grip on the bedsheets to loosen.

"... Of course. It can’t be that everybody dies on their first day, yeah? If so, nobody will remain in this city anymore.

Which means there’s a condition. A clause I can exploit."

He thought for a few seconds before coming to a realization.

"Oh. That’s why they are all afraid of sleep? No matter how much exhaustion they feel, they refuse to sleep because they don’t want to experience the Nightmares again. But how bad can a Nightmare be?"

At that question, his body involuntarily shuddered.

If an entire city could be afraid of sleeping, it meant the Nightmare had to be so deadly that they preferred being sleep deprived and possibly dying from it rather than sleeping.

"The pills..." The words slithered out of his throat as he facepalmed himself.

"I need... I need to get a stock of those pills before it hits. We have less than three weeks before the distorted visions she spoke of, then comes the Nightmare."

He quickly stood up from his bed and looked at the wall clock in his room.

Rubbing his face, he began thinking of a way he would be able to convince his family not to sleep when the time came.

How was he supposed to save everyone?

"Wait... who was that woman? And how did she finish Nuel off so quickly?"

His mind flashed back to all the light novels he had read back then.

Superpowered beings always descended during apocalypses.

And this situation surely looked like an apocalypse to him.

If care wasn’t taken, it could spread far and wide.

Well, he wasn’t about to become a superhero and save the world.

His immediate concern was his family and their well being.

With that thought in mind, he hopped over to his laptop, which was placed on the reading table.

Opening it and turning it on, he began waiting for it to boot.

While waiting, his eyes naturally drifted toward his window, allowing him to look outside.

The moment he did, he saw the blinds moving around their neighbour’s house.

His brows furrowed as he slowly lowered his laptop.

"Could that be a Shadow too? The amount of stalking is too much to be normal."

Just then, a dangerous thought began forming in his mind the longer he sat.

’Let’s go find out.’

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