The battle did not begin with a war cry; it began with three hundred stone blades whistling through the air at once. Sunny dove behind an altar of obsidian as halberds reduced the marble behind him to fine dust.

“Shadow!” Sunny roared. “Stop watching and earn your keep!”

The detached shadow beneath his feet didn't just ripple this time—it erupted. Expanding into a tidal wave of pitch-black tendrils, it swept through the frontline of statues, flooding their joints with pure darkness and locking their granite limbs in place.

Taking advantage of the momentary paralysis, Sunny sprinted up the marble tiers, leaping over shattered stone and petrified armor. The Ashen King rose, raising a colossal greatsword wreathed in frostfire.

Sunny didn't aim for the king's armor. Instead, he lunged for the crown resting upon its brow. His fingers caught the cold obsidian horn. With a primal scream fueled by every indignity he had suffered in the slums of Sector 4, Sunny channeled his shadow core into the crown. Black lightning fractured the stone, shattering the relic into a shower of glimmering stardust.

The statues collapsed into harmless rubble. The Ashen King’s flame flickered and died, whispering with its final breath: “The throne... belongs to the shadow.”