Shadow Slave: Shadow Blade

Sunless was eight years old when Anvil of Valor found him in the outskirts, half-starved and trailing a armored car through three blocks of slum without being detected. The patriarch of Clan Valor saw what he always saw when he looked at people: raw material. Taken through the Gateway into the Dream Realm and raised behind the walls of Bastion, Sunny grew up learning anatomy before arithmetic and kill angles before table manners. Anvil forged him into something quiet and precise, a weapon that could be aimed at a single target and trusted to strike without hesitation. The target was Nephis, daughter of the Immortal Flame. Sent to the Awakened Academy under the guise of an outskirts orphan, Sunny had one mission: ensure Changing Star never returned from the Dream Realm alive. But the Nightmare Spell had a sense of humor, and the Forgotten Shore didn't care about anyone's plans. Survival required cooperation, and cooperation required trust, and somewhere between the labyrinth of crimson coral and the dark sea that swallowed the world each night, the weapon began to wonder whether the hand that forged him had the right to choose where he fell.