Paper Shadow Prisoner

Among Ionia’s tranquil villages and verdant forests, the paper-shadow artist Kaden is renowned for the magical ink that flows from his fingertips and the creations he conjures from light and shadow. The stories he weaves with paper shadows are like dreams, but they unexpectedly attract the most dangerous audience of all: the black mage Imoris, obsessed with the eternal beauty of puppets. Kaden is dragged by force to a gloomy old castle and made a prisoner. Imoris forces him to use a wicked magical ink to tear apart the fragments of innocent people’s souls and imprison them within the paper shadows, creating powerful, twisted “living puppets.” Enslaved and desperate, Kaden is forced to carry out dark rituals, watching the monsters he created with his own hands prey on the living. Yet the artist’s soul never truly submits. Deep within the core of every puppet he is forced to complete, he secretly carves a hidden rune of resistance. Hatred and skill are forged together in despair. When Imoris is lost in admiration of his latest “masterpiece,” Kaden finally gets his chance: controlling his most perfect puppet, he tears the tyrannical puppet master to shreds. The castle crumbles into ruins amid a deafening roar. Kaden steps out, his body stained with ink steeped in sin. The sunlight of Ionia falls harshly upon him. His path ahead is uncertain, and the mark in his soul, along with the defiant whisper from the puppet’s core, follows him like a shadow.