Chained Isles

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>  | *In the vast empty darkness, myriads of distant stars were shimmering with ethereal light. The vista of the night sky was boundless and stark, full of promise and mystery. Above it was another sky, which was blue and bright, full of sunlight and gentle winds. White clouds flowed across it, telling enchanting stories with their movement and shapes. Between the bright sky and the dark sky, an island floated in the air. It was surrounded by freely levitating pieces of rock and ancient masonry, its surface awash in the soft radiance of the sun, and its underbelly veiled by impenetrable darkness. Several gargantuan chains stretched away from the island, cracking thunderously as it slowly rose and fell.* | ”
> |  ― Introduction to Chained Isles,Chapter 379 Chained Isles
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## Chained Isles

* Sky Above
* Sky Below

## First Appearance

### Novel

Chapter 378 A New Beginning *(Mentioned)*
Chapter 379 Chained Isles

Chained Isles bordered the Hollow Mountains, at the very north of the territories claimed by Clan Valor. It was mostly unexplored, and the Awakened population was not very large. There were not a lot of Masters and Saints in this place, but had an abundance of Nightmare Creatures of all kinds, from Dormant to Fallen, and terrifying Corrupted abominations.

## Characteristics

* The whole region consisted of numerous islands that somehow floated in the air, connected to each other by *gargantuan iron chains*.
* Every island in this region went through *cycles of ascending and descending*. As the island rose up, the pressure on the surface will grow tremendously, to the point where it was impossible to move or breathe. This is what they call "Crushing" and the reason every human on the Chained Isles pays attention to the sound of rattling chains.
* When the island ascends, the less weight was on the human body during the *Crushing*, the easier it was to endure, and the more chances of survival there were.
* Each island had its own menagerie of horrors, and the level of threat differed from one to another. Most were deadlier than an average Awakened was supposed to be able to handle, not only from the Nightmare Creatures but also because the sky is capable of killing a person.
* The underside of the islands is more dangerous than their surface. The creatures that dwell there are the true horrors of this place. Some of them stay put, and some move through the darkness as they hunt and migrate between islands. So flying under the islands is lethal in its own way.
* The southern part of the Chained Isles was relatively safer than the northern part. Its border regions had been tamed by humans more than a decade ago, while to the north there was nothing except for the dreadful Hollow Mountains.

## Nightmare Creatures

* Nightmare Creatures constantly fought each other. Winged ones were often caught by the inhabitants of the dark side, torn to pieces, and devoured.
* The Nightmare Creatures in this region tend to migrate and travel between islands to escape the *Crushing* but the really terrifying ones tend to stay put.

See Also: Creatures from Chained Isles

## Skies

There are two skies on Chained Isles, *Sky Above* and *Sky Below*. At night, the border between the two was almost invisible. The empty void beneath the Isles had stars of its own, so it seemed like the reflection of the real sky during these hours. The only difference between them was that the Sky Below lacked both the moon and the ethereal silhouette of a graceful *white tower* floating through the clouds.

* Sky Above
* Sky Below

### Sky Above

High above the floating island, there was the usual sky with the sun, the moon, and beautiful stars that shined brightly at night. Flying above the Chained Isles was rather deadly. The higher one went, the more crushing the weight would become until they would either fall down, or their body would simply implode.

### Sky Below

There was another sky below the strange land, the Sky Below. It is generally safe due to the fact there is nothing there but that is only true for its depths.

The Sky Below was always dark, and the ethereal lights burning at an unimaginable distance in its vast expanse only looked like the stars. The stars in the sky below were in fact remnant conflagrations of the *divine flame*. Descending below can cause a person's mind to break apart. Spending days in endless silence of this dark abyss, the human mind simply can't withstand it, that's how terrible nothingness was.

The Sky Below is vast and deadly. However, there is actually a path through the divine flame, an empty rift in the tapestry of stars where none of it remains. It was somewhere near the *Tear*.

#### The Lore

A long time ago, Sky Below was a beautiful and prosperous land. But then, its prideful ruler provoked the wrath of the *Lord of Light*. The Lord, also known as Sun God, brought down his heavenly flame upon the lands, shattering the earth and burying an unquenchable fire beneath it. Over the ages, that fire devoured everything — the earth, the land, even reality itself. All that is left is this empty abyss, and the remnant fragments of the divine flame still burning deep below.

## Gateways and Citadels

This region of the Dream Realm had several Gateways. Two were found, conquered, and turned into Citadels by humans.

* Sanctuary of Noctis
* Night Temple

### Sanctuary of Noctis

Main article: Sanctuary of Noctis
This citadel was ruled by the White Feather clan, which was one of the vassal clans to the great clan Valor. Most Awakened belonged here.

### Night Temple

Main article: Night Temple
This citadel was rather mysterious. It was situated at the very edge of the region, near the dreaded Hollow Mountains. It belonged to Valor itself and only those in direct service to the great clan were anchored at its Gateway. There was no information about what went on here, and how powerful were the Awakened stationed at this citadel.

While the Sanctuary of Noctis was closer to the southern border of the region, Night Temple was situated far to the north, almost on the outskirts of the misty Death Zone.
## Islands

Each island was different from another. Some were desolate and bleak, some covered by grass and vegetation. One was full of beautiful white flowers, while another hid a clear, tranquil lake. A few were covered by ash and flames, while several were covered by the ruins that some ancient civilization had left behind. If there was one thing that united all of them, it was that each was dangerous in its own way.

### Desolate Islands

* It is the home to swarms of giant monstrous gluttonous ants. They hid their maws beneath the grass waiting for their prey to step into the trap.
* The vegetation was predatory and deadly if a person gets too close.
* The beautiful white flowers could put a person to sleep from which they would never wake up.

* The tranquil lake was home to a creature so terrifying that one did not even dare to approach its clear waters.

Sky Tide had been known to avoid this place and also the place where Cassie had been bestowed the Ruby Knife by the creature of the lake in the Second Nightmare. The creature was long gone when Cassie visited the place outside of Nightmare.

* Corrupted Monster Island
* Forest of Twisted Trees
* Island of Jagged Rocks
* Reckoning Island
* Shipwreck Island
* Twisted Rock Island

#### Corrupted Monster Island

**Status:** Exists

One of the two isles between Forest of twisted trees and Sanctuary of Noctis which was home to a dreadful and utterly terrifying Corrupted Monster.

#### Forest of Twisted Trees

**Status:** Exists

* Island where the dreadful wolf was killed.
* The chains on this island are on the shorter side so it won't ascend too high.
* There is an ancient forest covering its surface.

#### Island of Jagged Rocks

**Status:** Exists

* The isle was covered by jagged rocks, with one ancient ruin standing in its center.
* From this island, one only needed to cross two more isles to reach the Sanctuary of Noctis.
* The ruin might have been beautiful once, but now, it was warped and misshapen, its walls full of cracks and on the verge of collapsing. No one knows what purpose it had once served, and how it was destroyed, but based on the clues, it can be concluded that many months ago a terrible battle must have taken place inside the ruin once. In the central hall of the shattered building, where the stones were damaged and looked like melted wax, the walls had collapsed outward, which indicates that whatever force had devastated the structure had come from within.
* There were two types of Nightmare Creatures inhabiting the island of jagged rocks:

* Creature resembled stone gargoyles and were of the Awakened Rank. They had lived near the edges of the island and never went near the ruin itself because there were much more powerful creatures dwelling inside the ancient building.
* Creature that looked like beautiful specters and was of the Fallen Rank. Beneath their eerie beauty, though, hid an ocean of madness, evil, and bloodlust. The wraiths only appeared at night.

See also: Temple of the Chalice

#### Reckoning Island

**Status:** Exists

* This island must be traversed in order to reach *Shipwreck Island*.
* According to the inhabitants of the Sanctuary, several cohorts lost members here, while others had not come back at all. Also, the creature that inhabited the island was especially twisted and deadly and was capable of messing with a person's sight. In reality, this creature was able to turn into a copy of any enemy while remaining as powerful as a Fallen Devil.
* It seemed like a beautiful and tranquil place. There was grass covering the ground, with a forest of tall evergreen trees visible in the distance. One could see a rocky hill far away, with a waterfall rushing from a weathered cliff. Just like everywhere on the Chained Isles, it was unclear where the water came from and where it went. It was very picturesque. However, there was no sound other than the rustle of the wind, no movement other than the slow swaying of the trees. Not a single Nightmare Creature could be seen wandering the expanse of the peaceful island.

#### Shipwreck Island

**Status:** Exists

* It was situated almost at the center of the Chained Isles, on the very edge of the Tear, and far removed from both human Citadels.
* The downside of this island was shrouded in eternal shadow and something vast and terrifying was moving in it.
* A long time ago, one of the chains connected to Shipwreck Island had broken and now hung down. A giant iron corpse swayed slowly in the wind entangled in it.
* The chain leading to the Shipwreck Island was about four kilometers long.
* Unlike how it was with the other islands in Chained Isles, the chain didn't simply disappear into the soil but instead led to a tall stone structure. Two massive pillars rose high into the sky, overgrown by vines and moss. The pillars reached for the sky, built for some unknown purpose. There were weathered steps cut into each of the pillars, leading all the way to the top.
* At the very heart of this desolate island, a large wooden ship lay broken on the ground.
* Twisted Rock Island already crumbled into the Sky Below and now the Shipwreck Island bordered the Tear.

#### Twisted Rock Island

**Status:** Destroyed

* Twisted Rock was the last piece of land before the empty expanse of the Tear. It only had one iron tether connecting it to the rest of the Chained Isles. It was a dreadful and miserable place.
* The island was rather small, and all of its surfaces were nothing but an uneven expanse of dark stone. The stone, however, looked really strange. It was as if once, a long time ago, it had been melted by unimaginable heat and then abruptly solidified again, creating strange shapes and swirls. Here and there, blackened bones protruded from the molten stone, telling the tale of countless humans and beasts who had drowned in that scorching inferno. The sight of them was eerie and disturbing, like something torn from actual hell.
* Its chain is the only failing chain on the Chained Isles — the one connecting Shipwreck Island to the Twisted Rock.
* If this island falls, its demise will echo through the entire region. Many islands will shift, causing changes to the severity of the Crushing on others. The migration patterns of the Nightmare Creatures will be affected too.

### Safer Islands

* The islands that were close to the Sanctuary of Noctis are usually empty of any Nightmare Creatures.
* Due to their proximity to the Sanctuary of Noctis, these islands were well explored, and anything dangerous enough to pose threat to the Citadel had long been destroyed by Saint Tyris herself.

* Altar Island
* Desecrated Grove
* Iron Hand Island
* Northern Island
* Unnamed Island
* Unnamed Island

#### Altar Island

**Status:** Exists

* This is where the gateway of the Sanctuary of Noctis is located.
* There is a deep pool of clean water surrounding this small piece of land on which the altar and the ancient tree stand.

#### Iron Hand Island

**Status:** Exists

* It was a strange large island covered in soft grass, with ancient stone columns protruding from the ground. Most of them had long toppled and been shattered to pieces by some unknown disaster. The ground itself was full of depressions and generally uneven as if it had served as a battlefield for giants once.
* The main feature of the island was situated at its center and appeared to be a *giant*, *rusty metal hand*. Hence, the isle was called *Iron Hand Island*.
* This island was well known to the Awakened anchored in the Sanctuary because very few Nightmare Creatures ever came here, and thus, many humans used it to rest during their journeys.
#### Northern island=

**Status:** Exists
The Northern island was beautiful, silent, and strangely peaceful. It was not too large, about two kilometers in diameter and its surface was one vast level plain, covered entirely by a beautiful field of violent flowers as if warped in a silken mantle. Its colossal chain was anchored to the Hollow Mountains obscured by swirling mist on both sides of it. The only landmark on the island is the ruins of the ancient fortress that perched precariously on its northern edge. It was very similar to the crumbled stronghold located at the southern edge of a large island to the south of Chained Isles.

#### Unnamed Island, south of Chained Isles

**Status:** Exists
An especially large island, covered with emerald grass and moss-covered ruins. This island was a bit special because at the southern edge of this large island, far away and below, the scattering of floating isles was no more. Instead, solid ground stretched as far as the eye could see, covered by a patchwork of forests, meadows, marshes, rolling hills, and glistening ribbons of rushing rivers. A dark, bottomless abyss stretched between the edge of the island and the rest of the Dream Realm, and those rivers fell into it, creating grandiose waterfalls.

Near the edge of the island, a ruined fortress rose from the ground, and from its gates, a colossal iron chain — many times thicker than the giant chains connecting the isles together — extended into the abyss, connecting to the soil on the other side of the dark chasm. This was one of the anchors of the Chained Isles, and the road by which Awakened traveled here from the lands to the south, which belonged to the Great Clan Valor.

#### Unnamed Island, east of Sanctuary of Noctis

**Status:** Exists

* An island in the eastern reaches of the Chained Isles, not too far from the Sanctuary of Noctis, covered by a vast and beautiful field of white flowers.
* Everyone, even the most competent cohorts of Awakened and those from the White Feather clan, avoided this island like a plague. The ground there was littered with bones of all kinds, hidden beneath the delicate white petals. As soon as a person stepped on the surface of the island, they would feel an irresistible desire to stop, rest, and fall asleep.

## Trivia

* The Nightmare Creatures were especially ferocious, and the islands themselves were far more bizarre and dangerous than those closer to the edges of this region.
* If one could somehow survive the *Crushing* and look upon the Chained Isles from above, they would see that there was a vast empty space at the very heart of this shattered land. Some people assumed that this was where the Ivory Tower had once been chained before all seven of its anchors were broken. After that, the islands bordering the *Tear* slowly fell into the Sky Below one after another, making it grow wider and wider.
* The inhabitants of the *Dark Side* in this region were all powerful and unsightly. but the thing nestling below the Shipwreck Island was especially harrowing.
* There is a new Saint that had replaced Sky Tide as the person in charge of Chained Isles.

## Terminologies

### Chains

There are only seven chains that were holding the Chained Isles from falling into the Sky Below. The numerous heavenly chains connecting all the islands were just the roots of those seven chains. Each of them had to be broken for the Ivory Tower to become untethered. In the present, the islands are linked by the fragments of the original seven chains, many of them severed from each other. That is why they are slowly crumbling, one after another.

### Crushing

The Crushing is deadly enough to kill a Saint but it's situational depending on someone's sense of how high or low the island they are standing on. When it is at its lowest point, it will be able to rise several hundred meters into the air before feeling any pressure. The exact margin depends on how long the chains of the island are. However, when it is ascending or descending, one should better either stay on the ground or not fly more than a dozen meters up. Before it reached its peak, anyone should have escaped to another island. But failing to do so in time, they should just lay on the ground and pray. If the chains are short enough, they will survive.

### Great Chains

Chains that connected all of the Chained Isles to the rest of the Dream Realm — to the Sanctuary of Noctis.

### Tear

There is a hole at the heart of the Chained Isles that was slowly expanding, and one day, thousands of years from now, it was probably going to devour the whole region. They called this hole "*Tear*".

The Tear was situated in the center of the Chained Isles and was both vast and absolutely empty. Some people believed that the Ivory Tower had once stood in its middle, and was the first island to break free of its chains. Over thousands of years, islands that had bordered it were slowly destroyed one after another, causing the Tear to grow.

## See Also

* Dark Seed
* Second Nightmare (Event)

## References

1. ↑ Chapter 378 A New Beginning
2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 Chapter 380 Above and Below
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 Chapter 381 Roan of White Feather
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Chapter 554 Coming Clean
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Chapter 468 Desecrated Grove
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Chapter 385 Iron Hand Island
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Chapter 403 Sky Tide
8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Chapter 409 Treasure Hunt
9. ↑ Chapter 386 Sanctuary of Noctis
10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Chapter 436 Nothing to Worry About
11. ↑ Chapter 434 Absolutely Nothing
12. ↑ Chapter 439 Do or Die
13. ↑ 13.00 13.01 13.02 13.03 13.04 13.05 13.06 13.07 13.08 13.09 13.10 Chapter 384 Traversing the Islands
14. ↑ Chapter 1162 Old Haunts
15. ↑ Chapter 379 Chained Isles
16. ↑ Chapter 382 The Crushing
17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Chapter 525 Vengeful Ghost
18. ↑ Chapter 411 Reflection
19. ↑ Chapter 412 Perfect Adversary
20. ↑ Chapter 410 Reckoning
21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 21.2 21.3 Chapter 404 Soft Life
22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 22.2 Chapter 416 Hanged Man
23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 23.2 Chapter 417 Shipwreck
24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 Chapter 430 Tapestry of Fate
25. ↑ Chapter 516 Legacy of Ruin
26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 Chapter 425 Twisted Rock
27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 Chapter 398 Master of his Trade
28. ↑ Chapter 562 Into the Night
29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 Chapter 552 September
30. ↑ 30.0 30.1 Chapter 633 Dead Fortress
31. ↑ Chapter 841 Prudent Decision
32. ↑ Chapter 431 Fall From Grace