LOCATION: The Hall of the Solar Throne, Solarium Aetheon
The chamber was a masterpiece of oppression masquerading as divinity.
Gilded pillars stretched toward a vaulted ceiling, their surfaces etched with hymns to gods who had never bothered to listen. Guards clad in silver stood at rigid attention, their lances gleaming under the floating radiance of the Solar Crown—a circlet of searing light that hovered above the throne like a mockery of a halo.
And there, motionless as a statue carved from ice, sat Elysia.
Supreme Commander of the Dawn Guard.
The woman who had turned faith into a weapon.
Then—
A whistle.
Low, mocking, slicing through the silence like a knife through silk.
"What's wrong? Forget to hire musicians for this mausoleum?"
Boots struck the marble floor with deliberate disrespect, scuffing polished stone. The guards tensed, their lances dipping toward the intruder—a figure shrouded in a tattered black cloak, his face hidden beneath a hood.
He didn't stop. Didn't even slow.
"Lower those sticks, boys. If I'd come to kill anyone…" A pause. A smile in his voice. "You'd already be choking on your own blood."
Recognition flickered in the eyes of the older guards. Their grips tightened.
The man reached the center of the hall and finally looked up, revealing eyes sunk deep into scars that time had refused to heal.
Tyran Zerel.
The man who had spat in the face of gods.
"Well, well." His voice was a rasp, amused. "The statue still breathes."
Elysia's fingers twitched, the only sign she'd heard him.
"Tyran Zerel," she said, her voice colder than the void between stars. "The one who refused to kneel."
"Nah." He chuckled, rolling his shoulders. "Just the one who realized praying's useless when the thing you're begging to is either deaf… or doesn't exist."
Silence.
"You came to provoke me," Elysia said. "Or are you here for redemption?"
Tyran barked a laugh. "Redemption? From what, Ely? From telling the truth? From refusing to kiss the feet of gods who feast on starving peasants? From not clapping when you call burning slums 'holy purges'?"
He paced, his boots echoing as he studied the stained-glass windows—their scenes of divine glory now warped by cracks and age.
"I came because something's moving down there," he said softly. "Not beasts. Not mist. Something… else. Like the abyss is waking up."
A flicker. Almost imperceptible. But Tyran saw it—the way Elysia's mask slipped for half a breath.
"And your precious Light?" He grinned. "It's not stopping it. Just pissing it off."
"The Empire fears no traitor," Elysia said, her voice flat.
"You don't look at me because I'm dangerous, Ely." Tyran met her gaze, unblinking. "You look at me because I'm not afraid. And that's the one thing your kind can't stomach—people with nothing left to lose."
He turned, his cloak swirling as he walked toward the doors.
"Oh, and a tip?" He tossed the words over his shoulder like scraps to a dog. "If what's down there ever wakes up fully… don't pray. Don't speak. Don't lie."
"Just run."
"And if you can? Run barefoot. Let the ground you helped rot remind you how much it hurts."
The doors slammed shut behind him.
Meanwhile, somewhere in stratum 1 of the abyss:
Ysmera's knuckles were white around the railing of the ascension platform.
The gears groaned as the lift carried her upward, each clank of chains a hammer strike against her nerves.
Elysia was here.
Nothing good ever followed that woman.
"Damn it," Ysmera muttered, her breath fogging the cold metal.
Above her, the jagged maw of High City loomed—a pit of politics and poison.
And somewhere in its heart, the Supreme Commander waited.
***
Chapter 8 (Part 2): The Weight of the ThroneThe Hall of the High Council
The chamber was a monument to power—cold, immaculate, and utterly silent.
Black marble pillars stretched toward a vaulted ceiling, their surfaces etched with golden hymns that no one living remembered the words to. Stained glass windows cast fractured light across the floor, their colors dimmed by the oppressive glow of the Solar Crown hovering above Elysia's throne.
She sat perfectly still, her armor drinking the light rather than reflecting it.
Around her, the most powerful figures in the empire stood at attention:
Commanders of the Dawn Guard, their silver pauldrons marked with the scars of forgotten battles.
Crimson Circle Captains, their faces hidden behind masks of polished bone.
Alchemists of the Blood Ministry, their robes stitched with veins of liquid mercury.
Lantern Bearers, their eyes hollow from decades of staring into the abyss.
Inquisitors of the Shadow, their presence like a knife pressed to the spine of the room.
All waiting. All watching.
The doors groaned open, and Ysmera entered.
Her ceremonial cloak—a relic of her rank—dragged behind her, its weight suddenly unbearable. She walked with measured steps, but the slight tremor in her fingers betrayed her.
The Absolute Council hadn't been convened in decades.
And never by Elysia herself.
She took her seat without a word, her gaze lifting only briefly to the throne.
Then—Ashur and Naira strode in from the side chambers, their armor still dusted with the abyss's clinging mist. The doors sealed behind them with a hiss of sanctified steam.
Elysia's voice cut through the silence like a scalpel.
"Seal the chamber. No one enters. No one listens."
A pause.
"And if anyone records a single word without my permission… their flesh will feed the Silence Windows."
The locks engaged with a final, hollow thud. The light above dimmed.
A veteran commander—braver than the rest—cleared his throat.
"Why… have we been summoned, my lady?"
Elysia stood.
Her cloak pooled around her like spilled milk as she descended the steps of the throne.
"Tyran Zerel has returned."
The name landed like a corpse hitting marble.
"The deserter," she continued, her voice devoid of inflection. "The unconsecrated immortal. The man who survived betrayal… and still walks."
"He came to me. Not with a threat. A warning."
"He says the abyss is changing. That this time, it isn't hungry…"
"It's awake."
A nervous murmur rippled through the room. Ashur's arms folded. Naira's jaw tightened.
Then—a laugh.
A young commander, his polished pauldrons gleaming with the unearned luster of nepotism, rose from his seat.
"With all due respect," he drawled, "are we really taking orders based on rumors? From a traitor who should've been dead decades ago?"
He smirked, glancing at his peers for support.
"And you, Supreme Commander—no offense—but aren't you just a ceremonial figure at this point? A military myth to scare recruits?"
The silence that followed was thicker than blood.
Ysmera's fingers dug into the table.
Idiot.
You just signed your death warrant.
Naira whispered under her breath:
"...he's dead."
Elysia didn't react. Didn't even look at him.
She simply raised her right hand—
—and lowered it, palm down, like a leaf settling onto water.
Annihilation.
A thread of pure, silent light unspooled from the base of the throne, racing across the floor to the young commander's feet.
For a heartbeat, nothing.
Then—implosion.
His body collapsed inward, consumed from the chest out by a white, soundless fire. No scream. No blood. Just ash, drifting lazily to the floor.
Elysia observed the remnants for a moment, then spoke as if nothing had happened.
"We are not here to debate."
"We are here because the world tilts."
"And when that happens… those who do not brace themselves, fall."
Her gaze swept the room.
"Ashur. Naira. Deploy squads to every living entrance of the fifth stratum. Reports every cycle. Absolute silence regarding Zerel's return."
A beat.
"And if he appears again…"
"Kill him."
She stands up.
Everyone bows. Some, out of habit.
Others, for the first time... out of fear.
The Council has ended.
***
Somewhere beyond light. Beyond time.
A place where the air was not air, but a slow, suffocating tide—thick with the scent of wet stone and old blood.
Pale reflections drifted like drowned stars: blue-violet, phosphorescent, clinging to the darkness like mold to a corpse.
And on the ground, half-buried in the abyssal silt—
A skull.
It was human. Or something close to it. The jawbone had cracked long ago, the teeth worn smooth by centuries of whispering against the rock.
Then—
A hand emerged from the fog.
Bone-thin, its skin stretched taut over knuckles too large, fingers too long. It was a hand that had never known sunlight, yet still pulsed with a terrible, living warmth.
It lifted the skull.
And behind it, the darkness shifted.
A silhouette unfolded—taller than the caverns, taller than the abyss itself.
It had no face.
No voice.
But in the way its shadow bent the light (what little there was), in the way the very air shivered around it…
It remembered.
Once, it had been worshiped.
Once, it had been god.
And now, cradling the skull like a lost child, it woke.