The crowns burned away into nothingness. What once had been eternal mantles of dominion—halo, decree, voice—was now reduced to cinders scattering into a fire not their own. The Thrones faltered, their figures hollowed, no longer pillars of creation but husks stripped of their command.
The stair stretched onward, unbroken, pulsing with Leon's heartbeat. Every step no longer obeyed the Thrones, nor did it bow to their weight. It was his stair now, a path of resonance forged by flame, echo, and law rewritten.
The abyss below writhed like a severed vein, spilling black fire that tried to climb, to reclaim, to drown. But each rise was devoured by his pulse, inverted and returned until the abyss itself began to collapse inward. Its endless hunger was no longer infinite. It was finite—bound, chained, and silenced.