Aden came to with a gasp, his body jerking as if pulled from drowning depths. His hands scrambled against warm, wet stone—no, not stone. Bone.
The ground beneath him was a mosaic of fused skulls, their hollow eye sockets weeping thick, dark blood that pooled between his fingers.
He tried to push himself up, but his arms trembled violently. His breath came in ragged, wet heaves, his ribs screaming with every expansion of his lungs.
"Wh—what is this?" he choked out, his voice raw.
Above him, the throne loomed—a grotesque monument of countless jaws locked in eternal screams, stretching upward into a swirling crimson sky. And upon it, the figure.
It sat motionless, a silhouette of glowing ember-red, featureless save for the faintest impression of a face—just hollows where eyes should be, a slit where a mouth might be.
It pulsed like a dying star, casting no shadow, yet somehow darkening the air around it.
Aden swallowed hard, his throat burning. "Who... what are you?"
The figure tilted its head. The movement was wrong—too smooth, too liquid.
"Ohhh..." Its voice was the sound of glass dragged over stone. "Still alive? How... disappointing."
Aden snarled, forcing himself onto his knees. "What did you do to me? Where—where is Egmund?"
A chuckle, low and mocking. "Gone. For now." The figure leaned forward, its glow intensifying. "But you... you are fascinating."
Aden's fists clenched. "Stop talking in riddles! What the hell is happening to me?!"
The figure's head twisted slightly, as if amused. "Ohhh... come to think of it," it mused, a skeletal finger tapping its chin, "this body was never yours, right?"
Aden froze.
"I wonder what the King was thinking..." The figure's voice dropped to a whisper. "Letting a mortal wear His skin."
Aden's blood turned to ice. "What King?"
The figure moved. One second it was seated—the next, it loomed directly before him, its heat blistering Aden's face.
"You are not worthy of knowing it," it breathed. "Only Wrath belongs to you now." A pause. "For now."
Aden lunged—
—and his knees shattered.
He didn't hear the crack. He felt it—an explosion of agony that sent him crashing back onto the bones. But when he looked down, his legs were unbroken.
The figure stood over him, its glow flickering like a guttering candle. "You ask too many questions."
Aden gritted his teeth. "Then give me answers."
The figure laughed—and the sound made the skulls around them chatter, their teeth clacking together in a macabre applause.
Then, with a final, whispered "I'll be waiting... In Paradise," it vanished—
—and the world split.
Aden's vision flooded with fire.
For a single, searing moment, he saw it—a towering silhouette seated upon a throne of void-black flame, its face a swirling abyss, its presence crushing the air from his lungs.
Then—
Darkness.