Of course. Your idea of adding a "visual symbol" is exactly what we need right now. It connects the immense psychological event Ethan was floating in nothingness.
After the last trace of the ancient entity had faded and flowed into him, he was left alone in absolute silence. There was no up or down, no right or left. Just him, and this vast emptiness that was now, somehow, a part of him.
"Is... is this it?" he whispered the question in his mind, his inner voice sounding like it was coming from a great distance. "Is it over?"
Fear began to creep in at the edges of his being. A different fear than anything he had ever known. It wasn't the fear of a monster or an enemy, but an existential fear, a fear of dissolving into this void, of losing himself and becoming just another echo in this eternal silence.
"Who am I?" he asked himself, clinging to the question like a lifeline. "I am Ethan. I... I hate my debts. I remember the smell of coffee. I remember my sister's face, Chloe..."
He held onto these simple, human memories, using them as an anchor. Slowly, the world around him began to take shape again, or rather, his consciousness began to impose itself on the void. The gray ground appeared beneath his feet, the sickly purple sky above him, and the black, twisted trees on the horizon. He had returned to the "Kingdom of Silence," but he was no longer a visitor.
He could feel the place now. He felt every particle of despair-dust, every charred branch, as if they were extensions of his own nerve endings. It was an overwhelming and unsettling sensation.
And as he was trying to process this new connection, he heard it.
A whisper.
It wasn't a sound, but a thought planted directly in his mind, a thought as ancient and clear as a cosmic truth.
"...Heir..."
His phantom eyes widened. "Heir? Heir to what? This forgotten tomb?"
Before his question was complete, he felt a sharp, sudden prick in his left hand. It wasn't pain, but an intense cold, the cold of the space between stars, spreading from his palm. He looked down and watched in astonishment and horror at what was happening.
On the back of his hand, a mark was beginning to form.
It didn't appear suddenly; it "grew" onto his dream-skin. It began as a point of absolute darkness, then slowly spread into a perfect circle, utterly black, as if a small hole had been torn in the fabric of reality on his hand. Its color was an unnatural black, a black that absorbed the faint purple light of the kingdom and reflected nothing.
Then, in the center of that black circle, a single point of light glowed. It wasn't blue like his power, nor purple like the energy of the place. It was pure white, steady, and alone. A solitary star shining in a coin-sized void on his hand.
He slowly raised his hand in front of his face. He tried to "will" the mark to disappear, to erase it with his will as he would with anything else in the dream world.
It didn't budge.
It wasn't part of the dream he controlled. It had become a part of him.
He reached out his right hand and cautiously touched the mark. He felt the cold emanating from the black circle, but the white point of light had no temperature. It was just a presence. A fact.
"So," he thought, a mixture of awe and understanding dawning on him. "I didn't just take over this place. It took over me, too. This wasn't a conquest... it was a merger. And this... this is the sigil."
He looked at the mark again, "The Sigil of the Throne," as he named it in his mind. Then he looked at the massive stone structure in the center of the kingdom. He felt a new connection, a new understanding. The mark on his hand wasn't just a tattoo; it was a key, a control interface.
"Let's try something," he whispered to himself, his eyes fixed on a dead tree fifty meters away.
He focused his will, not from his entire mind as he used to, but channeling it directly through the sigil on his hand. He imagined the power flowing from the black circle, concentrating in the white point, and then shooting out as an invisible beam toward the tree.
The result was immediate and stunning.
No leaf grew. The entire tree transformed. Its charred branches twisted and arched, hardened, and turned into pillars of polished black obsidian. And at its peak, where the branches met, a single flower bloomed—a crystalline flower with icy blue petals that radiated a faint, powerful light. Ethan's own light.
He looked at his hand, then at the transformed tree. "Yes... this is the key."
He no longer felt helpless or confused. They had been replaced by a feeling of absolute authority. He walked toward the central structure, the sigil on his hand pulsing with a faint sensation of energy. He no longer saw a mass of raw rock; he saw endless possibilities.
"This place needs an identity. It needs my mark."
He began to work. Using the sigil as a focal point for his will, he began to sculpt reality. The process was no longer arduous and tiring. It was smooth, like an artist running a brush over a canvas. He pulled the silence and turned it into silent, majestic walls. He polished the despair and turned it into a black floor that reflected a non-existent sky.
Then came the throne. He didn't make it from anger or fear, but from authority itself. It rose from the ground, a single piece of frozen darkness, adorned with engravings of ancient silence, its armrests shaped like two crouching beasts, eternal guardians.
When everything was complete, he walked forward and sat on his throne for the first time.
In that moment, he felt the entire kingdom sigh in relief and submit to him completely. He felt the ancient silence whisper its loyalty to him. He felt the immense power of this domain now under his absolute command.
He sat there, alone in his vast and silent kingdom. He had obtained a power he had never dreamed of. He had obtained the fortress from which he would wage his war.
But what good is a fortress without an army? And what good is a throne without a court?