The body of Heavenly Sovereign Caer'Zhael collapsed like a failed prophecy.
His divine frame cracked, each bone shedding threads of written law. Blood fell—not crimson, but liquid starlight, thick with abandoned oaths and decrees once worshipped by generations.
Kael did not watch the corpse fall. He turned.
For in the silence that followed, a greater noise awakened.
Above the Court of Screaming Light, a breach formed—not of this cosmos, nor any other within reach. It was a conceptual void where the throne of the gods was once meant to sit but never did.
The true center of power was never here.
The true throne had always been hidden.
Buried.
Beneath.
---
⟢ The Hollow Throne
It was not carved.
It was not forged.
It was simply... left behind.
A throne of black stone, unmarked and unseated for millions of aeons, lying within the Cradle Beyond Law—the gap between existence and intention, far beneath the root of the heavens.
And now it stirred.
Kael felt it calling—not with sound, but with recognition.
His steps moved without will, drawn toward a spiral of shattered principles and divine entropy.
Around him, the wreckage of the Celestial Court floated in abeyance, frozen in time's grieving silence.
> "One ascends," whispered the bones of Caer'Zhael.
"The old throne remembers."
Kael stood before the Hollow Throne.
He did not sit.
He placed the Crown of Dying Radiance at its base.
> "Let no god wear what was taken from men," he said.
---
◈ In the Shadow Realms: POV — The Oblivion Sect
The Nihil-Priests of the Oblivion Throned Sect gathered in voidlight around the Echo-Shrine.
Each wore robes sewn from the regrets of dying worlds. They did not speak. They communed in raw meaning.
The High Nihilist unsealed his third mind and uttered:
> "Kael has found the Hollow Throne."
> "Impossible," replied the silence.
> "It was made for what came before language."
The void laughed, and twelve avatars of ruin began walking toward the mortal plane.
> "Then we must offer him the Ninth Offering."
> "And if he refuses?" the silence asked again.
> "Then he becomes our final prayer."
---
✴ Lore Fragment: The Hollow Throne
Before there were heavens…
Before there were gods…
Before even the Primordial Courts of Aetherion…
There was the Hollow Throne—a seat crafted not for ruling, but for remembering the creator who vanished. Its occupant was meant to be no one—a soul freed from all tethers.
It is not power the throne grants.
It is void-recognition.
And Kael Vanthelmir had been recognized.
---
Kael raised his hand, and with it, his remaining heirlooms floated like mournful spirits. The Tongue of Ruin hummed, sensing the eleventh syllable buried beneath this place.
> "One day," he whispered, "even silence will speak my name."
He stepped forward.
The Hollow Throne pulsed.
The Court above wept.
And in the farthest reaches of the cosmos, three dead suns reignited.
They did not burn in light.
They burned in memory.