The Rift no longer whispered.
It screamed.
A silent scream, heard not with ears—but in the marrow. In the soul. In the pieces of identity that even resurrection could not fully stitch back together.
I stood before it once more.
The chasm beneath Netherhold was wider than before. The edges cracked like a mouth trying to remember how to speak. The void it held wasn't empty. It was saturated—soaked with memories that did not belong to this world.
I stepped in.
And the world vanished.
---
There was no falling.
Only fragmentation.
Every piece of me began unraveling, thought by thought, until nothing remained but the raw pulse of my essence. I did not know my name. I did not know if I had ever had one.
Only purpose remained.
To prove I was not a copy.
And then… he appeared.
Vorenth.
Not fully formed. A manifestation, shaped from the Rift's refusal to forget.
He did not wear a crown.
He was the crown.
His body rippled with the echoes of forgotten kings. His eyes were deep wells, reflecting every version of me that never came to be.
"You return," he said, voice layered with countless others.
"I never came before."
"No. But your shadow has."
I raised my hand.
Void curled around my fingers, sharper than memory, heavier than fate.
"You are nothing but a ghost."
He stepped forward. "Ghosts linger for a reason."
The air cracked.
And then we clashed.
---
He moved with elegance that mocked nature. His first strike wasn't a weapon—it was regret shaped into a scythe of lightless flame. I countered with a shield of will, folding the memory of my throne into an absolute wall.
The moment shattered around us.
Each time our forces collided, the world bent.
No ground. No sky. Just the endless battlefield shaped by ideology.
He moved like inevitability.
I moved like defiance.
Our strikes blurred between form and concept. I launched chains of obliteration, each link forged from the bones of fallen Sovereigns. He answered by unraveling the idea of cause and effect, striking before I attacked.
Blood dripped from my palm.
Not physical. But symbolic.
He was wounding my right to exist.
"You were made," he whispered, "because I was feared."
"I was made because you failed."
"And what happens," he said, "when you do too?"
I roared.
Void consumed the false stars above us, and I struck with the Requiem Pulse—a burst of soulfire encoded with every scream I had silenced since my resurrection.
He stumbled.
Not back—but inward.
His form flickered, revealing thousands of versions of himself—some crowned, some crawling, some broken and bleeding on their own thrones.
"You… are still incomplete," he said.
"And yet here I stand."
He smiled.
And then the world collapsed again.
---
When I opened my eyes, I was back.
But only in part.
I stood in the central chamber of Netherhold, before the Rift.
But my throne was gone.
In its place stood the aberrant who had evolved without my blessing.
It had taken shape—refined, regal, draped in veils of concept. Its body was constructed from silence and longing. On its brow glimmered not a crown, but the absence of one—a hollow circle burned into reality.
"You were gone for too long," it said.
"I did not give you permission to rise."
"You gave us purpose," it replied. "Not obedience."
I stepped forward.
It did not move.
"You claim my seat?"
"No," it said softly. "I built my own."
I raised my hand.
The void surged—ravenous, perfect.
And it smiled.
"Show me, Sovereign. Show me why you are not a shadow of him."
---