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Chapter 1 - Chapter 1: The Lamb Among Wolves

Blood dripped onto the marble floor in languid droplets, blooming into silent crimson flowers beneath the obsidian throne's indifferent gaze.

Ruvan Artheim remained kneeling. His head bowed so low that strands of raven hair brushed against the spreading stain. The Emperor's ring had split his cheek open. Warmth pooled within his mouth, thick and metallic, mingling with the rancid taste of humiliation that had corroded his tongue since birth.

The throne room stretched around him like a cathedral built to enshrine cruelty. Black marble pillars rose into vaulted shadows engraved with divine prayers no god bothered to hear. Crystal chandeliers floated above, casting pale flames across armored knights standing motionless like obsidian statues.

Dozens of eyes scrutinised him. Velvet-draped nobles adorned in sigil-etched circlets. Silver-haired ministers clutching ivory scepters carved with tax codes and execution decrees. Generals with eyes like polished iron watched with predator calm. Their gazes dissected every twitch of pain, observing each tremor in his shoulders and the trembling curve of blood-slicked fingers as if analysing a pinned specimen upon a scholar's black oak desk.

He heard their thoughts, unspoken yet ringing clear within the silent cathedral of cruelty. They saw a lamb birthed only to bleed.

Their silent verdict pressed upon him heavier than chains. Some smiled faintly, lips curling with restrained amusement. Others averted their eyes, not in pity but disgust at the reminder of their own fragile mortality.

The Emperor's voice drifted across the hall, low and languid, as if weaving a gentle melody meant to suffocate rather than soothe. He ordered Ruvan to raise his head. Pain seared down his spine as he obeyed. His vision blurred with tears he refused to let fall. In the polished marble beneath him, his reflection revealed blood dripping from split lips, dark hair framing hollow grey eyes, ceremonial robes hanging in loose folds around his emaciated frame.

A shadow shifted beside the throne. Two knights stepped forward with mechanical precision. Between them knelt a young maid, her tear-reddened eyes wide with terror, and an old steward clutching a mangled arm wrapped in bloodied linen. Both trembled as they were forced down beside Ruvan, their silent dread thickening the stagnant air.

The Emperor regarded them with mild curiosity, his grey eyes unblinking beneath the iron crown etched with sigils older than the empire itself. Those eyes held no hatred nor pity, only an indifferent disdain that regarded the scene before him as one might observe ants scuttling over broken glass.

He questioned Ruvan with a voice devoid of warmth, asking why these insects clinging to his worthless shadow should be spared. His tone did not invite an answer. It merely announced judgement preordained.

Ruvan's reply cracked from his throat like splintered bone. He whispered that they had done nothing wrong, begged punishment upon himself instead, pleaded for their lives with trembling fingers digging into the blood-slick marble.

A ripple passed through the gathered nobles. The Emperor tilted his head slightly, dark hair falling across his crown like spilled ink. He remarked that Ruvan's life held no value to him or to the gods who had cursed him with emptiness. Emptiness he remained.

Two fingers rose in idle command. A knight stepped forward, gauntleted hand wrapping around the hilt of his sword with silent finality. The maid's sobs turned to strangled whimpers. Tears fell upon the marble, prayers the gods never heard. The steward closed his eyes, lips moving in a final silent benediction for a life that would end kneeling before shadows.

Ruvan's scream erupted from his chest, primal and desperate, echoing through cavernous silence. Tears fell at last, splashing onto the floor to merge with the blood of the innocent. His forehead pressed against marble as he begged, pleaded, offered his life in their place, his voice fraying into broken gasps.

The Emperor descended the dais with deliberate grace. The quiet click of his boots upon marble sent shivers crawling across Ruvan's skin. Crimson robes embroidered with black iron threads rippled behind him. When he stood before Ruvan, shadow swallowed them both.

Cold leather pressed against his skull. The Emperor's boot ground his cheek into the blood-stained marble. Pain erupted behind his eyes. His ribs burned with each ragged breath drawn into lungs too weak to scream.

The Emperor's voice remained calm as he declared Ruvan's life worth less than lice feasting upon a beggar's corpse. Pressure increased. White pain burst across his vision. His limbs convulsed under the force pinning him down.

He commanded Ruvan to remember this moment. Mercy was not justice nor kindness. It was a privilege granted only by those who wielded dominion. Power shaped the world. And Ruvan would never hold power.

The boot lifted. His head fell back to the marble with a muted thud. Tears slipped soundlessly down his blood-streaked cheek.

The Emperor issued his final command with casual indifference. Kill them.

His scream fractured the throne room's silence as knights moved with disciplined precision. Two arcs of crimson painted the white marble. Warm droplets splattered across his trembling hands. The maid collapsed beside him, mouth frozen in a silent plea that would never be heard. The steward crumpled forward, blood pooling beneath him, darkening his white hair to rust-red.

The scent of blood invaded his lungs, coppery and suffocating. Something inside him cracked. His scream died before it could leave his lips, crushed beneath the weight of his own helplessness.

Caldor turned away, robes whispering like mourning veils across marble. He ordered his knights to dispose of this filth and return the failed spawn to his cage.

Gauntleted hands seized Ruvan's arms, dragging him across pools of blood still warm with life extinguished. As he was hauled away, the maid's lifeless eyes fixed upon him. Once they had glimmered with gentle defiance as she sang lullabies into his nightmares. Now they were glassy and empty, reflecting only death's silent absolution.

They were innocent.

The thought echoed within him, cold and unyielding, as guards flung his battered body onto the frozen tiles of his chamber. Pain flared across cracked ribs. The iron door slammed shut, plunging him into darkness unbroken by moonlight.

Ruvan lay unmoving, breaths shallow and ragged, tears dripping soundlessly onto the stone. His whispered question rasped from bloodied lips, so soft it might have been the sigh of death itself. Why was I born?

No gods answered. They never had. Not for someone like him.

Silence thickened until it became suffocating. Then, within that abyssal quiet, a voice slithered into his mind. Ancient. Genderless. Its timbre coiled around his sanity like poisoned silk weaving a shroud.

The voice asked if he wished to make them kneel. His eyes snapped open in the darkness. Cold bled into his marrow as shadows pulsed around him, numbing even agony.

He asked who it was. The shadows coalesced, whispering that it was the throne beneath all thrones, the sin within all hearts, the nameless terror even gods dared not speak.

His voice trembled as he asked what it wanted. Quiet laughter shivered across the walls of his mind. The voice told him it wanted his soul, his sanity, his humanity.

Images of the maid's lifeless gaze and the steward's silent collapse burned through his mind with truths more merciless than any blade.

His whisper was calm as he accepted. That's fine.

Darkness roared in triumph. Agony ignited within his chest as something primordial clawed its way into his being. Blood rose from his wounds, droplets spiralling through shadow like falling stars. Crimson threads coiled around trembling fingers, pulsing with forbidden life.

When his eyes opened, he saw the world in webs of sin. Every soul bound to threads of guilt, desire, hatred. Above them all rose a throne of writhing shadows and screaming spirits, towering above an endless black sea.

The Throne of Sins.

He stepped forward. Chains of black iron wrapped around his wrists and ankles, dragging him towards it. He sat. Darkness devoured him, branding his flesh with curses older than creation itself. Power flooded his veins like molten iron, incinerating everything that was once fragile, once human.

When the shadows receded, he sat upon the throne, trembling with newfound dominion. Crimson threads flickered around his hands before vanishing into the darkness of his sleeves.

The lamb had become the butcher.

He rose to his feet, inhaling the scent of blood and death with silent satisfaction. They would kneel. All of them.

He was no longer the worthless prince born without blessings.

He was the weaver of sins. The puppeteer of fate. The sovereign upon the Throne of Sins.

And their screams would become his coronation hymn.

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