Darkness did not retreat. It pulsed around him like a second heartbeat, swirling in thick, suffocating coils. The moonlight had died, consumed by shadows rising to the vaulted ceilings of the throne room. The nobles knelt trembling beneath its veil, their tears silver trails upon painted cheeks. Their prayers fell silent, choked by threads coiling around their throats.
Ruvan stood before the Emperor's dais, eyes raised to meet the iron gaze above him. Power pressed down upon his chest, searing pain blooming beneath his ribs as his bones creaked with strain. Each breath tasted of blood and candle smoke. Yet his spine remained unbowed.
The Emperor raised a hand. Darkness around his form shifted, revealing sigils glowing faint white along his palm. Divine blessing. Ancestral light forged from generations of slaughter and conquest. The Emperor spoke, voice deep and quiet, vibrating through marble and bone. He said Ruvan's existence was a stain upon imperial divinity. His life an insult to the bloodlines that built this throne.
Ruvan's lips curled into a smile. Shadows gathered behind him, swirling into a crown of black thorns suspended above his bowed head. Threads pulsed in his veins, their rhythm merging with the distant drumbeat of nobles' terrified hearts. He saw their hidden memories bloom within the threads. A mother poisoning her own child for inheritance. A priest selling confessions to assassins. A general condemning his soldiers to die so his name would remain unblemished by retreat.
Their sins bound them to him. Their guilt was the iron from which his throne would be forged.
The Emperor spoke again, words cutting into silence like spears. He declared Ruvan's sin unforgivable, demanded repentance before execution. His outstretched hand glowed with divine flame, casting trembling shadows across polished marble.
Ruvan lowered his gaze, eyelids shuttering half the world. For a moment, he saw himself reflected upon the black stone floor. Pale skin streaked with blood. Eyes hollow with sleepless nights spent begging silent gods for mercy that never came. Hair clumped with dried filth. Frail. Forgotten. Broken.
The shadows whispered softly. Their voices merged with the throne's silent chorus within his mind, a lullaby woven from sorrow and wrath.
You are no longer broken. You are no longer forgotten. You are the hand that severs mercy from the world.
He raised his head and opened his eyes. Darkness exploded outward, drowning divine light in absolute night. The Emperor's power crashed against it, iron will clashing with abyss until the entire throne room shuddered. Stained glass windows cracked in spiderweb patterns. Chandeliers trembled upon golden chains. Nobles screamed voiceless prayers, unable to tear their gazes away from the two shadows clashing upon black marble.
Ruvan stepped forward. Each footfall sent ripples through the shadows swirling beneath him. Threads flickered across the hall, weaving around columns and statues like veins of living sin. The Emperor roared a command for his blessings to bind the traitor before him. Divine sigils flared with blinding light, burning away darkness in a radius around the throne.
But the shadows reformed as quickly as they died, coiling around Ruvan's arms and chest, weaving markings that pulsed cold against his skin. Crimson threads wrapped tighter around his fingers, each pulse revealing new depths within the web. He saw memories hidden even from their owners. A girl burying her sister alive to inherit a suitor. A merchant setting fire to beggars sheltering beneath his warehouse.
Each sin was an offering. Each offering strengthened him.
Ruvan raised his hand. Shadows surged forward in silent obedience. They coiled around the Emperor's legs, binding him to the throne's obsidian steps. Divine flame seared the shadows, but they reformed without end, born from sin rather than flesh.
The Emperor's gaze widened. For the first time, iron certainty faltered within his eyes.
Ruvan spoke, his voice quiet and hollow as a grave left open beneath winter stars.
I was born without blessings. Without strength. Without mercy. And yet here you kneel before me.
The Emperor roared in fury, divine power blazing from his crown in radiant arcs. The marble beneath his feet shattered. Columns split with deafening cracks. Winds howled through broken stained glass, scattering moonlit shards across nobles crawling upon the floor in blind terror.
Yet Ruvan stepped forward again. Shadows flowed from his feet, bridging the broken marble like black glass. Threads pulsed in his chest, cold and eternal. The throne within his mind whispered approval, its voice vast and silent as the void between stars.
He raised both hands. Crimson threads erupted outward, piercing the hearts of every noble still alive within the hall. They screamed as shadows consumed their vision, memories bleeding from their minds into his own. He felt their fear, their hatred, their desperate desire to live at any cost. He drank it in, each sin feeding the abyss blooming within him.
The Emperor tore free from the shadows binding his legs. Divine flame roared across the hall, incinerating darkness in a blinding tide. For a heartbeat, Ruvan felt nothing but pain as the world became white fire.
When the light faded, he still stood.
His robes burned away, leaving torn remnants clinging to his scarred frame. Black markings glowed along his chest and arms, pulsing with shadowlight. His hair floated around his face in an unseen wind, eyes dark and endless.
He spoke one final time, voice quiet enough to be mistaken for prayer.
Mercy is for gods. And I am no god.
He closed his hand.
Shadows erupted upward in absolute silence. They swallowed the throne, the Emperor, and the screaming nobles in a single silent breath. For a moment, the entire palace trembled beneath the weight of darkness made flesh.
When the shadows receded, only silence remained. The obsidian throne stood empty. The hall was littered with corpses draped in crimson threads, their eyes glassy with frozen horror.
Ruvan stood alone within the dying echoes of moonlight, shadows curling around his bare feet like bloodied silk. His gaze rose to the fractured windows above, where distant stars watched without mercy.
Within his chest bloomed a quiet certainty.
He had no crown.
But tonight, for the first time, he felt like a king.