The Fourth Mural – The Subjugation of Kingdoms
The scale of the mural dwarfed the others, stretching from pillar to pillar, as though it demanded its dominance even among depictions of titans. Alatar's eyes lingered upon it with a stillness that was not emptiness, but recognition.
Here, the Malakors were no longer embattled warriors drenched in ichor, nor priests kneeling before altars of blood. They were conquerors. Titans that strode across kingdoms as if they were little more than sandcastles crumbling beneath the tide. Their four arms carried no weapons this time—none were needed. Their very presence was war.
Walls split asunder at their approach. Entire cities seemed to fold inward, their ramparts collapsing, their watchtowers bowing. Palaces, once crowned with the artistry of kings, were hollowed out and reforged as sanctums. Their marble pillars were reshaped into idols, their thrones dissolved into stepping stones. From each ruin rose something new: shrines, obelisks, temples—structures not built but grown by the pressure of Malakor dominion, as if the stone itself recognized who ruled it.
One titan dragged behind it a chain, each link threaded with crowns from fallen rulers. The crowns clattered like bells of surrender, each one a voice silenced, each one a nation turned to ash. Another pressed its vast palm into the soil, and from its touch sprang towers of basalt and obsidian, spires that spiraled like claws into the heavens. Where they walked, the very earth restructured itself in homage.
Armies knelt not from defeat but from recognition. Soldiers turned their blades upside down, their banners lowered until they became rugs for titanic feet. It was surrender ritualized into worship.
Alatar stood before this mural, his breath quiet, measured. Unlike before, there was no shock in him, no wide-eyed naivety. Instead, there was stillness—an acceptance that this was the natural progression. Worship had always led to dominion. Sacrifice was never an end but a path to rule.
His gaze lingered on the titan dragging the crowns. The pull in his chest was subtle but undeniable, like a whisper laced into his blood. A throne is not merely sat upon. It is claimed. It is taken from another, broken, reforged into one's own image.
For a moment, Alatar tested himself. He lifted his hand, slowly, almost unconsciously, and placed his palm against the cold stone of the mural. The carved grooves of the titan's fingers seemed to pulse faintly, as though the stone itself recognized him.
A thrill—dangerous, intoxicating—slid through him. He felt not fear, but weight. The weight of crowns. The weight of bending kingdoms. The pull of ambition.
Yet he did not recoil. His eyes narrowed, and the still calm within him deepened. For the first time, Alatar understood not only the cost of power, but the hunger it required.
The mural had been meant as a record. To Alatar, it was a mirror.
The chill of the stone seeped into Alatar's palm, but beneath it he felt warmth—no, more than warmth. Resonance. As if the mural remembered the Malakors and tested whether he was worthy to stand before their memory.
Alatar's lips parted, not in prayer, not in awe, but in thought given voice:
> "The chain of crowns… each one a will extinguished. Not through slaughter, not through chance, but through inevitability. Dominion is not cruelty—it is order. The weak bow. The strong remake the world."
The words startled him, not because he didn't believe them, but because of how easily they left him. They were not borrowed thoughts. They were his.
His eyes traced the armies kneeling, banners inverted like offerings. He imagined them not as strangers on stone, but as men of flesh, soldiers with hopes, loves, and names. And yet, in that imagining, he felt no pity. Only clarity.
For what was surrender but recognition of truth? What was worship but the natural response to power that could not be denied?
He stepped back from the mural, his hand falling to his side. The echo of ambition still hummed through his bones. A dangerous hum, yes—but no longer something to fear.
He drew himself taller, shoulders straightening, breath slow but deliberate. He did not merely look upon the Malakors now—he studied them as one who might one day stand among them.
The air in the temple responded. Subtly at first. The faint vibration of the glowing gems in the pillars. The low hum of stone. Even the silence seemed to acknowledge the shift in him.
Alatar whispered, half to the mural, half to himself:
> "If the Malakors reshaped kingdoms with their steps… why should I walk lightly?"
It was not a question of arrogance, but of inevitability. A statement of trajectory.
For the first time, Alatar no longer thought of suffering as chains to endure, nor of discovery as accidents stumbled upon. His suffering had forged him, his discovery had chosen him. And now, ambition—no longer shameful—was simply the next truth waiting to be spoken.
He turned from the mural, the calm in him heavier, darker, and somehow more regal. Already, his gaze lingered on the unopened shadows ahead, not with hesitation, but with expectation.
The hum in the air grew deeper. What had been faint, almost imperceptible, became a resonance that traveled through the stone under Alatar's feet. The temple was not passive; it was alive, ancient, attentive.
The glowing gems along the walls flickered in unison, a pulse that matched the rhythm of his own heart. Statues of the Malakors—silent and colossal—seemed to lean closer in the shifting play of light, their carved eyes glimmering faintly as though taking measure of him.
The great doors behind him gave a low groan, sealing tighter, cutting away all notion of retreat. Ahead, the long hall stretched into shadow, yet that darkness now seemed to beckon him rather than warn.
The temple approved.
Alatar did not flinch. He stood straighter, letting the weight of its scrutiny press upon him like a mantle. Where another might have faltered, he welcomed it. He had learned through pain that resistance was weakness. Now he knew that yielding to the inevitable—to becoming inevitable—was power.
With that silent pact sealed, he stepped from the Fourth Mural, leaving behind the image of chains and crowns, and moved toward the far end of the hall where the final mural loomed.
The Fifth Mural – The Throne of Ash and Bones
The wall at the terminus of the sanctum was unlike the rest. Where the earlier murals had been grand but orderly, this one consumed the entire stone face in jagged carvings and shadowed reliefs. It was not a scene of battle, nor of ritual, nor of conquest—it was culmination.
A single Malakor sat upon a throne wrought not of precious metals or carved stone, but of the remnants of what had been destroyed. Ash sculpted into a seat that smoldered eternally. Bones piled and fused into supports, some titanic, some recognizably mortal. The throne was grotesque and magnificent all at once, a crown of ruin made eternal.
The Malakor upon it was like the others, yet unlike any before. Four-armed, yes, but each limb was adorned in regalia finer than what the murals had shown prior—jagged armor interwoven with veins of living light, ornaments carved not for beauty but to declare dominion. Its face, though stone, bore an expression of terrible serenity: not rage, not triumph, but inevitability incarnate.
Around the throne knelt other Malakors. Titans themselves bent low, their heads bowed, their arms extended in ritual submission. Even the conquerors had found one among them who ruled.
Alatar stopped at the base of the mural, his breath caught between awe and something more dangerous. This was not merely history etched in stone—it was a promise. The image whispered in him, louder than any voice had before: This is the seat for those who rise above not only beasts, not only men, but equals.
The air of the temple grew heavier, pressing upon him. Dust sifted from the ceiling, stirred as though the very stone exhaled in anticipation. The gems in the pillars dimmed, focusing their light on this final mural.
Alatar's fingers curled into a loose fist at his side, not in defiance, but in contemplation.
He did not need to say the words aloud to know their truth, yet he whispered them anyway, testing his own resolve:
> "Even gods kneel before a throne. If there is such a seat… why should I not seek it?"
The temple stirred. A low tremor rippled through the floor, subtle but undeniable, as if the sanctum itself acknowledged the weight of his thought. The path ahead had changed.
Alatar's calm deepened further. He was no longer a boy tracing mysteries with trembling fingers. He was a figure being shaped, sharpened, claimed. And as he stood before the Throne of Ash and Bones, he felt not unworthy, but chosen.
The silence deepened into something oppressive, alive. Alatar's whisper had not merely echoed through the chamber—it had been heard.
The mural trembled. Faint cracks of light spread along the carved lines, as if molten fire burned beneath the stone. The etched throne of ash smoldered, smoke curling from its grooves as though the mural itself still remembered flame. The bones carved into its base rattled faintly, each one chiming like hollow bells in the vast hush of the hall.
The Malakor seated upon the throne stirred. Stone should not move, yet its carved head tilted ever so slightly, and its eyes—mere depressions in rock—glowed faintly with an inner ember. The gesture was not grand, not theatrical, but measured. A sovereign granting attention.
Alatar's breath slowed, steady despite the weight pressing against him. The air thickened, clinging to his skin, seeping into his lungs as if the sanctum wished to bury him beneath its gravity. His knees threatened to bend—not from weakness, but from the sheer density of what pressed upon him. It was not pain this time. It was burden. The burden of dominion.
Yet he refused to kneel. He would not.
He straightened his spine, the calm in his chest hardening into something sharper. His gaze did not falter from the stone king upon the throne. In that moment, Alatar understood: to kneel would be to remain a supplicant. To stand was to be tested.
The glow in the mural flared brighter, as though acknowledging his resistance. The seated Malakor's four hands shifted: one clutching the armrest of the throne, another raised as if to bless, another closed into a fist, the last extended outward, palm open—offering or demanding, it was impossible to tell.
The temple itself shuddered, dust cascading from the ceiling, the air vibrating with the hum of something vast and ancient awakening.
Alatar felt it then—not merely awe, not merely weight, but a pull. A summoning. His chest tightened, his heart thundered, and in the silence of his mind came a whisper not in voice but in pure knowing:
Claim… or be claimed.
His hand, unbidden, rose toward the mural, fingers trembling not with fear but with the raw pressure of decision. When his palm touched the stone, the world seemed to fall silent, every hum, every breath, every flicker of gem-light vanishing into stillness.
The throne's glow surged, and for a heartbeat, Alatar saw not a carving but a vision: himself, seated upon that throne of ruin, four arms not his own yet undeniably his, the crowns of kings trailing behind, the Malakors themselves bent in worship.
The vision burned away as quickly as it came, leaving only stone, smoke, and silence.
Alatar lowered his hand, his breath heavy but his eyes steady. The sanctum no longer pressed upon him with suffocating weight—it watched.
The temple had tested him. And it had not rejected him.