The black gales of the Veilstorm howled across the Hollow Horizon. Shattered starsbled in the heavens like broken teeth, stellar shrieks echoing down the Vault of Unmaking that Jairen stood alone in.
He'd passed beyond the Gate of Remembrance in Chapter 16—not as a man searching questions, but as a king burdened by knowledge that he was memory and myth, fact and fracture. He still felt the melody of Serephine Hollow resonating within his bones, and her voice—a soft tremor— haunted his every breath.
"You are the silence between words, Jairen. The pause between verities. To control the Void, you have to become what was never put down."
He recalled those words. He recalled her. But the deeper he went into the Vault, the less he was convinced that he'd ever lived at all.
The Vault of Unmaking was not like any dimension he had traveled.
No walls, no floor, no ceiling—just limitless reflections in all directions. A thousand thousand ghost-Jairens popped into existence at his feet, shimmering, keeping pace alongside him. One wore his rejected crown. Another's eyes were empty. A third's eyes were too like K'tharon's. And others still--oh, thousands--bled from wounds he hadn't yet taken.
"Show me the throne," Jairen ordered. His voice was subdued. It did not resonate. _The Vault_ was not a location where sound belonged.
Instead, something answered in memory.
"Which throne? Crownless One? That which you gave up? That which will create? That which never was?"
Jairen turned around. The voice belonged to no one. Or perhaps to all those mirror-himselves staring at him in silence.
He walked.
Time did not pass. There were no minutes here. No hours. Only a tension—contracting, shifting.
Until he saw it.
A throne of unshaped possibility. Floating in a void that even the Void feared.
It didn't have legs. A back. Armrests. It was not stone or steel or idea. It simply was not.
And still it waited.
A throne awaiting a man who was still unborn. A man such as him.
You are late," was a voice. Low. Melodic. Ancient.
Jairen stopped and faced the speaker. It was Northwyn.
No—an echo of hers. Burnt silver eyes, spiral markings across her cheek, and a shroud of broken lies streaming behind her like a cape. This was not the treachery he knew, but a part of her. A fragment left behind in this shapeless vault.
"Why did you come here?" asked Jairen.
Northwyn tilted her head. "To ask you the same."
He approached the throne.
"Is this mine?"
No," Northwyn said. "It's you.
Jairen halted.
"I don't know."
"Good," she whispered. "For only false kings know how it feels to reign."
Suddenly, the reflections around him twisted. They showed not just possible versions of Jairen—but the ones who had taken the throne. In one, he ruled with cruelty. In another, he died on the first day. In a third, he destroyed the Spiral Court with a whisper. In the last, he became K'Tharion.
"I didn't want this," Jairen whispered.
"But you were made for this," stated the Vault.
The Choice Arrives
The moment passed in a breath. A silence. An unspoken word.
Then the Vault changed. Under Jairen, the shapeless throne throbbed—it was calling him, or maybe trapping him. Not to sit. But to become.
Northwyn's echo stepped forward, her spiral markings burning like comet tails.
If you claim the throne, then your name will be lost.
If I don't?
"Then another will. One who has your looks but not your spirit."
Jairen breathed in.
And he was afraid for the first time since he left devastated Velmoria….
The Fragmented War
Far out beyond the Vault, in the waking world, a storm was gathering.
The Spiral Court was broken into civil war. Titans that once marched under Jairen's lost lineage were revived—now with new names and faces distorted by centuries of silence.
One faction within Mirrorborn, under false-Prince Elkaris the Hollow-Graced, had taken control of Shardlight Spire.
The Heart-Furnace of Velmoria—which was dormant—now throbbed again with other.
And within the shadows of the Black Depth a god whose name was erased by the Mirrorborn recited Jairen's fate in reverse.
He didn't have much time left.
A Throne, Claimed or Rejected
Jairen stood facing the throne, a hundred million futures twisted in its form. None of them made him a winner.
All of them showed him choosing.
"I am not prepared."
"No king is."
"I am not complete."
Never was a ruler.
Jairen put his hand on the throne without shape.
It passed through, like mist.
And suddenly
He witnessed everything.
Vision
A world before names. A cosmos of thought. A cradle of void and song.
The First Crownless, chained to a star.
Seraph of the Spiral, casting the initial betrayal.
The Thought-Titan, dreaming worlds into slaughter.
The Godless Scribe, inscribing destiny upon a mirror.
And between them all somewhere
Jairen walking backwards into a dream against his will in order to undo what was already recalled.
He dropped to his knees.
The throne pulsed once.
Northwyn's echo placed a hand on his shoulder, her voice kind for the first time. You aren't a king because you dominate.
You're a king because you remember the pain of having been dominated. Jairen rose.
"I am Jairen." "Are you?" He gazed again into the throne.
Into shapelessness.
Into truth.
I was.