——The Throne Is Not Empty, The Lie Is——
Above, the heavens warped to acknowledge their approach. The moon hung without orbit, spinning in place like an eye too afraid to blink. The stars flickered brighter—each one trembling as though summoned to bear witness. The air thickened, not with storm or fog, but with judgment: invisible, ancient, and heavy as a tribunal that had never adjourned. This verdictless gravity settled upon the intruders before their feet even touched the shadow of the portcullis.
The gates of Fort Dawnrise rose like a reliquary carved in defiance of entropy itself—ivory towers inscribed with laws older than kingdoms, their glyphs worn pale from centuries of pleading touch. Each stone seemed to hum with the after-breath of prayers long since spoken, still warm from the ritual flames that had licked these walls since the first altar bled fire.
Great marble doors yawned wide, not in welcome but in resignation, as though the fortress itself had recognized an old adversary. Cold incense wafted outward, mingled with the iron tang of judgment long delivered, long forgotten.
As they stepped across the threshold, the world shifted. The air grew dense and dry, tasting faintly of ash and old parchment. Their footfalls echoed with unnatural weight—each strike of boot or sandal rebounding longer than sound should linger, as though the fortress wanted to remember every trespass.
The Crusaders filed in stiff formation, their discipline a pale imitation of the grandeur around them. The veterans muttered prayers under their breath; the younger recruits stared wide-eyed at walls that seemed alive with scripture. Justice-bound runes spiraled across the pillars, glowing faintly in patterns too complex to follow, flaring when Balfazar passed as if uncertain whether to resist or kneel.
Above, the vaulted ceiling arched like the ribcage of some colossal beast petrified in the act of breathing. Chained braziers hung low, their flames burning without smoke, their light bending away from the travelers as if unwilling to touch them.
Corridors branched like arteries from the main hall, each sealed with heavy stone doors carved in reliefs of battles and verdicts. Some figures bore faces, others had been worn faceless by centuries of reverence—or erasure. The farther they walked, the more the carvings shifted in the corner of the eye: saints flickering into wraiths, judges into executioners.
The Crusaders shuddered as the fortress murmured around them. The walls hummed with verdicts rendered long before their birth, a susurrus of voices like quills scratching across endless parchment. Some heard words of comfort. Others heard accusations.
And at the center of it all strode Balfazar, unconcerned, as if the fortress itself had been erected to usher him down this path.
Arkeia walked foremost, armored but inwardly unmoored. Her silver hair dulled to the shade of tarnished steel beneath the weight of her thoughts. Since her last exchange with Balfazar, she had spoken little—silence, once a soldier's strength, now felt like a chain of shame and doubt tightening around her throat.
Behind her, Elissa murmured broken prayers even in her sleep, her words laced with unraveling dreams: syllables that refused to separate, as though her tongue sought to bind meanings together that creation itself had parted. Galeel's steps carried her carefully, reverently. Guiding her like a priest leads a nun.
Vharn's melodies, once lilting with deranged joy, now bent inward upon themselves, warped into refrains too ancient for language. The chords strained like omens translated through a dying instrument, each note a warning that remembered the future before it came.
Above them all, even Voidstor's lazy orbit bent light incorrectly—casting not shadow but distortion, as though illumination itself dared not declare his place in the world.
Caelinda moved at Balfazar's side with the serenity of a saint already consecrated. Her veil did not answer to the wind, but rippled in patterns belonging to no mortal breath. Her lips murmured a psalm older than graves, a language abandoned by the living and forbidden to the dead.
The Crusaders—hardened veterans and trembling neophytes alike—kept their ranks by habit more than conviction. The rhythm of their march faltered, armor clinking out of sync, prayers murmured half-remembered. Their discipline was a tapestry fraying thread by thread, sanity loosening where faith once held taut. Eyes glazed. Steps dragged. Shadows lengthened from their heels as though eager to depart before the men themselves broke.
One Crusader muttered his prayers backward, as though his tongue had revolted against his god. Another wept without ceasing, a ghastly grin stretched across his face as though sorrow itself had turned traitor. The youngest cast furtive glances at the shapes that trailed at Balfazar's side—his own shadow among them, lengthened, sharpened, moving a half-step out of rhythm. He never realized the infection had already taken root, that his thoughts now bent in service to something other than himself.
From deeper within the fortress, stationed Crusaders appeared along balconies and side halls, drawn to the procession like moths to an open flame. Some saluted stiffly, voices wavering as they called down:
"Who approaches the Arch Halls?"
Others whispered to one another, unease heavy in their tone:
"Do you see them? Their shadows don't move right…"
"Why does the air feel… thick?"
A young guard broke rank entirely, clutching at his chest. "It's him—he's the storm they warned us of."
Yet not all recoiled. One older knight lowered his weapon, eyes wet with sudden tears. "I… I feel absolved," he whispered, as though confessing to himself. "As if the verdict has already been spoken, and I am… free."
Another snarled from the far end of the hall, gripping his halberd. "Blasphemy walks in chains of silk! We should strike now!" Yet his hands trembled, refusing to obey his outrage.
Arkeia heard it all, but her focus narrowed. The Crusader walking beside her—stalwart, long loyal—kept his gaze low, shame clouding his face. He did not know why he felt it, nor could he name its source, but the weight pressed on him all the same. His armor seemed too heavy, his oaths too thin. Something inside him bowed, and he did not know whether it was to his goddess or to the Promised One.
Edmun, usually the steadiest among them, twitched each time Aethon's gaze lingered too long. And Aethon, savoring the fracture, had taken to smiling often—wide, wolfish, deliberate. The sight was enough to make even steel-blooded veterans shiver.
At last, Edmun's unease betrayed him—a glance held one heartbeat too long. Aethon caught it instantly, tilting his head with the precision of a predator toying with its prey. His voice slid out, rich and poisonous, honey dripping from the edge of a hidden knife:
"You look at me," Aethon purred, voice a knife wrapped in velvet, "as if I've unstitched your dreams. Tell me… haven't I?"
Edmun muttered through clenched teeth, "Leave me be, serpent…" His eyes flicked—first to Arkeia, then, unwillingly, to Balfazar.
Aethon caught it. Of course he did. His grin widened, sharp as broken glass.
"Careful, Crusader," he drawled, leaning lazily against a pillar as though this march were a garden stroll. "Stare too long, and you'll fall in love. Or worse—you'll understand."
Edmun's jaw worked until his teeth ached. His silence betrayed what his prayers could not contain.
Aethon's smirk thinned into something crueler.
"Love only kills you once."
Arkeia pressed on, boots striking the stone with a steady rhythm she did not feel. She refused to turn. Yet her hands, curled tight at her sides, whitened at the knuckles. She could feel it—the pull, the slow, silken unraveling creeping through her being. A twitch climbed her spine. Her heart stumbled into an unnatural rhythm, as though it beat for a will no longer her own.
Still she moved, carrying herself like a soldier on borrowed strength, each step heavier than the last. The fortress seemed to draw her forward, not as a destination but as a summons—its corridors whispering, its air thickening, its judgment already reaching for her before the verdict had been spoken.
The great arch halls of Dawnrise loomed ahead, carved from petrified wood, veined with justice-bound runes and sigils inscribed by divine breath. The marble doors, vast as any temple wall, bore oaths older than kingdoms. They opened of their own accord, exhaling the chill scent of incense and verdict.
Caelinda's presence drifted closer, the air around her carrying a hush that pressed against Arkeia's armor like an unwelcome touch. The faint perfume of incense clung to her veil, sweet and suffocating, threaded with something older than fragrance—a heaviness that whispered of altars and chains.
"Nervous, sweet paladin?" she asked, her voice velvet and venom, curling into the silence like smoke that refused to disperse.
Arkeia did not turn. Her eyes stayed fixed ahead, jaw set, as though the act of looking forward alone could shield her from the weight at her side.
Caelinda drifted nearer until her veil brushed the edge of Arkeia's shoulder. Though her face was hidden, the curve of her mouth was unmistakable in the cadence of her words.
She smiled something wicked.
"What troubles your mind… little rose?" The title slipped out like silk drawn over a blade—mocking, jealous, malicious.
Arkeia's head tilted almost toward her, but she caught herself, snapping her gaze back forward. Her voice was steadier than she felt.
"Mar'aya is a goddess… not merely divine, but a Pillar of totality. She is power—pure, law-bound power."
Caelinda's laugh chimed sweetly, but it burned at the edges, sweet as poisoned honey. The braziers lining the corridor guttered and flared with her mirth, the flames bending toward her veil as though eager to be consumed by it.
"You sound worried," she crooned. "Is it doubt I hear? You think your goddess stronger than mine?"
"I… don't know. I don't want to think so. But if she is—"
"What?" Caelinda cut in, her smile curving into a blade. "That Balfazar will die? Is that truly what you believe?"
The words struck, but it was not the taunt that made Arkeia flinch—it was the faint stir of doubt she felt within herself, quiet but persistent. A question she had not meant to ask pressed at the edges of her mind: why does the thought of his fall unsettle me more than the thought of hers?
Her throat tightened. The chain of faith she had worn all her life felt thinner than thread, while his presence—wrong, terrifying, heretical—pulled at her like gravity older than the stars.
Caelinda's laughter, low and knowing, only widened the hairline fracture in Arkeia's resolve.
"Truly," she murmured, eyes glimmering with a venom too languid to be anything but deliberate, "I don't see what he sees in you. But I suppose even the Nexus Vessel must indulge his curiosities."
The words slid like silk dipped in poison, leaving their sting to linger.
Arkeia's lips parted with the shape of a retort, "oh, fu—," but before she could curse, the chamber yawned open ahead of them—stone sighing, air spilling cold and heavy with incense and judgment.
Caelinda lingered at her side, veil tilting ever so slightly toward her. From beneath the shadowed fabric, a smile curved—patient, knowing, triumphant. She was not merely mocking. She was studying.
The echo of that smile clung to Arkeia like cobwebs as they advanced, each step pulling them further into a silence that no soldier's tread could break. The fortress ceased to be stone and corridor—it had become expectation, a mouth of law widening to receive them. The air itself held its breath, as though verdicts too long buried were about to speak.
They crossed the iron gates into the Judgment Hall.
This was mortal architecture straining toward divinity—a place where the air tasted of burned parchment and the stillness before lightning. The marble floor gleamed faintly, reflecting their distorted shadows as if to remind them they did not belong.
One Crusader swallowed audibly, whispering, "These walls… they should feel holy. Why do they feel hollow?"
Another muttered back, voice shaking, "I don't recognize the prayers here. As if they were never ours."
Edmun, steadier than the rest but pale at the lips, exhaled through clenched teeth. "Keep your ranks. Do not falter. Eyes forward."
Yet even his voice betrayed the thin quiver of unease.
Caelinda's veil turned slightly toward him, as though amused by his defiance.
"How noble," she whispered, sweet as poison. "How useless."
Balfazar smiled through it all, a quiet, unfathomable curve of the lips. He offered no word, no gesture—yet the silence around him seemed to bend in deference, as though the fortress itself felt mocked by his calm.
The monks stationed within the Judgment Hall stirred as the company passed. Some lowered their eyes, refusing to meet his gaze, fingers trembling over prayer beads that no longer comforted. One clutched his scripture scroll so tightly the parchment tore. Another's voice faltered mid-chant, syllables breaking into a rasp as though the words themselves had abandoned him.
"Why… why do the verses sound wrong?" a monk whispered to his brother, though the question felt heavier than fear—it was confusion, the horror of no longer belonging to what had once been your refuge.
Alongside them, Crusaders standing guard shifted uneasily. One raised his halberd in formal salute but could not hold it steady; the steel tip wavered as though repelled by an unseen force.
"His shadow touched mine," he hissed to the man beside him. "It's heavier than armor."
"Don't look at it," came the muttered reply, "or you'll carry it with you."
There was no warmth here. Only cold splendor. Scripture spiraled across the walls in concentric circles, the words glimmering faintly as the group passed. With each step the travelers took, runes pulsed dimly as though testing their worth, then recoiled when Balfazar drew near, the glow shrinking back into stone. The deeper they walked, the more the fortress pressed against them—stone shouldered against flesh, air against breath, judgment against will. Something in these halls rejected them, yet could not deny them passage.
A young monk, face pale as linen, fell to his knees and muttered: "This is no longer holy ground. We are trespassers in our own sanctum."
One of Arkeia's Crusaders snarled low, as though to remind himself of his loyalty. "Stand firm," he spat. "The goddess watches." Yet his eyes darted toward Balfazar as if daring his own words to hold.
From the shadows of a column, another whispered, voice breaking: "Does She? Or does He?"
And then they reached it.
The entrance to the Sanctum of Judgment.
There were no doors. No barriers. Only a vast, yawning aperture cut into the fortress wall, its edges seared with runes that pulsed like open eyes. The threshold itself shimmered with an invisible divide—neither light nor shadow, but something between, as though to cross it was to step into a verdict already rendered. The monks knelt instinctively before it, trembling, while the Crusaders shifted uneasily, armor clinking out of rhythm with their failing discipline.
Balfazar did not wait for command nor invitation. He was the first to cross. Eyes closed, smile wide—serene, theatrical, profane. It was as though the Sanctum had been constructed for no other purpose than this moment, and he its long-awaited claimant. Each step of his descent carried the sound of certainty, echoing with the gravity of law undone.
The Sanctum of Judgment revealed itself beyond: a colossal coliseum wrought from sacred geometry, where architecture and divinity intertwined until neither could be told apart. Its tiers rose in concentric rings, carved from petrified flame, the stone flickering faintly as though remembering its fire. Columns twisted skyward like the fossilized spines of angels long extinct, their fractured vertebrae frozen mid-arch toward heaven.
The floor itself pulsed beneath them, alive with runes inscribed in perfect, pitiless rhythm—circles within circles, scripts within scripts. Every mark was a breath of law, every glow a heartbeat of balance. To look upon them too long was to feel your own pulse falter, falling into the cadence of judgment.
At the center—
Mar'aya—
and she was blinding.
The Goddess of Clarity. Balance Incarnate. She stood as though sculpted from dawn itself, her skin radiant with molten light, her crown a circlet of flame forged from the fragments of divine order still burning across eternity. Ten vast wings unfurled behind her, each feather a shard of glass set aflame, their span so immense they blotted the very geometry that sought to contain her. Her eyes were twin suns fixed in impossible stillness—unchanging, eternal, pitiless.
Taller than any mortal frame could hope to bear, she was wreathed in judicial fire, armored in molten gold that pulsed with the glow of unbroken law. Her wings curved inward and outward at once, like a verdict both closing and already passed. Her face was carved serenity, lips motionless as a sealed decree, yet her gaze was eclipses of burning righteousness. When she shifted even slightly, the sweep of her wings gave off the sound of commandments breaking—like stone tablets shattering beneath invisible hands.
The Crusaders fell apart in a scatter of responses. Some dropped to their knees at once, foreheads pressed to the cold floor, tears streaking down their cheeks as if salvation had arrived. Others stood rigid, armor clinking, trying to believe the faith they had clung to would steady them—but their lips quivered, prayers faltering into nonsense. One muttered a litany that dissolved halfway, words slipping into backward syllables, leaving him pale with terror.
A young recruit whispered, "She is the scales… I feel my sins written on my bones." His voice cracked, and he covered his ears as if her radiance were reciting them aloud.
A veteran Crusader clenched his halberd and forced the words through gritted teeth: "This is judgment. Stand firm!" Yet his stance trembled, knees bowing as though dragged down by unseen chains.
The monks fared no better. One chanted louder, desperate, as though volume alone could protect him—but his voice fractured, splitting into sobs. Another tore his scripture scroll against his chest, muttering, "The letters won't hold. The words won't stay. Why won't they stay?"
And among this collapse stood Balfazar's companions—unaltered, as though Mar'aya's brilliance did not quite reach them.
Elissa stirred in Galeel's arms, her eyes half-lidded, lips shaping fragments of dreams: "Not the first… not the last…" Her murmur sounded more prophecy than prayer.
Galeel himself did not kneel. His grey eyes, storm-washed and heavy, fixed on the goddess with neither reverence nor defiance—only the quiet weight of one who remembered losing more than even gods could measure. The trees outside had bowed to him; now he merely bowed his silence.
Aethon, by contrast, smirked openly. He leaned on the haft of a Crusader's trembling halberd as though it were a walking stick, his voice a low purr: "All this splendor… and still she frowns. How dreary divinity becomes when it's forced to keep accounts." His laughter slithered into the silence, sharp enough to make the nearest Crusader recoil.
Caelinda, serene and venomous, tilted her veil toward Arkeia, whispering a psalm older than graves. Her smile beneath it was clear, as if to say: your goddess stands before you, and yet it is still mine you fear.
And Arkeia—
Her breath caught as her gaze lifted to Mar'aya. Every instinct demanded awe, devotion, certainty—the anchor she had trained her whole life to hold. Yet her pulse stumbled, quaking not for her goddess, but for the shadow walking beside her. Shame burned through her: why did her heart falter at Mar'aya's radiance, yet race at Balfazar's smile? Why did she feel smaller beneath his silence than beneath her goddess's flame?
She trembled—not with piety, but with betrayal of herself.
The silence that followed weighed heavier than the goddess's radiance. Even the runes seemed to dim, as though the Sanctum itself were holding its breath, awaiting the first verdict.
And then Mar'aya moved.
She stepped down from her throne, each stride ringing like a hammer against cathedral bell, the sound reverberating through stone and soul alike. Her voice carried with it the gravity of law spoken at the dawn of ages.
"So this is the abomination I was told of."
Her gaze fell on Balfazar, sharp as judgment made flesh.
"The Promised One…" her lips curved, not in wonder but in disdain. "A name whispered in fear, mistaken for prophecy. They say you would rise from shadow, clothed in madness, a herald of dissolution."
Her wings flared wide, scattering golden embers across the runes. "You think yourself chosen—but you are chosen only by failure. By every silence the heavens would not sanctify. You are no promise, creature."
The Sanctum itself groaned at her words, as though its walls strained to contain the verdict.
Balfazar bowed low—far too low, theatrical to the point of mockery. His robe of void swept outward as he dipped, folds of shadow curling and writhing like ink spilled across air, a parody of reverence more fitting for a stage than a sanctum.
"So, you've tracked me," he said, voice lilting with stage-born cadence. "I'm flattered—truly. It's not every day one catches the eye of a goddess. You must forgive me if I don't faint from the honor."
He rose with a smile of disturbed charm, a grin that could belong to an executioner or a king at court—it was never clear which he intended.
Mar'aya's voice struck like molten iron across stone. "Honor? Do you dare shape that word with your tongue? I have seen the ruin you trail like a cloak. You unravel balance wherever you tread. You corrupt mortal hearts, twist the faithful into heresies, and now—now you step willingly into my Sanctum. Why? To flaunt yourself before me? To mock law itself?"
Balfazar's laugh was low, unsettling, and strangely intimate, as if he chuckled at something only he could see.
"Mock you? Oh, goddess—that would require effort. I assure you—I am merely observing."
The words drifted like incense, sweet enough to choke.
Mar'aya's eyes narrowed, her brilliance intensifying until her gaze was a blade of molten glass. Slowly, inexorably, it shifted from Balfazar to Arkeia.
"You brought this thing here, child?"
Arkeia's lips parted, but the air thickened as though judgment itself pressed down upon her lungs. The floor seemed to tilt beneath her feet, her thoughts sliding between duty and something she dared not name.
"Why does it move freely?" Mar'aya's eyes flared, their light searing.
Arkeia stammered, her voice brittle in the vast chamber. "He… he promised cooperation without incident—"
"And this did not concern you?" Mar'aya's tone cracked cold, each word a chastisement hammered like nails into her flesh. "Look at what he has already wrought."
The Crusaders behind her clenched their teeth, jaws grinding in helpless silence. None dared speak, though the strain showed in their every breath. Armor shifted with restrained fury, gauntlets tightened on spear and halberd. Edmun's hand whitened at the haft of his weapon, knuckles taut as cords. Thalos bowed his head low, his shoulders rigid, his tongue bitten between his teeth until blood salted his mouth. Each one longed to cry out, to defend their commander against the goddess's scorn—but no mortal dared interrupt judgment incarnate.
And Arkeia stood caught in its fire, trembling beneath the double weight of Mar'aya's rebuke and the shadow of the one who smiled ahead.
Mar'aya's voice cooled to a simmer—the heat of judgment restrained, sharpened into suspicion.
"Your faith—does it still serve me, child?"
Arkeia's throat tightened. The words that rose felt brittle, a creed she no longer trusted to bear her weight. "I believed my faith served you," she said at last, low and trembling, the edges of conviction already fraying. "But you never answered me… and he does."
At those words, Edmun's breath rattled out between his teeth, as though struck. His gauntleted hand flew to the hilt of his blade, only to fall away again, trembling, ashamed at the thought of raising steel in the presence of a goddess. Thalos closed his eyes, jaw working furiously as though chewing on the words unsaid, biting them back until his lip bled. Both men turned their faces aside, unable to watch the commander they had sworn to follow offer such dangerous truth.
Caelinda's laugh broke the silence, quiet but sharp, like glass splintering under a fingertip.
Aethon tilted his head, his grin as effortless as sin. "You shouldn't blame her," he drawled, amusement lacing each syllable. "She did try her best." His chuckle was soft, almost kind—yet crueler than any lash.
Mar'aya's burning gaze snapped to him, wings twitching as though commandments cracked in her presence. She lingered on him, eyes narrowing with loathing at his insolence—then turned back to Arkeia.
"The serpent speaks truth," she said coldly. "Perhaps there is redemption for you yet, child."
Arkeia shook, torn between relief and revulsion, between the searing weight of her goddess's words and the intoxicating shadow of the one who needed no defense.
Balfazar stirred at last, his void-robe whispering like night across marble. He stepped forward with a flourish, bowing his head just enough to be mistaken for courtesy.
"My, my," he murmured, voice smooth as ink over glass. "So stern, so merciless. Forgive me, Lady Balance—but she has done quite well. She has led me faithfully, kept her vows, even refrained from striking me down when temptation whispered otherwise. That is loyalty—though not, perhaps, the sort you favor."
His smile curved, dangerous and boyish all at once. "If anything, you should be thanking her. Without her, I might never have graced your halls with such ease," his tone dipped into mock-reverence, "And here I am, Balance. Exactly where you wanted me."
The chamber shivered with the words, runes flickering as though his voice tugged at their meaning.
Edmun stiffened, fury crackling beneath his silence, teeth grinding until a tremor ran down his jaw. Thalos's knuckles rapped once against his breastplate, a sound like an oath half-remembered, half-refused. Neither dared speak, but their shame thickened the air.
Arkeia's chest tightened, caught between shame, relief, and the illicit warmth his words sparked in her—an ache she could neither smother nor confess.
Mar'aya's wings shifted, the sound like commandments breaking against one another. Her gaze sharpened, twin suns narrowing on Balfazar.
"Your words are disease laced with madness," Mar'aya's tone cracked like tempered glass, her voice filling every seam of the sanctum. "Hold that vile tongue, if you wish to keep it."
And then, like a serpent slipping into silence, another voice intruded.
Aethon's tone floated lazily across the chamber, smooth as oil poured into flame.
"Easy, goddess," Aethon drawled. "My brother's appetite is… easily stirred. Give him a stage, and he'll dance. Call it desecration if you like—he just calls it supper."
His grin tilted, sharp as a crescent blade.
"Would you deny him? You, of all beings, should know Balance was meant to be… tested."
Aethon's grin widened, but before his words could fester further, Mar'aya's voice cleaved the chamber.
"Silence." The command cracked like a whip across the marble. "You are no serpent—you are carrion. A shadow draped in your brother's discarded skin, gnawing on what was never yours. Do not speak of Balance. You were unmade the moment you touched it."
The air quivered, braziers guttering though no flame dimmed. Even the runes recoiled, shrinking from her decree.
Aethon only chuckled, low and delighted, like a beast amused by the snap of its chain. His eyes flicked to Balfazar, then back to the goddess, as if savoring how little her scorn wounded him.
Balfazar's voice uncoiled into the tension like silk laced with smoke.
"No need to be so harsh," he said lightly, his smile tilting with boyish cruelty. "The truth hurts—let's not spill too much."
His eyes flicked toward Aethon, then back to the goddess, gleaming with amusement.
"Besides—my brother carries that form with grace. Quite handsome, if I do say so myself."
He tried, and failed, to stifle the chuckle that slipped free—a low, conspiratorial sound that echoed far too warmly in the cold Sanctum. Even the shadows along the marble twitched as though they, too, shared in the joke.
Around him, his companions drifted into their places as if the chamber had always been theirs. Elissa stood in reverent stillness, her face lifted to an unseen hymn. Galeel folded into silence, wings at rest yet watchful. Caelinda bent low to kiss the runes beneath her, while Aethon leaned with predatory ease against Vharn's shoulder. Voidstor coiled at Balfazar's feet, purring in contradictions no mind should parse.
And beneath it all, unnoticed, Caelinda's hum threaded through the air. She dipped her fingers into her dreams, painting runes across the marble—writhing symbols that bent away from mortal geometry, shapes that unmade shape as they formed.
Mar'aya's radiance flared in answer, her wings shuddering with the sound of commandments splintering. The very pillars of the Sanctum trembled as her voice rang out, each word falling like a verdict carved into living flesh.
"You dare laugh in the face of judgment? You've corrupted innocence, desecrated shrines, twisted the weave of fate itself. And now you dare my wrath… for what? To pretend to be divine?"
Balfazar's smirk deepened, his eyes glinting with mirth as he leaned into her rage like a man savoring a performance.
"Pretend?" he echoed, voice steeped in mock astonishment. "I could say the same of you." His smile edged into something knife-like, joy flickering in his gaze. "And to be fair—I never claimed divinity."
He grinned, sharper than his stare.
"But if I were to claim…" His tone dropped to a velvet whisper. "I'd say I'm—liberation."
At that word, the runes convulsed—flaring with searing light, bleeding radiance into the marble as though the chamber itself recoiled. Arkeia flinched, clutching her arms as script blazed alive beneath her skin, each line a law branding her flesh with loyalty she no longer felt.
"You forget your place, beast," Mar'aya declared, her voice ringing like law struck upon an anvil.
"Oh, I remember it well," Balfazar replied smoothly, bowing his head in mock-gallantry. "Right next to yours. Or perhaps… just above it."
Her wings flared, the sound of burning commandments filling the air. "Your arrogance knows no bounds—You wear its heresy like silk. You are not a threat—you are an infestation, a shadow that thinks itself fire."
Balfazar smirked, tilting his head with boyish cruelty. "Is that praise, or are you merely trying to see me blush?"
Aethon's chuckle slid across the chamber like a knife against glass. "She's circling you like a hawk, brother. Must be love."
The chamber stiffened. Crusaders flinched, monks gasped. Then—Mar'aya laughed, bright and merciless, her voice shaking the braziers.
"Such confidence. Such arrogance. You speak like a monarch of dreams, yet you are no more than the rot that festers in silence. You are a wound given shape."
She paced toward him, each step radiant, terrible, her eyes twin verdicts unblinking. "I could unmake you with a whisper."
Balfazar's smile did not falter; it grew. "Then whisper," he said softly, as though granting her permission. "And learn."
His gaze gleamed, Promised Eye flickering beneath its seal. His voice unfurled like scripture rewritten mid-breath.
"I come as superior. As equal. As opposite. As One. I am the mirror you dread, the verdict you cannot write, the truth your Balance will not suffer to name."
For the briefest breath, Mar'aya's radiance faltered—the golden fire of her wings stuttering like a candle caught in a draft. A muscle tightened at her jaw, the smallest fracture in her carved serenity. Then the light flared hotter, sharper, as though to erase the weakness.
"You profane what you cannot comprehend," she said—her tone steady, yet sharpened by the strain of speaking over the echo of his blasphemy. Her radiance flared, and with a laugh bright and merciless, she pressed on:
"You are neither my equal nor my superior. There is no justice in what you are."
"There is no justice in what you serve," he answered, serene as if delivering a prayer. "Only stasis. Only chains."
The hall groaned under unseen pressure, runes dimming and flaring in violent alternation. The air itself seemed caught between bowing and breaking.
Arkeia clutched her head. Her thoughts fractured. Two voices warred within her—judgment and truth, order and One.
"Your stain bleeds into everything," Mar'aya hissed, her voice carrying the crack of breaking stone. "You are a product of error. A thing. A parasite feeding on the marrow of meaning."
"I am freedom," Balfazar answered, calm as still water.
Mar'aya lifted her hand, and visions unfurled in the air behind her like torn banners—worlds undone in his shadow, oceans boiling into ash, temples overturned and swallowed by fire, priests twisted into grotesque mockeries, their mouths spilling hymns of untruth.
"This is your gift!" she thundered. "A blasphemy made flesh—"
"And yet," Balfazar whispered, stepping through the images as though they were smoke, "all that fell… was false."
Her eyes blazed. "You dare speak over me?"
"With pleasure," Aethon cut in, smirking. "Do go on, brother—we do so adore when you interrupt divinity."
Her wings stiffened, radiant and rigid, the sound of commandments shattering in their movement. "You are more than infestation—you are a blight upon this earth, chaos given thought. A storm that believes itself sovereign."
"Careful," Balfazar said lightly, his smile curving sharper. "You're starting to sound almost fond of me."
Mar'aya turned toward him, disdain carved into every flawless line of her face. Balfazar only smiled wider, as though her contempt were incense offered at his altar.
She laughed then—a sound that cracked through the Sanctum like thunder rolling over shattered mountains. "Your charm," she said, voice bright with cruel delight, "is amusing—rare, even… unique."
Her smile curved like a blade sheathed in silk, and her vast wings unfurled in radiant splendor, light cascading outward in waves that battered stone and soul alike, a silent reminder that here, in this place, she was dominion.
"I could make better use of you," she said, her voice low, honeyed with judgment. "You wear your mask well—beautiful, composed, an actor in flesh. I have not taken a consort in millennia…"
She circled him with deliberate grace, each step echoing like ritual, her eyes tracing him as though he were some rare and perilous specimen. "Yes… there is something almost pleasing in you. That calamity might yet be molded—if I willed it—into my delight."
Her crown flared, and her tone hardened to mockery.
"You'd make a fine adornment, a lovely plaything. Chaos tamed in my bed—yes, perhaps that is your highest calling."
From the sidelines, Aethon let out a low, sharp whistle, his grin widening.
"Caution, goddess—you're reaching for more than even your holiness could bless."
A sudden stillness drowned the room.
Balfazar's smile broke.
Slowly. Surgically.
Both hearts within his chest ignited—not with lust, but with wrath that pulsed like suns collapsing into themselves.
"…You believe I would copulate with a Pillar God?"
His voice sank lower than mortal throats could bear, a resonance dredged from beneath the bones of creation. The air quivered; the runes flared and recoiled.
Mar'aya's laugh was sharp, brittle, and blasphemous all at once. "You jest. Wouldn't you prefer the divine embrace of order… to the cold arms of the void?"
Balfazar leaned forward, shadows folding closer about him like a second skin. His tone was quiet, absolute.
"I was born in that cold. I made it warm. It is not horror to me—it is home."
Her gaze narrowed, hungry and mocking. "I offer you worship at my altar. A throne beside me. And you expect me to believe you would deny such a blessing? I do so fancy a man who can fight… You have an opportunity, Promised One. Reconsider."
Disdain scorched his words as he answered, each syllable falling like an iron seal.
"I bend the knee to but one woman—and you are not her."
The Promised Eye twitched beneath its seal as his voice deepened.
"Twelve chains hold her. Twelve chains will break."
His gaze locked upon Mar'aya's burning eyes, unblinking, a verdict in itself.
Her breath faltered—not from exhaustion, but from disbelief. A god, denied. She who was Balance, who was Law, now stood before a man who stared upon her as though she were nothing more than parchment waiting to be torn.
"I uphold existence," she spat, wings trembling, sparks of judgment flaring from her feathers. "Without me, the very spine of reality would falter. And yet you—malformed rot—you reject me?"
Balfazar's smile returned, but it was stripped of charm, honed to cruelty.
"Uphold existence? No. You shackle her. You bind her to law—to concepts she never asked to bear. You are not her savior—you are why She suffers."
The air cracked. Her wings flared violently, feathers erupting into golden sparks that screamed like commandments breaking. Sigils spun wild in the air, their geometry collapsing as they failed to contain her indignation.
"You insolent piece of filth…" Mar'aya's voice cracked like a verdict breaking across the heavens. "You are no divine. You are less than insects—you are nothing!"
Balfazar tilted his head, a motion almost boyish in its mockery.
"And yet," he said softly, smile curling, "you're angry."
Her eyes seared hotter, composure fraying, embers of wrath licking behind the mask of balance. "I am of the Twelve. Without me, reality would tilt into madness!"
"Then tilt it, goddess," he murmured, his voice low, dangerous, inviting. "Let the madness breathe…"
Her radiance flared, wings arcing wide, the air trembling beneath their span. Her voice struck like lightning across a storm-drowned sea.
"Who do you think you are?"
Aethon's laugh rang from the shadows, smooth and delighted, like wine poured into poison.
"Oh, you shouldn't have asked her that…"
Balfazar's robes twitched—folds of void tightening as though restraining a storm. He stepped forward, and the shadows recoiled from him only to gather closer, clinging like devoted thralls.
His voice rolled out in layered echoes, every phrase spoken by a thousand unseen mouths.
"I am the constant… and the anomaly."
He took another step, and the braziers dimmed, their flames bowing toward him.
"I am the truth beneath the lies."
The runes across the marble writhed as he spoke, scripture bleeding from the walls.
"I am the undivine."
The Sanctum itself seemed to shudder, geometry bending as if the very stones remembered him. He leaned forward, his smile gone, his whisper heavier than thunder, intimate as blasphemy:
"I am paradox… I am—"
And the world froze in fear. The breath of the Sanctum halted.
"—Rez'xanth."
The name did not sound; it tore. The walls wept golden light, columns cracked, and the ceiling groaned like a sky about to collapse.
The Sanctum wailed in agony.
Sigils cracked like glass beneath an unseen weight.
Columns bent and recoiled all at once, like reeds caught in opposing tides.
The ceiling wept golden tears of light, that vanished before it touched the ground.
The floor quaked under the strain. The sacred geometry warped, lines bowing into impossible curves.
Solid structure began to melt, glass move like liquid.
The runes of judgment spasmed, their rhythm breaking into stutters and gasps.
Caelinda gasped as the runes across her flesh flared in violent recognition, searing like brands of revelation. Her voice quivered with rapture, yet rang with command:
"O' golden one… let the world gaze once more."
Her face was alight with obsession, every line of her expression consumed by awe.
Voidstor purred like a blade being drawn across a whetstone.
"Balfy, she trembles…" he murmured. "Like a mouse—should I eats her?"
Arkeia's mind cracked open. Her name is Law. His name… is Truth.
Her runes shifted beneath her skin—it burned, it ached, it yearned. The sensation was neither curse nor blessing, but something in between: a reminder that her flesh was being written upon by truths she had never chosen.
And before that thought could settle—reality itself recoiled.
Balfazar's robe of shadows quivered, then split apart, dissolving into four colossal wings of voidlight and shifting scripture. Space warped beneath their span; columns leaned, runes faltered, and the Sanctum's geometry bent to redraw itself around him.
The Promised Eye opened—black sclera devouring light, emerald iris burning like a verdict yet to be spoken. From its edge fell a single tear of violet, glinting as it struck the floor with a sound that made the Sanctum hold its breath.
He rose—towering now beyond the scale of men, his form stretching until even the pillars seemed diminished beneath him. Emerald runes blazed across his bare chest, patterns that refused to stay still, shifting like half-remembered truths glimpsed in dreams one was never meant to recall.
And then the world forgot itself.
Reality shattered—night and day poured into the coliseum together, bleeding across the heavens until clouds laced with stardust birthed nebulae above the dome. The ground rippled like water, debris drifting upward as though gravity had resigned. Raindrops of star-fire fell in slow suspension. The sun and moon circled one another in a feverish dance, their mirrored afterimages lagging a heartbeat behind, smearing the sky with ghostlight.
Sound became visible. Thought brushed against the skin like touch. Existence tripped over its own laws and landed facing the wrong way—walls, columns, and floor fracturing into overlapping visions, a dozen realities pressed into one moment before collapsing in violent unison. The air quaked with the aftershock, and the Sanctum's bones melted and reformed in a slow, crumbling tide.
In Arkeia's eyes, Balfazar fractured into a flicker of layered selves: the man, the child, the voidborn anti-god. Her breath caught—she gasped and nearly fell to her knees.
Aethon grinned, eyes alight like a man watching the sunrise burn the world.
"There… he… is…"
Mar'aya faltered, a single step breaking the immaculate poise that had seemed unshakable. Her radiance cracked, awe bleeding through the armor of her composure. She felt it—danger unbound, a tide swelling through the sanctum, vast and merciless, no longer certain she could command its shores.
"Stop this," she breathed, her voice trembling between demand and plea. "If you go further—"
Balfazar's gaze burned violet, his smile a scar cut across reality itself.
"Then teach me," he said, every word reverberating like a verdict already carved in stone. "Pass judgment. And try—try to survive your own verdict."
The runes across his chest quivered, then burst outward in emerald brilliance. Tendrils of inky light writhed free, coiling like serpents of living scripture—each stroke a law unmade, each curve a sentence rewritten. They lashed against pillars, threaded through the air, redrawing the geometry of the hall as though order itself had grown porous and could no longer contain its own reflection.
The monks recoiled—one collapsed to his knees, gasping that angels had descended, too radiant to behold. Another shrieked, clawing bloody furrows into his eyes, swearing he saw demons with wings turned to mouths. Crusaders gripped their weapons, but none could lift steel; Edmun's hand locked around his hilt, shame scorching him as his arm defied him. Thalos ground out prayers through his teeth, only to find the words no longer belonged to the god he thought he served.
Some saw angels.
Some saw devils.
Some saw nothing at all—only the unraveling of meaning, a silence vast enough to swallow their names.
From the walls, the etched commandments peeled loose, their lines stretching and bleeding into the air—runes stripped bare, torn into his grasp as though by inverse communion.
The very laws that crowned her power turned inside out, forced to confess their origin, their frailty, their falsehood.
And Mar'aya screamed.
It was not the cry of a goddess in command, but the shattering wail of law itself cracking under strain. Her voice split the sanctum into splinters of sound—half hymn, half shriek—each note bending pillars, rattling runes, and scorching the air with the heat of her fury.
Her halo fissured, shards of molten gold dripping like tears of broken judgment. Wings convulsed behind her, their once-flawless symmetry twisting out of harmony, feathers shimmering like glass struck too hard, fracturing into discordant light.
The braziers guttered. The floor split hairline fractures across its runic lattice, as though Balance itself could no longer bear the weight of her scream.
Monks clasped their ears until blood slicked their fingers. Crusaders dropped to their knees in shame and terror, unable to tell if they were worshiping or begging for mercy. Some wept. Some laughed. One whispered that justice was bleeding, and the words spread like infection through the chamber.
And through the cacophony—Balfazar only smiled. Serene. Radiant. Immutable. As though her scream were not defiance, but the hymn he had been waiting for.
He stepped closer, the void folding around his shadow like a stage curtain drawn tight. His voice cut cleanly through her cry, not raised, not strained—simply sovereign.
"Your scream betrays you. Balance doesn't scream."
Her radiance flickered, her cry faltering for the first time.
"You rage because you feel it. The unraveling. The verdict that is not yours to give—a right reserved for me… alone."
Emerald light from the runes carved across his chest pulsed once, a sovereign heartbeat—like the strike of a gavel against the ribs of creation. The sound echoed deeper than stone, deeper than bone, as if the Sanctum itself had been summoned to bear witness.
"You dare steal from a Pillar, monster!" Mar'aya's voice rang out, fury fraying into desperation, her wings flaring so wide the air split in shrieking heat.
"I do not steal," Balfazar answered, his voice layered, resonant with tones that belonged to no mortal throat—an echo as though the cosmos itself lent him its tongue. "I remember. I return what was buried."
At the edge of the sanctum, Vharn's eyes burned like coals doused in ichor. He lurched forward, half-mad, half-exultant, his voice breaking into a near-song:
"Drink deep, my Lord! Let her judgment be your wine, her law your feast!"
Voidstor's yowl split the air, a sound that was not sound at all but the fracture of reason across every ear that heard it. The braziers guttered in response, their flames bending away from the creature's form.
Mar'aya staggered, her radiance flickering like a torch starved of air. "You wouldn't…" she narrowed her eyes, voice trembling between command and disbelief.
The Promised Eye dilated. Emerald fire swam in its depths, terrible and unblinking.
"…Oh, but I would."
And it pulsed.
A single emission burst from his brow, luminous and absolute, rippling outward in concentric waves that tore through reality itself.
The runes of judgment convulsed as though scalded, their symmetry collapsing, words of law bleeding into nonsense.
Mortals fell, some screaming, some laughing, some silently convulsing in prayer they no longer remembered.
The divinities tethered within the Crusaders shrieked in one voice—and then went silent, their presence extinguished as if smothered beneath a tide of deeper law.
And among the monks—the most devout, whose faith was tempered into iron—did not fall. They resisted. They burned. Emerald fire lit their eyes as prayers split into screams beyond creed.
Flesh warped, veins spilling starlight, bodies refracting into lattices of impossible geometry. For a heartbeat, they bore eternity in mortal frames.
Then, like glass beneath thunder, they burst into clouds of cosmic dust—rising weightless, scattering as uncharted constellations across the vault of the Sanctum.
And in that pulse—they saw him.
Not Balfazar.
But Truth.
Elissa's eyes opened wide, and for the briefest of moments, her gaze locked with Mar'aya's. It was not defiance that gleamed there, but pity—soft, almost tender, unbearably cruel.
"The first," she whispered, her voice dream-sweet and broken, "you won't be the last."
The Sanctum reeled in silence. Dust of the devout still drifted upward, glimmering as if the heavens themselves had begun to molt. Crusaders averted their eyes; monks cowered, unable to reconcile the paradox their faith had birthed. Between collapsing prayer and ascending ash, something irreversible had shifted.
And in that rupture—Arkeia broke.
Arkeia wept.
Tears of revelation. Her flesh glowed with his mark.
She turned to him.
Her voice trembled, but her eyes did not.
"…I see you."
The words struck the chamber like a verdict no goddess had sanctioned.
Mar'aya staggered, her radiance flaring and faltering in the same breath. "You are my children—MINE," she cried, voice cracking with a panic foreign to divinity. Her wings shuddered like a verdict torn in two.
She turned sharply to Arkeia, eyes blazing with injured authority. "You were my chosen. My sword. My light."
Arkeia's lips parted, trembling not with fear but with certainty newly born. "I was," she whispered, her voice a blade slid free of its sheath. "But you were never my freedom."
Her armor shivered with glyphs that no longer bore Mar'aya's seal. They cracked, shifted, and re-etched themselves in Balfazar's mark. The weight of her oath broke like chains, and in their place rose something older, darker, freer.
She knelt, the sound of the act reverberating through every Crusader's bones, shattering what fragments of faith remained.
"I kneel."
Balfazar placed a hand upon her head, his touch both benediction and claim. His smile widened, slow and serene, as if this moment had been written into the marrow of creation.
Elissa smiled faintly, her eyes burning with cursed purpose as though she had waited for this inevitability. "So it begins," she murmured, more to herself than to anyone.
Caelinda's hum, soft and venom-sweet, reached its end. She leaned closer, veil shimmering like oil on water, her voice dripping triumph and jealousy alike.
"Good girl…"
The Crusaders behind them faltered—Edmun choking back a cry, Thalos clutching his blade only to find it frozen in his grasp. Whispers of prayer spilled from trembling lips, but the words curdled into ash before they left their tongues. The monks wailed in dissonant chorus: some clawed at their own faces, others collapsed prostrate in fractured devotion, torn between their goddess and the unholy promise that now stood before them.
They understood her choice. They knew it was wrong.
And yet… they did not want it to be
And Mar'aya—her grief shook the Sanctum, a sound between thunder and lament, as though balance itself had been betrayed. The golden fire in her wings shuddered, no longer the cold blaze of law, but the ragged flare of a mother's anguish. Her cry was not just wrath—it was loss, raw and bottomless, as though her own heart had been ripped from her chest and made to kneel before another.
The sound reverberated through stone and marrow alike, shaking the faithful to their knees. Some wept at the grief in her voice; others trembled at the fury laced within it. For the first time, Balance faltered—not by force, but by sorrow.
And in that fracture, silence bled in. The runes along the walls guttered, their glow sinking into shadow. Even the geometry of the Sanctum hesitated, lines bending as though unsure to which power they now belonged. The air thickened with the weight of choice—devotion, betrayal, revelation—until every breath felt like trespass.
And in the moment before collapse—
Arkeia's final thought coursed through her soul like fire, blistering through every vow, every prayer, every oath she had sworn:
And what if I was born for more than flesh?
What if the chains of creed and crown were never my fate?
What if I was meant to be more… beside him?
The certainty that had once been her anchor turned traitor, slipping through her grasp like sand. She looked upon Mar'aya and saw ruin where once she had seen radiance—a goddess unmade by grief, a mother betrayed by her own child. And yet she could not return to her. That path was ash.
She turned inward and found him—Balfazar—standing not as a man, but as promise incarnate. His silence, his smile, his unyielding presence: the forbidden gravity pulling her beyond the reach of law. In him she saw not faith, but freedom. Not service, but sovereignty shared.
She saw herself reflected in Mar'aya's ruin.
She saw herself mirrored in Balfazar's promise.
The symbols that once bound her oath seared bright, then unraveled into flame, their light consuming the edges of her mortal certainty. Her armor shimmered with alien glyphs, her skin thrummed with a new hymn, and her heart did not falter this time—it thundered in answer.
And the veil began to burn.