The tremors began at dawn.
The sky over the capital split with cracks of crimson light, thunder without clouds. The nobles stumbled from their estates, guards clutched their halberds with pale knuckles, and the streets filled with voices crying out to gods who did not answer. Mana itself boiled in the air — thick, heavy, choking — as though the world's veins had been poisoned.
Children screamed as their bodies spasmed with mana sickness. Mothers fell to their knees as their limbs refused to obey. Even seasoned magisters collapsed, clutching their chests, their carefully maintained reservoirs of mana betraying them in violent spasms.
And yet, in the midst of this chaos, there was a silence.
Atop the obsidian steps of the High Palace sat the King. Not a muscle shifted in his jaw. His crown tilted with the weight of the unseen storm, but his back did not bend, his hands did not tremble.
"The earth quakes… but the throne stands still," whispered one noble through bloody lips as he collapsed to his knees.
Lightning cleaved the heavens, striking the mountains beyond the city. Shadows of something vast — wings, chains, burning eyes — stretched across the land, cast from a realm not their own. The visions of Hell's war bled through the fabric of reality, and men wept at the sight.
Still, the King did not move.
Mana writhed around him like serpents, a storm threatening to crush even the strongest mages into dust. Yet his gaze was steady, fixed forward, as if daring the very heavens to try and bring him down.
One by one, nobles fell in convulsions. Priests shouted prayers. Some fainted, others clawed at their eyes as visions of fire burned into their minds. But when their gazes, however broken, returned to the obsidian throne, they saw him — unbent, unbroken.
And that stillness became their anchor.
"The King does not tremble…" the words spread in whispers. "Then neither shall we."
Outside the palace, chaos reigned. Cults of the Black Eye whispered in alleys, using the tremors as proof of prophecy. Farmers in distant villages saw their harvests rot overnight. Rivers turned black in places. Towers cracked under their own mana weight. The world was bending.
But in the heart of the capital, the image of one man upon his throne became legend.
And so the record would remember it not as a day of collapse, but as the day the Absolute King did not bow, even as the world itself began to fall.