The cosmos where the god once ruled was in ruins. Stars bled, worlds cracked, and the last echoes of false divinity faded into silence. Yet in the center of the ruin, the being that had once reigned supreme knelt.
The Outer God Thariel, the Maw of Stars, was vast, its form a shifting storm of black suns and devouring spirals. For eons, mortals had whispered its name with terror. Now, it bowed in chains of Lucien's making.
Lucien stood before it, hands clasped loosely behind his back, expression calm, amused, and faintly curious.
"I should erase you," he said, voice soft, but sharp enough to cut through galaxies. "But you're… interesting. Not in strength—you're nothing before me. But in your persistence. So I'll allow you to remain. Not as a god. Not as a tyrant. As my servant."
The chains of void tightened, burning symbols of inevitability across Thariel's writhing form. The Outer God shuddered, its essence convulsing, yet it could not resist. For the first time in its existence, it knew what it meant to kneel.
"Yes…" Thariel's voice was broken thunder, jagged and hollow. "I… will serve."
Lucien's faint smile widened. "Good. You'll be more useful alive, as an example." He turned, cloak flowing like a shadow across eternity. "Stand. From now on, you are no longer the Maw of Stars. You are mine."
Far away, across the endless void, a council gathered.
A vast chamber that existed outside universes themselves—a table of endless black stone, surrounded by thrones carved from dimensions long dead. This was the Conclave of the Outer Gods, a place where only the most powerful of their kind sat.
At the head of the table sat their leader: Nytheris, the Crownless Sovereign, a being whose form was a shifting crown of burning halos, each one humming with the weight of collapsed realities. Nytheris did not move, but his presence pressed on all lesser gods like a commandment.
Around the table, the reactions rippled.
"He… enslaved Thariel?" one god hissed, its body a writhing ocean of knives. "Impossible. Thariel devoured a hundred star systems with a breath. To bend him is—"
"—to mock us all," another interrupted, its head a sun that screamed endlessly.
The chamber shook with dissonant voices, fear laced with outrage.
Nytheris finally spoke, voice calm, deeper than silence. "No. It is not mockery. It is… revelation."
The council quieted. Even gods feared the Sovereign's words.
"Lucien Dreamveil," Nytheris whispered the name as though testing it, tasting inevitability in each syllable. "The one outside all. The Sole Exception. His presence disrupts balance, his existence denies rule. And now, he has taken one of us as his pawn."
The table seethed.
"He will hunt us."
"He will unravel us."
"He is not bound to the old laws—he is beyond them."
Nytheris raised a hand, silencing the storm of voices. His burning halos flickered. "Then we must decide. Fight him… or acknowledge him."
The thought alone was blasphemy. For gods who ruled over eons, who shaped galaxies and drank faith like wine, the idea of kneeling to one outside their pantheon was unthinkable.
Yet Lucien's shadow already stretched across their empires.
One by one, their gazes turned back to the Sovereign, who alone did not look shaken. He sat in silence, eyes of collapsing halos fixed on the void beyond the chamber.
"Let him rise further," Nytheris said finally. "Let him show the depth of his arrogance. When he reveals himself fully… then, and only then, will we decide whether to destroy him… or to kneel."
The Round Table trembled with unspoken fear. For the first time in eternity, the Outer Gods did not feel like predators. They felt like prey.
And far away, Lucien's smile only grew.