Elito planted the Eclipse Blade. The arena fractured into a dozen screaming fissures as scarlet geometry folded and pillars collapsed into spirals of bone and mirror. Lacolone braced, sensing a new pull in the air. Elito smiled coldly. "I will show you the place that made me." The Kid tapped his twin knives together; space around them sang. The King withdrew — not in cowardice, but to bring them to his sanctum.
Reality thinned as the group was swept through a tunnel of runes and faces. Eden clutched his head as memories and visions whirled. Jessica screamed as light tore at her hearing, tasting metal and salt. Valgor and Walid exchanged grim looks. Maya held Lacolone's sleeve tightly. They were dragged to a place the elite called the 33-Degree.
They spilled out into a vast black plain dominated by a colossal floating triangle. At its center, an impossibly large eye opened and watched. Geometry warped; stars hung like teeth in the periphery. The Eye blinked — a sound like worlds collapsing. Lacolone gripped his katana, eyes burning scarlet-white. Elito stood at the triangle's base, small as a god. Here the elite sought coronation. Here kings were made.
A ring of pillars rose, each carved with impossible script and faces. Elito gestured; images flashed — empires, plagues, holy wars, and thrones. "Whoever stands within the Triangle becomes more than ruler — they become the axis of the world." The Kid laughed softly. "Many have tried. Few succeeded." Maya whispered, "So this is the heart of the cult." A throne of geometry and appetite.
Four figures coalesced atop the triangle's points — avatars of epochs, neither human nor myth. First, a figure of ash and crown — The Regent of Ash. Second, a towering figure plated in rusted iron — The Iron Consul. Third, a luminous, warped seraph with a ledger — The Archivist-Seraph. Fourth, a hollowed, glasslike monarch whose face fractured into maps — The Cartarch. They were the four who once bent the world's spine.
The Triangle's Eye rolled, revealing an inner ring of names carved in blood. Eden read, voice small: "These are the names of those who visited… and ruled." Elito bowed slightly in reverence. The Kid murmured, "We owe everything to their covenants." Valgor gritted his teeth. "Then they'll answer for what they made." The living pantheon returned to judge or be judged.
The Regent of Ash stepped forward; battlefields of old flared to life — dying armies wreathed in the four's echoes. Walid snarled: "Your rule stained the world." The Iron Consul's voice boomed like factories: "We steadied chaos into order." The Archivist-Seraph opened its ledger; names burned to barter fate. The Cartarch unmasks maps twisting souls into borders. They did not deny the blood of history — they celebrated it.
A hush fell. The Triangle's Eye narrowed; its sight dug into every chest. The Regent of Ash spoke: "A fifth was promised." Elito tilted his head: "To be a fifth is to be final. We wait the claimant." Walid's eyes flashed; he stepped forward. The Cartarch's whisper curled like a map: "Who seeks to complete the crown?" A challenger named the idols; a man named himself Messiah.
Walid planted his blade into the ground, raising his voice. "Who is the fifth? It is you — the holy books, the idols, and laws that chained us. You have been the voice that claimed rulership." Shock rippled through the gathered. Lacolone's jaw tightened; Maya's hand went to her throat. A challenger had claimed his right.
The Triangle's Eye pulsed, considering Walid's proclamation. The Iron Consul laughed like collapsing beams. "Arrogant mortal. Claimants die here." Walid drew a sigil across his chest with his blade, blood and light entwining. "I will not bow," he said. The Regent of Ash raised a spear of dust and bone. Kingship was not given. It was taken or forged.
The Regent of Ash flooded the plain with ruined citadels; colossal fists of rubble rose to crush Walid. He charged, blade humming with newly-claimed sigils, slicing the fist in half. Dust and memories poured like blood. The Regent smiled: "You cut memory itself." Walid: "Then I'll carve new history." A war of eras broke at a man's feet.
The Iron Consul's metallic legions surged, gears and rust-studded soldiers. The Archivist-Seraph chanted, twisting thought into obedience. Lacolone intervened to shield Maya from a sermon that would steal names. Valgor barreled into the iron ranks, fists igniting with Riftquake. Walid cut through a rusted banner. "I am no doctrine!" They struck doctrine with a living blade.
The Cartarch painted borders in the air — lines clamped around hearts, isolating allies. Eden nearly collapsed as a boundary isolated his sigil. Maya tried to stitch it with soul-thread, but it became knots. Walid uprooted a map-column and hurled it. The Cartarch hissed: "You sever what binds." Maps became shackles; chains became rules.
The Archivist-Seraph opened its ledger; lifetimes spilled as ink. Names in the air attempted to root in the survivors, sapping memory. Lacolone screamed as his past shifted. Walid drove his blade into the ledger, cutting ink and pages alike. The Archivist recoiled. "Who dares unwrite the written?" He struck at the gospel of power itself.
The Triangle's Eye widened; its gaze forced each hero into personal trials — the same as before but deeper, older. The Regent whispered of conquest; the Iron Consul sang of order through combustion. Maya clung to Lacolone; both felt the tug at their names. Valgor roared, smashing a pillar to silence the whisper. Walid roared: "Names are forged by the living!" The Eye sought to claim what memory refused.
Walid stepped alone into the Eye's center, blade raised like a cross between sermon and sword. "If you are the threshold, then here I become fulcrum!" The Regent of Ash struck, a spear of ruin aimed at his heart. Walid cleaved it apart, blood and light mixing. Around him, allies fought to hold back the four, giving him the chance to stand. One man dared to be the fulcrum of a broken world.
The survivors rallied behind Walid — Lacolone slicing a path through iron, Maya patching wounds as she ran. The Kid watched, amused and unsettled. Elito observed from the triangle's base, novelty in his smile. Eden's sigil flared to life, empowered by Walid's defiance. Valgor slammed into the Eye's outer ring, cracking its skin. A single claim can topple an edifice — if enough hands pull at its seams.
Walid stood within the Triangle's Eye, blade raised into the staring iris. The four Sovereigns reared as if struck, their auras splintering. Elito stood behind them, watchful and amused, the Kid beside him, knives at rest. Around the triangle, the heroes — battered but united — prepared for the impossible: to either seize the Fifth and upend the rulers, or be ground beneath the ancient machine of kingship. One claim. One blade. The world once ruled by four now feared the rise of a fifth — and Walid's name echoed into the triangle's hungry dark.