Rain. And blood.
Those two elements comprised the entirety of reality upon the churned, ruined fields outside the walls of Aethelburg. The rain did not merely fall; it lashed down, as if the heavens were scourging the naked body of the earth, washing the warmth from twisted armor and diluting the blood into a watery slurry the color of rusted memory. And the blood—thick as tar—steamed in the cold air, carrying the metallic scent of extinguished life and the heavy, cloying taste of terror, overpowering even the smell of the trampled mud.
Amidst the carpet of corpses—mangled Fiends and soldiers of the old Black Dynasty—a solitary figure stood like a basalt pillar, challenging both heaven and earth. His black armor possessed no color; rather, it was a void of light, a hole in the fabric of reality where every photon seemed to be sucked in and obliterated. He did not roar. He did not celebrate. He only breathed. His breaths were slow, almost meditative, the white plumes of mist dissolving into the rain like the soul of a creature just fading away. He was the epicenter of the silence that follows the storm.
One final Netherion, massive as a demon bear, let out a roar of ultimate despair and charged. His battle axe, wreathed in dark energy, inscribed a deadly arc through the air. The solitary figure did not retreat. He merely tilted his body—a minimalist, almost unreal movement. The axe blade grazed his shoulder by a hair's breadth, slicing the air with a short, sharp vwoom.
In the moment his opponent overextended, he pivoted.
Midenismos, the blade in his hand, was solidified night. It did not cut, nor did it slash. The world did not tear. Simply put, wherever that edge passed, matter ceased to connect. The Netherion froze, his eyes like glowing embers widening in a reflection of pure horror. There was no wound, no spray of blood. But then, his upper body slowly slid from its lower half along an invisible seam, falling with a wet thud into the red mud. The Netherion died not from an injury, but because he had been severed from his own existence.
The battle was over.
Skoeidos glanced at Midenismos. The blade remained eerily clean, as if it had swallowed the souls of those it touched. He turned his back on the final enemy and strode through the piles of the dead. The rhythmic clanking of his armor was a monotonous tolling amidst the ceaseless rain. He stepped over a tattered banner bearing the crest of the old king—a red vulture, now torn asunder by a clean slash. Mediocre. The symbol of those who knew only how to roar, never how to act.
He stopped beside the corpse of a soldier, picking up a spear still slick with the blood and brain matter of his own kind. With one hand, he snapped the metal shaft with a crisp crack, leaving only a long, jagged stake. He drove the blunt end hard into the earth. Coldly, he lifted the body of a dark general—whose ornate armor was now nothing more than a useless coffin—and decisively impaled him. A wet shunk echoed.
He repeated the action. Again. And again. There was no trace of emotion in his movements; only the cold majesty of a natural law in motion. Every enemy spear became a gibbet for its owner. A forest of twisted stakes began to sprout from the mud, bearing human fruit that ripened rapidly under the leaden sky, accompanied by the ceaseless cawing of crows in the rain.
Finally, he approached the "noblest" corpse, clad in gold-inlaid armor with rubies that had now lost their luster. The old king. The man who had thrown open the kingdom's gates to the abyss on the back of sweet, poisonous promises. Skoeidos lifted the man's limp body. He chose the highest spear, skewering the corpse upon it like a beetle pinned for a collection, planting it on the hill directly facing the city gates. He did not look at the man's face. To him, this was merely a message written in meat and bone.
When the grey dawn began to bleed through the clouds, it was not an army that stepped out from the city gates, but commoners—ghosts of their former selves, emerging from the mass grave known as Aethelburg. They looked at the forest of stakes, at the familiar corpse hanging highest of all, and then at the solitary figure standing amidst it all. Under the first weak rays of sunlight, his features—handsome, imposing—were revealed, his eyes the color of blood rubies. It was a beauty more lethal than the hallucinations of any forbidden drug.
The silence thickened until it was palpable.
Then, an old man in tattered robes stepped forward, trembling. In his hands, he held a golden crown, simple and dented. He dared not look Skoeidos in the eye, kneeling instead in the mud and offering it up.
"My lord," his voice rasped like sandpaper. "The kingdom... it is... yours now."
Skoeidos looked down at the faintly glittering crown, then at the crowd. He saw no admiration in their eyes, only a terror that had become as natural as breathing; it had merely changed masters. He understood. This was not loyalty. This was a desperate transaction: trading a familiar demon for a stranger, in the fragile, singular hope that the new monster might be less hungry.
He stepped forward, his gauntleted hand gently lifting the crown. It was light. Lighter than a dagger. Midenismos was a promise of the end. This dented piece of metal was a curse of the beginning. A curse of endless days of judgment, construction, and rule. He had come to excise a tumor at their request, but the petitioner was dead—having used his own blood to summon Skoeidos. He had never intended to become the physician who stitched the wound. They offered the crown as the ancients offered sacrifices to a ferocious god, simply begging to be left alone.
He did not wear it. He merely held it, turned, and walked toward the city gates. The crowd parted like water before the prow of a ship.
The throne room was a portrait of decay. Royal tapestries embroidered with vultures were shredded, the birds seeming to writhe in the unravelling threads. Stained glass windows that once depicted magnificent patterns had suffered the same fate as the dynasty, leaving behind jagged lines and headless statues staring down in silence. The marble throne bore a large crack running through it like a bolt of black lightning. Skoeidos stepped through the rubble, the sound of his armor striking a discordant note, clearer than ever.
He walked straight to the throne.
And sat.
The sound of iron meeting stone rang out sharply. He placed the crown on the armrest. Midenismos was sheathed and propped beside him. He leaned back, chin resting on his hand, elbow on the right armrest. The shadows in the great hall seemed to recognize their new master. They slithered from the corners, from beneath broken furniture, flowing toward the throne like a rising tide, wrapping around the new king's form like a living cloak. His shadow swallowed the crack in the throne, making it appear terrifyingly whole.
An Abyssord, a Lord of Tartarus, now sat upon the throne of humanity, right here in Anthromos. On the armrest, the crown of man lay small and silent. But the invisible weight it carried, Skoeidos knew, would be more persistent than any blade.
One year.
To an entity born of the Genesis Era, it was merely a skipped beat in the universe's breathing. But one year on the throne of Anthromos was a millennium pressing down upon his shoulders.
He still sat upon that throne, his back perfectly straight, one hand resting beside the crown, which was now coated in a thin layer of time's dust. In the other hand, he held a parchment scroll. Not a dark pact, nor a strategic map. It was a report on grain yields. Mundane figures of wheat, livestock, rainfall... they danced before his eyes like a swarm of meaningless insects. The lifeblood of a kingdom, he realized, was woven from threads as trivial as these.
He had faced magical storms that tore continents apart. His enemies now had no physical form for Midenismos to sever. They were a plague gnawing at the west, a drought cracking the earth in the south, the desperate silence in a farmer's eyes as he looked up at a cloudless sky. This was a war without glory, without victory, only the endless erosion of responsibility. Using will to impose order upon the chaos of humanity was a thousand times more exhausting than leveling a fortress. The cold of the stone seeped through his armor—a cold not of temperature, but of stasis. This throne, more unyielding than any peak in Mons Pessimus of Tartarus or the Palati Stereoma mountains at the edge of Northern Dikaios, had become his cage.
The crack behind his back remained, a reminder that this kingdom was built on broken things. He allowed no one to repair it.
The throne room had changed. The torn tapestries were replaced by thick wool drapes of deep indigo; the broken windows were refitted with clear glass, allowing the naked light of day to enter. No dark symbols, no macabre torches. Only cleanliness, solemnity, and... ruthless efficiency.
The silence was broken by footsteps. The old Prime Minister knelt, his voice struggling to hide a tremor.
"Your Majesty. There is... a guest."
Skoeidos did not look up from the scroll. "Guest?" His voice was low and even, sucking the air out of the room.
"From... Elysium."
Only then did he raise his head. Eyes the color of blood rubies stared into the void. Elysium. Finally. He placed the parchment on the armrest, beside the crown.
"Let them in."
As the Prime Minister turned away, he felt it. The air thickened, as if space itself was contracting. The torches on the walls suddenly lost their warm orange hue, burning instead with blades of cold light. Outside, the clatter of the guards' armor fell silent. They froze, gripping their weapons not to fight, but because a primal awe had seized their muscles. The entire citadel seemed to hold its breath.
There was no sound of a door opening, no wind. The light at the threshold curled upon itself, condensing into a silent vortex.
From within it, a figure stepped out, glancing at the "forest of stakes"—now bleached bones—far beyond the window.
Light did not flood in behind her; she was the source, displacing the air in the room. The smell of old blood and the fear ingrained in the stones were purged. Every shadow recoiled, not because it was illuminated, but because it was afraid. To Skoeidos, her presence was a high-pitched note, pure to the point of pain, a harmony so absolute it became oppressive. The Tartarian instinct within him roared, not in hostility, but in the primal discomfort of facing the complete antithesis of his nature.
Theotia. An Empyrean.
She needed no introduction; her existence was a declaration. She wore robes as white as the snow at the southernmost edge of Anthromos, woven from solidified moonlight. Her beauty was not meant to stir desire; it was the beauty of a theorem: absolute, emotionless, and indisputable. At her hip, the blade Lupusnia rested, radiating an aura even purer than its master.
She stopped in the center of the hall, at a perfect distance. And she observed.
The mind of an Empyrean does not think. It assesses. It cross-references reality against the great tapestry of Law. It had predicted a den of chaos, a tyrant gloating over suffering. But the reality was different. A throne room ordered to the point of coldness. The only dark energy converged at a single point—the one sitting on the throne, reading an agricultural report.
She saw the crack in the throne, the carefully repaired windows, smelled the beeswax and cinnamon in the air. This was not a monster's lair. This was a ruler's palace.
A paradox.
To Theotia, an entity woven from law, this paradox was more disturbing than pure chaos. Chaos was a natural enemy. This was something else. It was like a wrong note in the universe's perfect symphony. But this note was not merely out of tune—it was writing a new melody, a dissonant harmony that somehow balanced itself. This being's will did not just resist order; it was shaping a new order from the ashes.
Finally, her eyes—the purple of twilight—locked with his.
In Skoeidos's blood-ruby gaze, she saw a universe unformed, a storm of void imprisoned by a singular will.
In Theotia's twilight eyes, he saw the absolute stillness of a star that had died millions of years ago, its cold light only just reaching this reality.
In a moment outside of time, the room vanished. Only two primordial principles of creation—Chaos and Order—regarded one another through the eyes of a king and a god.
"Elysium," Skoeidos spoke, breaking the silence. His voice was deep and heavy, like hammers grinding against paving stones. "Has sent its most powerful Empyrean here. Should I feel honored, or insulted, O Theotia of Destiny?"
Theotia's voice rang out, not as sound pushed by breath, but as a vibration of space itself. It was crystalline, devoid of joy or anger, humming like glass.
"Honor and insult are warped coins in the pockets of mortals, Sovereign of Dikaios," she said. The title was a precise scalpel. Not "Your Majesty," a submission. Nor "Skoeidos," a false familiarity. Just a cold fact tied to this land. "Elysium does not feel. We only act when necessary."
Her bluntness was more brutal than a declaration of war. The gentle Empyrean light in the room rippled, like a lake disturbed by a thought. Deep within Skoeidos, a hurricane of void began to form—a primal urge to tear apart that static perfection. He strangled it. Immediately. When will tightened around instinct, the shadows in the corners, which had been recoiling, suddenly solidified, motionless as frozen ink. Rage was a tool, not a shackle. That lesson had been paid for in fire and blood.
The hand resting on the parchment tightened slightly.
"Necessity," he repeated, dropping his voice an octave, thickening the air. A speck of dust fell from the ceiling, disintegrating before it touched the floor. The shadows around the throne silently elongated, licking at the light. "So, the existence of a kingdom not torn apart by war, where people do not starve by the roadside, is a threat requiring the visitation of an Empyrean? I would have thought Elysium would be pleased to see a corner of Anthromos 'cleaned up'."
In the word "cleaned," the sour taste of blood and ash could be tasted. He knew they viewed Tartarus as filth. But the forest of stakes outside the gate—his method of cleaning—was hardly fragrant either.
Theotia did not flinch. Her eyes were as still as a meteorite lake.
"Clean and dirty are the language of the senses. Order and chaos are principles," she replied, like an alchemist correcting a flawed formula. "A wolf hunting a rabbit is order. Continents shifting is also order. Elysium does not interfere."
She paused, her gaze piercing through him, analyzing every crack in the throne, every thread in the carpet.
"But a human kingdom, ruled by a Monarch Abyssord, one who once governed one of the twelve realms of Tartarus, using the power of chaos to impose an order... That is not natural order." She took a step forward, the click of her heel against the stone sounding sharp, purging the heaviness in the air. "That is a paradox."
As she spoke, Lupusnia at her hip chimed a crystal-clear note, the sound of Law itself. Almost instantly, Midenismos, leaning against the throne, responded with absolute silence. It did not make a sound; it swallowed her chime, creating a terrifying gap in hearing—a rest note of the void. One sword sang the melody of creation; the other imposed the silence of destruction.
Her voice remained even, but now it carried the weight of galaxies. "And a paradox does not merely exist, Sovereign. It is a seed sown into the tapestry of Destiny, from which sprout countless paths that never existed before."
Her gaze looked distant, beyond the stone walls. "Some branches may lead to a golden age Elysium has never envisioned. Others lead to destruction far worse than the abyss you left behind. And the majority... they lead to a reality outside both order and chaos. Something unnamed."
She looked straight into his eyes. "Your 'order' was never an error. It is the source of all possibilities. Elysium cannot predict the future of this place, not because it has vanished, but because now there are too many futures."
For the first time, Skoeidos felt something other than indifference from her. It was the curiosity of a scientist looking at an incalculable variable in a cosmic equation.
"You are not a threat, Midaminotis... No, you are now Skoeidos von Dikaios of Aethelburg," Theotia declared, the words carrying a completely new weight. "You are an anomaly to be observed. My mission is not to judge or punish. My mission is to understand. To see if this paradox will collapse upon itself, or... evolve."
A red gleam, small as a pinprick, flashed in the depths of Skoeidos's eyes. A Monarch Abyssord of the depths, one who could break reality with a single slash, was being viewed as a specimen in an alchemy lab. Theotia's words were not meant to be insulting, yet they touched the primal pride of an entity more powerful than any slur could reach.
Silence descended again, thick and heavy. Light and darkness wrestled, neither side winning, creating a strange neutral zone between the two.
Then, Skoeidos slowly relaxed his hand. He picked up the parchment scroll again, as if the conversation were merely a passing breeze.
"Then observe, Empyrean," he said, his eyes returning to the figures on grain yields. "But remember, this is my kingdom. And it needs to be fed."
The act was one of absolute dismissal. He had just placed the governance of a mortal kingdom above the concerns of a cosmic entity, turning a confrontation between two principles into mundane administrative work.
And Theotia, for the first time in millennia, felt something her logic could not immediately define.
Interest. Or... perhaps something else about to germinate?
Skoeidos set the parchment down on the stone. The sound rang out like breaking bone in the heavy silence.
Then he stood up.
It was not a body rising, but a center of gravity shifting. There was no clatter of armor, no exerted breath. Only the space around the throne buckled for a fleeting second. The shadow that had swallowed the throne retracted, flowing back into his heels like liquid tar. The crown and Midenismos were left behind. Two symbols of power—one borrowed, one inherent—sat abandoned by the cracked throne. He needed neither to rule.
Skoeidos stepped down from the dais, his black leather boots swallowing all sound.
"Come, if you wish to see," he said, looking toward the worldly light outside.
This was his lecture, a lesson without words. Elysium looked down from the heavens, seeing only abstract models, great flows of energy. They did not smell the sour sweat of despair, did not taste the bitterness of moldy bread. They saw the law, but not the life struggling within it.
Theotia did not answer. She moved to follow, a white shadow behind a black one, keeping a constant distance. Her mind, a crystalline structure of logic, processed immediately: Leaving the center of power. Likely wishes to demonstrate something. Risk is incalculable.
As Skoeidos passed through the great hall, figures huddled against the walls bowed low. No one dared to breathe. The air thickened, not just with fear, but with a twisted reverence. They did not bow to a king. They were prostrating themselves before a natural law that had decided not to crush them today. Theotia glided past, and those mortal eyes pinned themselves even tighter to the stone floor. to them, she and he were no different—two sides of a divine coin, a power beyond comprehension.
They exited the palace through a concealed passage, leading straight into the beating heart of Aethelburg. Skoeidos donned a simple traveler's cloak; the hood did not hide his identity, but it softened his lethal presence.
Immediately, reality assaulted Theotia.
Smells. The scent of hot baked bread from a nearby brick oven wrapped around her, thick as a memory. The smell of leather and the sweat of porters carried a sour tang like lemon on the tongue. The scent of dried herbs from an apothecary pierced her olfactory senses like invisible thorns. In Elysium, the air had no smell; it simply existed.
Sound, too. The clang of a blacksmith's hammer on an anvil, the shrill cry of a woman selling fish, the giggling of children playing, and above all, the ceaseless noise of hundreds of overlapping conversations. In Elysium, the only sound was the harmony of the universe, an eternal music.
This chaos should have been an insult to her being. But within that jarring mess, her divine intellect began to isolate patterns. The law of supply and demand in the hawkers' cries. The laws of physics in the hammer blows. Social laws in the laughter. This was not chaos. This was an ecosystem. Complex, noisy... and painfully alive.
And she recognized what was missing. No beggars. No drunken guards. No theft, nor the smell of Ascension Weed or forbidden narcotics laced in the air. The fear she sensed when soldiers glanced at Skoeidos was not the paralysis of prey. It was a disciplined fear. An invisible electric fence keeping the wolves from tearing each other apart.
Skoeidos felt it all too. But he did not see chaos. He saw a machine. The smell of bread was the result of safe roads. The hammer blows were the result of dwarves finding sanctuary. The children's laughter was a consequence of solid city walls. Everything was connected by a single thread: stability guaranteed by the power of the Abyss.
When the people in the market inadvertently recognized Skoeidos, a wave of silence spread like ripples in water. The noise died out. All activity stopped. Everyone bowed their heads, avoiding his gaze. The fear was still there, plain as day, but it was different from the fear of a year ago. It was no longer the terror of a monster about to devour them. It was the wariness of absolute power, a storm that had passed, leaving them living in the stillness of its eye.
Skoeidos paid them no mind. He walked straight to the bakery where the warmest scent wafted out. The baker, a portly man with a mustache dusted in flour, turned pale as dough. He bowed so low he dropped his tongs.
"Your... Your Majesty."
"How is the price of flour these days?" Skoeidos asked, his voice low as stone.
"Yes... still stable, my lord. Thanks to your grace, the eastern routes are clear. No monsters trouble us."
Skoeidos nodded, a minimalist gesture. He picked up a raisin loaf dusted with sugar, its warmth radiating a tiny life. He placed a gold coin on the counter. He did not take the change.
Then, he did something that caused Theotia's logic to pause. He broke off a piece of the bread, brought it to his mouth, and chewed. Slowly, as if inspecting the quality. He had no need for food to exist. But this action was a message carved into her mind: I do not just rule this system from the outside. I taste it. I understand it in a way you never will.
His gaze turned outward, stopping on a little girl, about five or six years old, hiding behind her mother's skirt. Her large, round eyes watched him with a mixture of fear and curiosity. Her clothes were patched, her face smudged. He stepped forward. The mother hurriedly pulled her child back, her face bloodless.
Skoeidos bent down, an unnatural motion as if a mountain were folding in half, and held out the remainder of the bread. The warmth of the loaf radiated enticingly, a speck of life in the darkness he carried.
The girl did not move. Her eyes darted from the fragrant bread to his emotionless face.
"Take it," his voice remained even. "I haven't placed a curse inside it."
A tiny hand, hesitant, reached out, touching the gift from a world of power and shadows. She took the loaf, clutching it to her chest as if it were her entire kingdom.
Skoeidos straightened up, turned, and walked away. He did not look back. The transaction was complete.
Theotia stood motionless for a moment, watching his receding back. She looked at the girl, who was hesitantly biting into the bread.
In that moment, a new hypothesis crystallized in her mind, clear and sharp as a blade.
His action was not kindness. Kindness is an emotion, and he had no emotions... did he? It was likely logic. A healthy subject works better. A fed child will not become a thief. He did not rule through cruelty or benevolence.
He was tending a herd. Protecting them from other predators because they were his. He fed them because a fattened herd is more useful.
This was not order born of light and harmony. This was an order born of darkness, the cold, ruthless logic of a predator who had decided to become a rancher.
And that, somehow, was more disturbing than pure chaos.
They walked again, in silence, leaving the vibrant noise of the market to return to the cold majesty of the palace. But Skoeidos did not lead Theotia back to the throne room. They ascended a spiral staircase, climbing the stone spine of the citadel. Up and up, until the air grew thin, and they stepped into a private sky.
A hanging garden, perched atop the highest tower, where the kingdom spread out like a living map.
The wind here tasted of clouds. From the edge of the stone railing, Aethelburg lay below, a complex organism of stone and people, and further out, the fields stretched like a breath of green. The hanging garden itself was a painting cultivated with flora. Beds of herbs were lined up in strict rows, the spacing calculated as precisely as notes in a score. Their scents did not blend but were distilled into single, clean notes. Fruit trees were pruned until their shapes obeyed geometry rather than nature. This was a garden of will, not of life.
Skoeidos strode to the tower's edge, bracing his hands on the railing, looking down at his chessboard.
Theotia stood a few steps behind him, the wind caressing her golden locks as if seeking something soft in all this austerity.
"Your order has revealed itself," she spoke, her voice clear, undisturbed by the howling wind.
Skoeidos did not turn. "Is that so? Has Elysium's prophecy machine finished weaving its thread?"
"The thread is very clear," Theotia replied, ignoring the sarcasm. "You do not rule a people. You are tending a field of life. The child, the loaf of bread, the safe roads... those are not the actions of a king, but of a farmer ensuring his harvest will be bountiful."
Her words were not an accusation. They sounded like a conclusion drawn after research and observation.
The silence stretched, filled only by the wind whistling through marble columns like a lost soul. Finally, Skoeidos spoke, his voice deeper than the wind.
"A stable ecosystem," he said, "is more efficient than a chaotic one. A healthy resource yields higher output. Your logic is not wrong."
He admitted it without hesitation. That candor caused a small ripple in Theotia's perfect train of thought. She had prepared for denial, for justification. But he wore the title of "farmer" easily, like well-fitted armor.
"But your logic is incomplete," he added, turning around.
This time, Theotia fell silent, waiting.
His blood-ruby eyes held no question. They were an abyss awaiting an answer. "You see the action, but not the ultimate purpose. Why does a farmer fatten his cattle, Empyrean?"
He paused, letting the question hang in the air.
"To slaughter. To harvest."
"Then what is my ultimate purpose?" his voice dropped, almost a whisper to the universe. "That is the variable your machine is missing."
The analytical engine in Theotia's mind rebooted, this new variable shaking the entire equation. He was right. She had seen what and how. But she had not seen what for.
And then, as her mind raced through countless possibilities, her gaze stumbled upon it.
An anomaly.
Amidst the strictly planted rows of mint, azure stone rose had sprouted. It had not been planted. It had happened. A resilient life had found a way to exist right in the heart of an iron order, a hole in the garden's theorem. The wind atop the tower made the fragile petals tremble, but it could not break them. The petals folded into a perfect spiral, obeying the golden ratio.
It was not edible. It cured no ills. It served no function in Skoeidos's "ecosystem."
It was simply... beautiful.
Theotia approached, her white shadow tracing a soft curve on the harsh stone floor. She knelt beside the flower, a gesture bearing the solemnity of an ancient ritual. She did not touch it. The space around the flower seemed to freeze, thinning out, becoming a lens looking back to the Genesis. In a moment, Theotia heard the whisper of mathematics as it bent itself into the curves of the petals. This flower was a silent axiom of the universe, an existence that was, in itself, truth. To be silent before it would be blasphemy. This was not a trap, but an invitation: did the abyss have the courage to look at a star?
"Then tell me," she said, her voice as soft as wind reading an ancient verse, "in your grand design, what is this note for?"
Skoeidos looked. And fell silent.
For the first time, the absolute thinking machine within him—the machine that could plot the trajectory of wandering worlds and read lies woven from shadows—stalled. It was like a sudden rest note in a battle anthem, a void where logic should have filled the space.
"A weed," he replied, a slight edge in his voice that even he did not recognize. "Sprouted by chance."
His mind was screaming. Its useless existence was a color his spectrum could not record, a sound outside every frequency he could hear. It was not a threat, not a resource, nor information. That meaningless existence was a metaphysical itch, an imperfection in a perfect system. And the Tartarian instinct within him, the instinct that once craved to return everything to primordial nothingness, urged him to pluck it out.
"No," Theotia said, standing tall. Her voice was not meant to refute, but to realign a shuttle that had slipped its loom. "In Elysium, we do not define it. We recognize it. Just as Anthromos recognizes the gravity of the sun."
She looked straight at him, her amber eyes as calm as the surface of an ocean that had never known a storm. "This little flower is the signature Patheos left on his work. It is Beauty. It is a reminder that the universe is not just a machine, but a work of art."
She took a step closer, the light around her seemingly softening. "Your logic is a fortress built of ash, standing firm against every gale. But every fortress has a window its master does not know of. You can calculate the value of a silo of wheat, yet you are blind to the value of an inedible flower."
Skoeidos said nothing. His silence this time was not power, but the emptiness of a map suddenly found missing an entire continent. He, who once ruled one of the twelve realms of Tartarus, lord of darkness, who could tear reality itself, was neutralized by a concept as fragile as a petal.
He looked at Theotia. The afternoon sunlight was no longer mere photons. In a surreal moment, he saw it weaving her, golden threads knitting together into an entity his logic could not dissect. He did not just see an Empyrean. He saw a living language written in light.
"Beauty..." He tasted the word in silence, like an alchemist tasting a strange element.
The crack in the throne was just a scar on stone. The crack just forming in his mind was deeper than that. It was not destruction. It was an entrance. Through that fissure, a light he could not name began to seep in. He did not understand it. And that, instead of making him want to destroy, stirred a strange sensation that had slept for millennia. Curiosity.
And his gaze, unconsciously, shifted from the kingdom beneath his feet to the wildflower, and then to the Elysian maiden standing before him.