The Obsidian Map pulsed faintly under Raizen's gloved hand as the Ember Serpent cut across the midnight tide. It had not been drawn with ink or etched with steel. Its lines shimmered only in darkness, veined with a substance older than the seas — voidstone, the scholars called it, but even that was a guess. No one alive had seen its like.
And it was whispering to him.
Not in words, not in voices, but in gravity — a pull toward Nullmare, the first mark on the Hollow Map. According to Varro, the location didn't exist on any known chart. According to Juno, it had been deliberately erased. And according to the archives left behind by Drax, the map had only one true destination: the Hollow Throne.
"What do you think it is?" Zuri asked, leaning over the candlelit table as the map glimmered faintly. "A weapon? A source of power?"
Raizen stared at the coiling spiral of stars, each point aligned with a ruin, a vanished kingdom, or a forgotten graveyard. "I think it's a seat meant to rewrite the rules of the world."
They were sailing into uncharted waters, both literal and political. Already, rumors were spreading like cracks in glass: that Raizen sought to replace the World Government with a new throne of his own. That the Flameheart War had been just the beginning of his conquest. That the "Breaker of Chains" was chasing a myth to crown himself a god.
He didn't care.
This wasn't about power.
It was about truth.
And truth had a cost.
Their first stop — the Isle of Hollowwake — was the last known place the map had surfaced before vanishing into Drax's hoard. A bleak island swallowed by storm and superstition, it was said to be cursed by "the silence of forgotten kings." When they docked, there were no guards, no reception — only petrified statues along the shore, each one twisted in horror, as if frozen mid-scream.
"Not statues," whispered Calyx, their alchemist. "These were once men."
What they found buried beneath Hollowwake chilled even the fearless: a chamber of memory, where time stood still and shadows told stories. When Raizen placed the Obsidian Map into the altar at its center, the room came alive — showing visions not of the past, but of possible futures. In each, the Hollow Throne sat empty, untouched. But around it, empires fell, oceans boiled, and skies split with war.
A message echoed in Raizen's mind as if tattooed onto his thoughts.
"The throne does not grant power. It reveals who already wields it."
And in one of those futures, Raizen saw himself seated on it — not as a ruler, but as a prisoner, bound in chains of his own making, watched by a hundred eyes with no faces.
Back aboard the ship, the crew argued.
"We should destroy the map," Varro insisted. "Seal this place and forget it."
Juno countered, "No. We find the Hollow Throne. Before someone worse does."
Raizen remained silent, staring at the stars above — and at the stars coiled on the map below. The spiral was just beginning.
Each point they visited would unlock a part of the world's buried memory.
Each truth revealed would bring them closer to enemies hiding in plain sight — and closer to a throne built not for rulers, but for judgment.
He tucked the map away, looked to the helm, and gave the order.
"Set course for Nullmare."
And far beneath the hull, something stirred — something old, watching, waiting. For Raizen was not the first to seek the Hollow Throne.
But he might be the last.
END OF THE CHAPTER2