Chapter One: The King Without a Throne
The city never slept, not even for the dead.
Rain slicked the streets of New Carthage like oil on a corpse, reflecting the glimmer of neon and the strobe of sirens. Even at 3:00 a.m., the heartbeat of the city thumped through every alley, every skyline silhouette. Music and menace vibrated from nightclub basements, lovers fought under flickering streetlamps, and in the old quarter, a jazz saxophonist played a tune so sorrowful it could make stone weep.
High above the alleyways where blood soaked into ancient cobblestones, a tower of onyx glass pierced the heavens like a black blade. D'Angelis Holdings. A name that meant money, menace, and miracles in equal measure. Vespera D'Angelis stood at its apex, surrounded by wealth, surveillance, and silence.
He didn't belong here anymore.
The skyline sprawled before him, a kingdom of sin he'd crafted with meticulous brutality. He was the shadow behind the throne, the ghost in the machine, the name whispered in fear and reverence. Vespera had inherited a dying empire and resurrected it with bullets, loyalty, and brilliance. His reign was legend. Presidents owed him favors. Judges recited his creed. The city bent to his will.
Yet the chair behind his desk remained empty. Liora had chosen it—ergonomic, ivory leather, absurdly expensive. She'd laughed when he winced at the price, cupped his face with callused fingers, and said, "Empires are built on comfort and illusion, Ves. This chair is both."
She was gone. Three years. The pain hadn't dulled. It had sharpened, turned inward, carved out everything soft in him. Now, the tower felt more like a tomb than a fortress.
He lit a cigarette. The smoke curled like specters from the Underrealm.
The door clicked open behind him. Adrian, his consigliere, stepped in with careful footsteps. He knew better than to disturb Vespera when the storms rolled in. Adrian had been with him since the early days, back when they ran numbers and laundered money through laundromats. Back before blood had become a language.
"It's done," Adrian said. "Santiago's ports are ours. Clean. No witnesses."
Vespera didn't turn. He watched a lightning bolt fracture the sky.
"Then why do I feel like we lost something?"
Adrian hesitated. "Because it doesn't matter anymore."
They let the silence breathe between them. Vespera took another drag, fingers steady, eyes far away. He looked older than his forty-five years, though his features were still aristocratically handsome. His suits tailored, his silver hair immaculately styled. But the soul beneath the polish was a battlefield.
Finally, Adrian approached, offering a thin envelope.
"This came through our Siberian contact. He said it's not a message. It's an invitation."
Vespera took the envelope, slicing it open with a fingernail. Inside was a single card made of human bone. Inscribed on it, in ink that shimmered red under the halogen lights, were coordinates—and a phrase in a dead language: To find what was lost, give what you gained.
He felt it then—a shift in gravity, a breath colder than the rooftop wind.
The legends had whispered for years. There were places where the veil thinned, where the world of the dead scraped against the living. Most thought it superstition, romanticism for grieving kings. But Vespera had always trafficked in the impossible.
Adrian leaned against the desk. "You believe this? It could be a trap. A con. One last cruelty."
Vespera looked at him, and in that moment Adrian saw the man beneath the myth. A man who had lost too much to care about survival.
"Even if it is," Vespera murmured, "it's a door. And I've knocked on every other one."
It took four days to arrange his departure.
He left the empire in Adrian's hands with a silent nod and an encrypted directive: burn it if you must. Adrian didn't argue. Loyalty wasn't about understanding—it was about trust.
Vespera wore no insignia as he boarded the rusted cargo plane in Istanbul. No one asked questions. The pilot never turned his head. The cargo hold was cold and silent, filled only with crates of old weapons and older secrets.
The coordinates led to the Dargav Mountains—the City of the Dead. There were no runways, only a clearing lit by moonlight and folklore. As he stepped onto the frostbitten ground, the air felt thinner, the world quieter. Even his thoughts echoed differently.
Ruins older than language littered the valley. Towers of bone, mausoleums etched with runes, catacombs that sang when the wind passed through them. Locals called it cursed, a hinge between realities. Here, according to the myth, the gate to the Underrealm could be opened—but never closed.
A woman waited at the base of the path. She wore a robe of moth wings and eyes like obsidian mirrors. Her voice, when she spoke, carried an impossible weight.
"You are late," she said, not unkindly.
"Time doesn't matter to the dead," Vespera replied.
She smiled. "It does to those who wish to steal from them."
She introduced herself as Ilyra. Gatekeeper. Not a title, a role—older than kings, older than grief. She led him into the catacombs, and the further they descended, the more the light above faded into unreality.
They passed shrines built of regret, candles that burned memories instead of wax. In one corner, a specter wept beside a cradle. In another, a woman argued with her own ghost.
"They all want to return," Ilyra murmured. "But returning breaks more than it mends."
At the lowest chamber, Ilyra stopped before a stone arch, blanketed in thorns.
"This is the Threshold. Once crossed, you will be of the Underrealm. No power from above will serve you. No weapon, no wealth, no name. Only what you carry within."
Vespera stared into the darkness. It pulsed.
He thought of Liora. Her smile. The way she looked at him when he wasn't a monster yet.
"What must I pay?"
"Everything you gained."
He stepped forward.
The thorns bit into his flesh, drank his blood. The arch flared with crimson light.
And Vespera D'Angelis, king of the mortal world, descended into the dark.
The Underrealm was not fire and brimstone.
It was memory. Fractured cities built from longing, where alleys rearranged themselves to reflect buried fears. Faces of the lost flickered in windows. Shadows lingered behind him with every step.
The first city was Nyxar, the Hall of Echoes. Here, the dead relived their final moments in endless loop. A boy thrown from a tower. A mother drowning in silence. A lover screaming for help that never came. Vespera walked among them untouched, yet not unmoved.
He saw Liora everywhere and nowhere. In the curve of a stranger's smile. In the whisper of a forgotten lullaby. The longing grew teeth.
A demon approached him at dusk, taking the shape of a priest he'd executed decades ago.
"You seek a soul who does not belong to you," the demon rasped.
"She belonged to no one," Vespera replied. "But she loved me."
The demon studied him, then offered a shard of obsidian.
"Then remember what she gave you, and what you took."
Each shard brought a memory. The first kiss. A fight over loyalty. The moment he chose vengeance instead of running with her.
The price deepened. At the second city—Velmara, City of Masks—he was forced to wear the faces of those he had destroyed. For each wrong unacknowledged, he walked a mile in their skin. He bled for their regrets. He screamed their final words.
The process stripped him down to nerve and bone. Regret became scripture.
By the third city, he was barely more than a shade. But in the vale beyond the Obsidian Gate, he saw her.
Liora.
She stood at the edge of a frozen river, watching the stars trapped beneath the ice.
"I knew you'd come," she said.
He fell to his knees. "I can bring you back. There's a way."
She looked at him, tears unshed. "You came all this way to chain me again?"
"No. To free you."
"Then why are you still trying to make me yours?"
The silence that followed was the loudest sound he had ever heard.
She approached, touched his ruined face. "You can stay. Or you can let me go."
The final choice.
Above, the empire waited. His name. His throne. His power.
Below, only her.
He looked into her eyes, and saw the last flicker of the man he used to be.
Vespera smiled, a broken thing. "Then I'll stay."
The Underrealm accepted his choice. The river cracked, and the stars beneath it shone.
In New Carthage, Adrian received the final directive. The empire burned, by Vespera's own design.
No throne remained. Only ash.
And in the realm of shadows, a soul once broken found its mirror in another.
Love, not vengeance, had been his final weapon.
And the dead whispered his name with reverence—not as a king, but as a man who gave everything.
For her.