The wind was dry and hollow, threaded with the scent of scorched paper and something faintly metallic—like old blood crusted into stone. It slipped through the fractured stained glass, weaving around the gaping holes in the arched windows of the great hall. Where once golden light fell through panes etched with saints and conquerors, now only dust reigned.
It brushed past fallen tapestries—faded emblems of kingdoms I'd devoured—over shattered chandeliers that no longer caught the light. What remained of their crystal hung in jagged teeth, glittering faintly like the ruins of a once-celestial mouth. This place had once echoed with music, laughter, voices raised in ambition and pride. Now, only silence dared linger here.
And I sat in its heart.
Upon the throne I once believed to be everything. Obsidian. Cold. Etched with veins of gold that no longer gleamed. It leached the warmth from my spine like a parasite. But the weight pressing into me wasn't the throne.
It was me.
Everything around me was mine. The vaulting walls carved with the names of the dead. The skies beyond the hall's remains, where clouds moved only if I allowed them. The continent stretching past the horizon, reshaped by decree and dream. The people—what remained of them—whispered my name like it was both prayer and curse.
But none of them knew me.
Not even I did.
My fingers curled over the armrest, skin brushing the gold-flecked obsidian, cool and unyielding. A sliver of sensation—dull, distant. Almost gone. My nails scraped across the surface as I stared into nothing. No particular focus. Just… through it all. Past the empty columns, the floor where blood had once gilded the seams between tiles. Past the silent statues of old heroes—some I had made, most I had unmade.
And then she was there.
Barefoot, stepping down the fractured marble stairs. Her cloak stirred as if caught in a wind that did not touch anything else—the air around her bent in reverence, the stillness warping for her alone.
The girl.
The last to stand against me.
Not a rebel. Not a queen. Not even a lover, though once, I'd wished she could be.
She was the World's Will.
The sentient voice of Eldrineth. Draped in a human shell. A being not born to rule, but to correct. To balance. To end anomalies like me.
She had no name.
But she knew mine.
She spoke, her voice thin as starlight, but steady as the mountains.
"You've bought everything," she said. "Even time. Even fate. There's nothing left to give you—except your end."
I didn't speak. Not yet. My gaze dropped to the marble between us, where her footprints marked the path she'd walked—each step burned faintly, not with fire but with rewriting. The stone glowed beneath her heels, as if the laws of reality rewrote themselves to permit her existence.
"You've rewritten this story too many times," she continued. "You killed the chosen one. You severed the last bloodline of the hero. You bribed fate itself. This world was never yours to shape."
I raised my head. Met her eyes.
They were ancient. Not weary. Not cruel. Just... knowing.
She didn't hate me.
She didn't pity me either.
She simply understood.
Understood what I had become.
"What do you want?" My voice rasped through the silence, brittle, like it had been left out in the cold for centuries. Because it had.
"Not what I want," she said. "What the world needs."
She stepped closer.
"To ascend you."
I laughed. A sound that had once commanded armies now echoed hollowly around the bones of my hall.
"You mean destroy me."
"No," she said. "Make you into what you already are. You replaced gods. Rewrote myths. Bartered with souls. There is no seat left for you among men."
"I never wanted to be a god."
"But you are one."
Silence fell, thicker than stone, deeper than death.
I stood from the throne, the obsidian groaning as if unwilling to let me go. The hall shifted slightly, as if the world held its breath.
Behind her, the doors stood open.
Beyond them, a staircase of light rose into the heavens. It had no end, no beginning. Just purpose.
Dozens had tried to climb it. Saints. Tyrants. Prophets who heard whispers from beyond the stars. All had failed.
It was meant for me now.
A reward.
A sentence.
"You're telling me I have no choice," I said quietly.
She tilted her head, cloak brushing the stone. "You made this choice a thousand purchases ago."
I looked at her. But I was also looking back.
At a memory.
At a field of wildfire lilies where I once knelt beside a dying woman who whispered my name with her last breath. My mother. I had traded that memory for immortality, yet here it was—rebuilt in the cracks of my mind by the scent she used to wear.
Jasmine and firewood.
"I only wanted to matter."
"You do," she said. "Too much."
I turned my gaze past her, to the sky beyond the stairway. The stars no longer blinked. I had bought them, too. Froze them in place to feel less alone. Now they were just echoes of the things I couldn't keep.
"Will I feel anything... up there?"
"No. Only order. Purpose. Stillness."
The kind of stillness that forgets itself.
"I miss the pain."
She didn't flinch. "Pain made you human. You gave it up."
A pause.
"I'd give everything to feel it again," I said.
She didn't move. But something shifted in her. An understanding. A kindness that held no warmth.
Then she stepped aside.
"Then decline the path. Give it all up. Be forgotten. Be no one again."
The air behind the throne shimmered. A second doorway unfolded like shadow turning inside out—small, trembling, black as unformed thought.
My beginning.
My real name.
Waiting.
The throne room dimmed, colors fading like a painting submerged in grief.
One path to godhood.
One path to humanity.
And me, standing between them, with a girl who was not enemy or friend, only consequence.
I closed my eyes.
And the wind changed.
Not hollow. Not dry.
It carried the scent of wildfire lilies.
My eyes snapped open.
I turned—not toward the stairway of gods, nor the broken throne—but toward the doorway of shadow.
And took one step.
The girl inhaled softly.
A sound like the world remembering how to weep.
Then—from beyond the light-soaked stairs—a voice called my name.
Not a title. Not a prophecy.
Just my name.
My real one.
And I froze.
Between the stairway to ascension…
…and the voice that shouldn't exist.
---
📝 Author's Note :
Dear Reader,
Thank you for stepping into this world.
This novel began with a simple question: What happens when you can buy everything—except meaning?
This story is about choices. About cost. About the invisible thread between power and consequence. It's a fantasy world built on systems, rules, and contracts—but under it all, it's about something deeply human: the ache to matter.
You've just read the moment after the end. From here, we peel back the layers—not just of what was bought, but what was lost, traded, and forgotten along the way.
I promise you questions. Twists. Quiet heartbreaks. And perhaps, a path back to something real.
Thank you for reading,
– [Ashen_Fang]