The Real world...
Demon Realm...
The 4th hour after the rising of the red moon....
Castle of Irenaeus....
The Throne Hall....
The 97th meeting....
The throne hall vast as a ribcage enclosing the void, does not remain neutral when the princes enter. The space bends to accommodate them, each chamber's essence bleeding into air until the hall becomes a kaleidoscope of horrors.
Chains descend from unseen heights, clinking like heartbeats. Embers drift like dying stars, igniting patches of the floor in smouldering bursts.
Veins swell in the walls pumping thick streams of blood into cracks that shouldn't exist. The air itself is heavy with rot,shadow and hunger until every breath feels stolen from something else's lungs.
Above the ceiling _ a void pulsing like flesh echoes with the sound of a bell that never tolls. Glass shards hover in silence, reflecting distorted images of those gathered below.
The Prince of Ashes descends first, down the spiral stairs.His smoke-cloak trailing behind him like a storm cloud. Wherever his steps fall, the floor cracks and smolders, coughing up sparks before sealing again. His volcanic armor glows faintly, fissures of fire dancing along his form. A walking ruin crowned with ember light.
Name: Veythar
Age: 1,294
Position: 5th prince
Personality: Vengeful, restless, obsessed with destruction and rebirth through fire.
Never still. Never satisfied.
Chamber: The Eternal Furnace
True Name: The Lord of hollow flames.
The Prince of Rot emerges next, dragging a stench of mildew and festering ruin. Fungi sprout in his wake, pulsing wetly before collapsing back into sludge. His robes hang heavy, stitched flesh weeping spores and the air grows thick and suffocating where he passes.
Name: Mournloch
Age: 1,212
Position: 7th prince
Personality: patient,corruptive,sly_ believing that all things, given time must fall into ruins.
He finds beauty in collapse.
Chamber: The Fungal Cathedral
True Name: Womb of Worms
The Prince of Chains descends suspended by his living mantle. Chains rattle and scream with his every movement, whipping outward like lashes to strike the floor. His crown of barbs gleams with blood and the hall groans as if shackled to his will.
Name: Zerakhul
Age: 1,248
Position: 6th prince
Personality: Tyrannical, obsessive, sadistic.
Delights not in killing but in binding, controlling and making souls bend.
Chamber: The Shackle Abyss
True Name: Master of a thousand shackles.
The Prince of Silence arrives not by walking, but by simply appearing between heartbeats. His cloak flows in still air, his faceless mask unyielding. Around his head floats a slow orbit of knives, silent and trembling. The hall itself seems to hold its breath as he stands—every sound dampened.
Name: Xander
Age: 1,402
Position: 4th prince
Personality: Cold, detached, contemplative.
Speaks rarely but when he does, the world bends to listen. He thrives in absence and emptiness.
Chamber: The Shattered Hall Glass
True Name: The Soundless King.
The Prince of Hunger crawls from a pit that wasn't there before, dragging saliva-slick claws across the ground. His cloak of stitched hides writhes with screaming mouths, each gnashing in frantic hunger. His jawbone crown gnashes as though alive and the scent of bloodied teeth fills the air.
Name: Ghorvian
Age: 1,198
Position: 8th prince
Personality: Insatiable, feral, obsessive.
A predator that consumes without pause driven by endless craving.
Chamber: The Maw of Eternity
True Name: Lord of the Gnashing void.
The Prince of Blood bursts in like a tidal wave—his cloak of crimson torrents dragging across the floor. Every step floods cracks in the marble with blood that writhes as if alive, twisting toward those nearest. His jagged bone crown glistens with red, and his voice rumbles like a war-drum.
" Who dares to summon me!?"
Name: Thalyth
Age: 1,423
Position: 3rd prince
Personality: Wrathful, passionate, intoxicating. He thrives on violence, ritual and frenzy.
Chamber: The Arterial Cathedral
True Name: The warlord Eternal
The Prince of Decay (Time) arrives last, and with him comes stillness. Weapons in the hall rust instantly, chains corrode and stone begins to crumble before reforming. His robes rot and weave themselves anew with every step and his shattered hourglass crown spills endless sand into the void. The sound of endless, arrhythmic ticking fills the chamber until time itself feels unsteady.
Name: Atheron
Age: 1,642
Position: 2nd prince
Personality: Cold, inevitable, calculating.
Sees no victory but in the slow, crushing erosion of all things.
Chamber: The Withering Hour
True Name: The Rot of Ages.
" Brothers. We are summoned and yet none dares to sit. Who among you carries the will to bind us all?"
Zerakhul said. His voice like grinding iron.
Others laugh except Xander.
" Bind? Your chains are nothing but brittle iron. Fire consumes, reshapes, remakes.
I will sit and this hall will burn anew."
Veythar spoke. His voice like a dying furnace.
Thalyth chuckled at his words.
" Fire smolders. Chains rust. But blood_ blood is eternal. It flows through every war, every death, every offering. The throne belongs to me!"
" You squabble like carrion birds. In time....your fire will crumble into dust. Your blood will dry, your shadows will wither.
All rot. All feed me. The throne is not seized _ it decays, until only I remain."
Mournloch said in a patient voice.
For a moment, there was a Soundless pause.
Then Xander's voice cuts the air, low and absolute.
"You waste breath. Words fracture. Power is silence. When your noise is done, stillness crowns me."
At his words, the hall falls mute.
Flames flicker without crackling, chains rattle without sound. The others shift uneasily.
" Silence starves. Stillness tastes of dust.
But I .... I devour. Fire, blood, rot, shadow_ all are meat. The throne is a feast and I will gorge until nothing remains but bone."
Ghorvian said. Saliva hissing between teeth.
" Were we summoned to argue about the throne? Who called for this meeting?"
Atheron asked.
" It's me."
A voice echoed.
And it didn't come from among them.
It came from.... Him!
The prince of shadows does not walk... he seeps. His forms flickers between silhouettes, sometimes tall, sometimes monstrous, sometimes familiar.
His cloak ripples as though made of living night and his crown of black fire devours even the glow of nearby embers.
His laughter echoes from the shadows at the edges of the hall, though his lips never move.
Name: Nyxivar
Age: 1,945
Position: 1st prince
Personality: Elusive, cunning, cruelly, playful. Delights in deception and tormenting perception.
Chamber: The Labyrinth of Echoing Night
True Name: The Black Flame
" Ah, but blood spills,fire fades, iron breaks.
Hunger doesn't last. Yet shadows remain.
They watch when all else falls. Tell me Veythar.... when your fire dies, whose shape dances on the wall? Mine."
" Ever since father's illness has made him bedridden. You've all been acting reckless, fighting for what you can never have. Forgetting that I'm the rightful heir to the throne."
Nyxivar glared at his brothers.
Then laughed.
" Well it's good to dream but those dreams of yours have been shattered by me. "
" You summoned us here to tell us that?"
Thalyth raised a brow.
" Of course not." Nyxivar simply stated.
" I want the VIVAT captured. With its power we can take down the heavenly realm."
Zerakhul scoffed.
" But hasn't the VIVATRA being killed by the second Lord of the Underworld 97 years ago?"
" No" Xander answered. " The VIVATRA he killed was a fake one, he did that in order to gain the throne."
" What's the name of the second Lord again?" Ghorvian whispered to Mournloch.
" Lucas."
" Oh " Ghorvian said dryly.
" It's that snake demon."
" Wait? I thought it's only the truth orb that can tell the VIVAT's presence. It's practically impossible to fool the truth orb. So how did he__"
" They replaced the truth orb with a fake one.
He fooled his brothers and the king."
Veythar laughed.
" Presently, him and his elder brother are not on good terms. The Capital isn't safe either."
" This gives us a good chance to find the VIVATRA without any surprises. But we need to get the orb from the castle. I've asked Lucas to lend it to us.
But he refused. So__"
" We' re going to take it by force"
Thalyth finished Nyxivar 's statement.
" And we'll walk out in silence. With our hands clean and frame the innocent."
Xander added coldly.
" Not satisfied with your words , your highness" Veythar gave Nyxivar a death glare.
" Oh." Nyxivar smiled .
" Was thinking we were going to burn the whole castle down." Veythar smiled from within. " Down to ashes"
" Chill Veythar." Nyxivar laughed.
" Your thirst will be quenched."
" That's no fun if there's no blood."
Thalyth smiled devilishly.
" There must be blood!!!!!"