The silence was the first thing that truly terrified her. It was a physical presence, a heavy blanket that smothered all other senses. In the Basilica, even in its quietest moments, there was always a distant hum—the city, the wind, the very thrum of life. Here, there was nothing. The silence was so absolute that Ilia could hear the frantic, panicked beat of her own heart as if it were a war drum.
She stood frozen in the heart of an impossible landscape. The black glass floor stretched in every direction, seamless and perfect, reflecting the cosmic ballet above. There were no walls, no ceiling, just the endless expanse of space. It felt like standing at the bottom of a frozen, bottomless ocean, looking up at a sky that was on fire. The air was cold and thin, yet perfectly breathable, carrying a faint, metallic scent like ozone after a lightning strike.
This was not the pit of fire and brimstone the scriptures described. It was not a realm of chaotic torment. It was a place of vast, desolate, and terrifying beauty. It was a kingdom of majestic emptiness.
Slowly, cautiously, Ilia took a step. The silk of her gown whispered against the glass floor, the sound shockingly loud in the profound stillness. She took another, then another, turning in a slow circle. She was utterly, completely alone.
Or so she thought.
As her eyes adjusted to the dim, celestial light, she began to see shapes in the distance. They were not buildings, but colossal, crystalline structures that seemed to grow out of the glass floor itself. They were jagged and asymmetrical, like shards of frozen darkness, absorbing the nebulae's light rather than reflecting it. They formed a broken, sprawling city of shadows, a silent testament to a forgotten age. It was a graveyard of gods.
And in the center of it all, rising above the lesser spires of shadow, was a structure that drew her gaze like a vortex. It was a throne.
It was a thing of terrible majesty, carved not from stone or metal, but from what looked like solidified night. It was vast, its back arching high into the star-dusted void, its form both elegant and brutal. It was a seat of immense power and immeasurable sorrow.
And it was not empty.
Someone was sitting on it.
At first, he was just a deeper shadow within the shadows, a silhouette against the backdrop of swirling galaxies. But as she stared, her heart hammering against her ribs, her mind refusing to process what her eyes were seeing, details began to emerge from the gloom.
He was tall, his long-limbed frame slumped in the massive throne in a posture of regal boredom and ancient weariness. He was not a monster of scales and horns. He was humanoid, his form one of impossible, masculine grace. One hand was draped languidly over the armrest of the throne, his long fingers idly tapping a silent rhythm on the dark material. The other hand supported his head, his elbow resting on his knee, as he leaned forward slightly, gazing out into the emptiness of his kingdom.
He was dressed in robes that seemed woven from the very shadows around him, shifting and flowing like liquid night. But it was his face, half-hidden in the gloom, that stole the breath from her lungs.
Even from this distance, she could see that he was beautiful. It was not the soft, beatific beauty of the angels in her frescoes. This was a sharp, dangerous beauty. The severe, perfect lines of his jaw, the high cheekbones, the straight nose. His skin seemed pale, almost luminous in the cosmic light, and his hair was as black as the void itself, falling across his brow in a way that seemed both careless and deliberate.
He was a masterpiece of divine creation, now fallen and residing in the dark. He was a fallen star, still burning with a cold, terrifying light.
He was Zephar. The Betrayer. The King of the Abyss.
As if he had felt the weight of her stare, the idle tapping of his fingers stopped. The silence, which had been merely profound, now became tense, electric. Slowly, languidly, he lifted his head.
And his eyes found her.
Across the vast, empty expanse, his gaze locked onto hers. Ilia felt it like a physical impact, a spear of ice through her soul. His eyes… oh, his eyes. They were not red, not black. They were the color of the nebulae above them, a swirling vortex of violet and indigo, filled with the light of ancient, dying stars. They were the most beautiful and most terrifying things she had ever seen. And they held no warmth, no mercy. Only a bottomless, soul-deep weariness, now sharpened by a flicker of something new.
Curiosity.
He didn't move from his throne. He didn't have to. He simply watched her, this tiny, trembling figure in white, a splash of defiant purity in his kingdom of shadows. A faint, slow smile touched his lips. It was a smile that did not promise welcome. It promised ruin.
Ilia's training, her lifetime of composure as the Saintess, evaporated. All that was left was a primal, instinctual fear. She wanted to run, to scream, to pray. But her feet were rooted to the glass floor, and she knew, with a certainty that chilled her to the bone, that there was no god here to hear her prayers.
She had been delivered. The sacrifice had arrived at the altar. And the devil was finally looking at his offering.