The vaulted chamber still hummed from their previous discussions—about commanders, territories, and power lines Simon intended to establish. The air was dense with ambition and yet, for the moment, utterly still. A strange quiet had settled over Orba's throne hall, broken only by the faint pulse of void-energy that flickered occasionally around Simon's shoulders like silent embers.
Simon stood near the edge of the obsidian platform, fingertips resting behind him on the cold stone railing as he gazed into the phantom-lit court. Eras lingered two steps back, silent and composed, but his pale eyes observed Simon with quiet calculation.
"We are leaving soon," Simon murmured at last, voice steady but low. "Nexara will not wait forever, and neither will time. A neutral city—where every allegiance is tested. Where whispers can be tools." His lips curled faintly. "Exactly the kind of place we need if we want to find a marshal and a vanguard worthy of leading a Triad."
Eras nodded once, respectful. "Nexara is the only city that could host individuals of such potential without direct political pressure. But…"
He hesitated, and Simon glanced back.
"You seem troubled."
"Your timing, my Lord," Eras replied. "The Abyssal cycle is shifting. Stirring. It is as though something old has begun breathing again, just beneath the fabric of realms."
Simon raised an eyebrow. "And you did not tell me this before because…?"
"I required certainty. I have it now." Eras bowed formally. "And certainty demands your caution."
Simon exhaled slowly. For all his strength, all his void-born clarity, he was still learning this world. It irritated him—quietly, deeply—that he needed guidance at all. But irritation did not cloud him; not with the void steadying him like calm iron water running through his veins.
"We move anyway," he decided. "Hesitation is the death of kings. And I have no intention of dying before my throne has been built."
Eras lowered his head in affirmation.
Simon's gaze sharpened, and he spoke with finality:
"Prepare the travel sigil. We leave in—"
He stopped.
A low, wet slither echoed across the throne hall.
Both turned.
From the shadowed end of the corridor, something crawled toward them—slow and deliberate, as though each movement dragged against the stone like living mucus. A creature emerged, coated in viscous black sheen, shape vaguely foxlike but wrong— limbs too thin, joints bending backward, eyes like hollow pits leaking oily vapor.
Its presence was suffocating—feral, instinct-heavy, ancient.
Eras took a half-step forward, hand raised. "Stay alert."
"I gathered," Simon muttered.
The creature stopped three paces from them, spine arching, head lowering like a beast acknowledging an apex predator. Then, with unnatural delicacy, it opened its maw. A scroll—sealed with abyssal wax—slipped wetly onto the floor.
Simon stared, then looked to Eras. "Explanations. Now."
Eras did not flinch. "One of the former Ninth Abyss King's last… attendants."
Simon narrowed his eyes. "Attendant? It looks like corrupted roadkill dipped in tar."
"Most of Orba's legion has lost reason since his fall," Eras replied, tone grim. "Except me, they are instinct-bound husks now. They obey the throne, not the mind behind it. And you," he gestured subtly, "are now the throne."
Simon gave a half-laugh, without warmth. "How flattering."
Eras didn't smile. "This one brings a message."
Simon bent, picking up the scroll. As he touched the seal, void-energy rippled; the wax cracked, opening like a black flower. He unrolled it.
The script was jagged, written in abyss-ink that pulsed faintly, as though alive.
> To the Ninth Seat, Orba
A reminder of obligation.
The Council of Abyss Kings gathers in cycle tide.
Attendance mandatory.
Violation invites reclamation.
Below it, sigils flared—ancient, violent, binding.
Simon exhaled through his nose. "Council of Abyss Kings. Wonderful." He rolled the parchment shut with controlled annoyance. "Is there any part of ruling the abyss that does not come with threats coded into formal invitations?"
Eras shook his head lightly. "Power respects pressure. And kings test kings. It is tradition."
"Tradition is tedious," Simon muttered.
The fox-abomination bowed again and slithered away, vanishing into the dark as silently as it came.
Silence returned.
Simon closed his eyes briefly, reaching into his void core. Calm, clear calculation resurfaced. He weighed strategy, risk, and opportunity with clinical poise.
Nexara or the Abyss Council.
Two paths.
He opened his eyes. "Well. It appears I don't get to decide my timing after all."
Eras inclined his head. "I had suspected the summons would come, but not this soon."
Simon faced him fully. "Then the Triad must wait."
"It seems so."
"Unfortunate." His voice was cool, but beneath it, something darker simmered. Not fear—never fear—but irritation sharpened into ambition. "But if they expect spectacle, then I will give them one."
Eras bowed. "What do you command?"
Simon turned toward the abyss-lit throne. His mantle of authority settled like a living weight across his shoulders.
"Postpone Nexara. Cancel our scouting lines. Begin council preparations. I will not enter that gathering as some newly crowned fool fumbling for power."
"You will enter as the void incarnate," Eras said softly.
Simon didn't smile outwardly, but his aura deepened in response.
"Exactly."
His tone darkened, smooth as midnight oil.
"If the Abyss Kings wish to measure me—then they will find the void has no bottom."
He looked again toward the direction the fiend vanished.
"And when this council ends… Nexara will tremble at our arrival. For we will not go to seek allies."
His eyes glinted void-silver.
For a moment, his vision stretched beyond the hall, beyond kingdoms and neutral cities. He pictured an empire not of fear alone nor domination for its own sake, but a machine—a perfectly balanced triad with him at its apex, a shadow-crown forged from intellect, loyalty, and unbreakable strength.
But all things in order.
"Come," he commanded. "There is much to prepare."
Eras followed, cloak trailing silently.
The throne hall faded behind them like the calm before a storm.
---
Appendix Scene — Vision of the Eighth Abyssal King, Abyssal Champion
I am Rusnumalung.
Eightfold Crown of the Abyssal Circles.
The Seer Sovereign, Watcher of the Obscured Path.
They call my existence a curse to fate itself.
They whisper that I do not see the future—
I invade it.
Time is a river to lesser beings.
To me, it is a hallway of mirrors.
I walk between the reflections, pulling threads, cutting others, observing what the arrogant call destiny.
And yet now—
Now the river feels poisoned.
The mirrors crack.
My sight stings like needles pressing behind the eyes.
Something is wrong.
I sit upon my throne of bone-marble and breathstone, a crown of whispering runes hovering inches above my skull. Veins of prophecy glow faint beneath my skin—like constellations etched into flesh.
My domain, the Eighth Abyssal Seat, is silent.
Even silence has texture.
This silence has weight.
I exhale slowly. "Begin."
My consciousness unfolds outward, like a vast wing of perception sweeping through timeless dark. Runes ignite across the chamber floor—my loyal scribes shiver from the sudden pressure in the air. Mortal bodies are not built to coexist with divination.
"Clear all distractions," I command without turning.
They scatter.
Only the throne hall remains—lit by floating amber lanterns burning with fatefire. Everything trembles gently as my awareness pierces across domains and dimensions.
Searching.
Sensing.
Surveying the thrones of abyssal kings.
As I have done for epochs.
As every king of the Eighth Seat before me has done.
Knowledge is survival.
Foreseeing is strength.
Ignorance is death.
One by one, the Thrones appear in my sight as silhouettes in the void — each seat radiating its signature authority like a cosmic heartbeat.
Fourth.
Second.
Eleventh.
Some dim, some blazing, some shifting like serpents in smoke.
Then—
I reach the Ninth Throne.
Orba.
A creature of hunger and rot. Disgusting, yet predictable. The underdog king — resentful, gnawing, desperate to someday rise above his station while never truly possessing the spine nor mind to do so.
Pathetic.
But not dangerous.
Not to me.
Not to most.
I expect to see his path — twisted, yes, but legible. A future woven of blood and crude ambition. A king who survives by submission.
Instead—
I see nothing.
A murky fog coalesces where Orba's fate should lie. Vague outlines, tremors of existence, but no clarity.
Like looking into a pit that refuses to echo.
"…impossible," I whisper.
A cold ache drags down my spine. I widen my sight, force it deeper. Fateflame erupts across my temples. The air ripples around me.
"Reveal."
The void around the Ninth Seat remains shrouded in dense gray.
Not smoke.
Not shadow.
Not even interference.
Absence.
An absence so total that my sight rejects comprehension.
As if existence has been eaten away.
I reel back internally, jaw tightening.
What force erases fate?
What power denies foresight?
I grit my teeth. "Again."
This time, I sharpen my reach like a blade and plunge it directly toward the anomaly.
A shock tears through my vision.
A blank pulse slams into me — not white, not black, not color — simply void, raw and silent and merciless.
My sight sputters.
My breath stutters.
Rivers of clairvoyant energy stammer and fracture.
When it clears, the Ninth Throne wavers like a ruined candle flame.
Blurred.
Muted.
Hidden.
Never in my era has fate refused me so bluntly. I am Rusnumalung. The Abyss itself bends for my gaze.
And yet something—
Someone
pushes back.
Not with hostility.
Not with rivalry.
No…
With indifference.
As if whatever sits upon that throne now does not even consider my existence relevant enough to hide from.
A force that does not engage fate.
It voids it.
I whisper the word to myself:
"…Void."
A concept.
A path forbidden.
A myth among abyssal scholars — the true antithesis of ascension, a devouring silence even divinity fears.
My pulse quickens; I feel the runes above my head tremble.
"No," I hiss. "Impossible. Orba was filth. Powerless. He could not—"
But my certainty wavers.
Orba's presence—
Orba's future—
is gone.
Not clouded.
Not obscured.
Erased.
And in its place, something new stirs. Something quiet. Cold. Boundless.
I attempt to trace it. My sight touches the edge of that gray silence—
— and recoils violently, like flesh burned by frost.
I gasp sharply, hand gripping my throne's armrest.
A lesser king would fear.
A foolish one would attack blindly.
I—
I plan.
Something has taken the Ninth Throne.
Something the abyss has not birthed nor recorded.
A presence that devours inevitability.
"…Intruder," I breathe.
"Pretender."
A threat unlike any other.
One who wears a king's seat yet is not of the abyss.
One who walks a path that is not time, nor blood, nor chaos, but—
Void.
I swallow my pride and force calm through my veins. The runes settle. My heartbeat steadies.
Information first.
Then action.
Then execution.
Orba has either hidden beyond sight, or—
"—he has fallen."
The thought tastes strange.
A king killed in silence?
Without disturbance in the fate lattice?
It has never happened.
Not once in abyssal memory.
And yet the gray spreads across where Orba once was like infection across a star.
This is unacceptable.
Unsettling.
Intriguing.
"…Ninth Seat," I murmur, voice low and steady. "You will not crawl unseen while I breathe."
I release my sight with deliberate slowness. The mirrors of fate retract. The runes dim, and sensation returns to my body like thawing from ice.
My throne room comes into focus again.
I lift a hand and press my thumb to my temple, wiping a thin streak of crystallized fate-blood.
The first time in ages that my sight has bled.
The universe just changed and expects me not to feel it?
Fools.
The abyss trembles.
A king has vanished.
A void rises in his place.
And I—
I prepare to hunt.
Because whatever lurks in that gray silence…
If it is not Orba—
Then it is a stranger
who has claimed an abyssal crown.
And strangers do not remain strangers long.
Not under my watch.
Not in my abyss.
I lean forward, crown whispering above me like restless spirits.
"Ninth Seat…"
My tone turns razor-soft.
"I do not know you."
My eyes narrow, burning with cold calculation.
"But I will."
The lanterns flicker.