The gates of Tisbet towered above me like an obsidian mountain. Thirty-two stories of polished dark stone, spires stretching toward a sky smeared in swirling violet clouds. Despite the chaos I'd witnessed before—abyssal beasts and collapsing fortresses—this place carried a more chilling energy. It wasn't raw destruction; it was control. Authority so ancient and absolute that even silence bowed to it.
"Abyssal King Orba," Eras whispered before we parted at the threshold. "Walk tall. Speak little. Let silence be your blade unless confrontation becomes necessary."
He adjusted the black-veil insignia on his uniform—symbol of the Ninth Court's marshal—and stepped away, leaving me alone with the weight of my new title. The mask Girte crafted clung to my skin like second flesh, breathing faint tendrils of cold into my face.
I inhaled deeply.
This mask isn't just a disguise. It's a throne I must carry.
I moved toward the entry line: rows of abyssal retainers, envoys, and minor nobles waiting to be screened. The shimmering veil barrier scanned magical signatures, aura currents, and even emotional fluctuations—anything to detect impostors.
My heart beat once, heavy.
Will they sense the Void?
Eras' lesson repeated in my skull:
> "Void is absence. You are not light nor darkness. You are the hollow between."
So I smothered my presence—let existence pass around me like I was a gap in reality.
The guard's halberd lowered across my chest. "Identify."
Voice steady, I growled, "Ninth King. Orba."
The runic screen rippled, brushing against the mask's internal magic. Something like cold fingers grazed my soul. A faint hum. The shield flickered gray—Void interference. But then stabilized.
"Cleared," the guard murmured, though brows pinched. "Proceed."
I walked forward, tension loosening only slightly—
And then a crashing voice split the air.
"Move aside! I don't queue!"
A woman strode past the line, ruby hair blazing behind her like a comet. Regal, confident, radiating heat and command. Her armor gleamed with phoenix motifs, and her eyes held fire within gold irises.
Karuel. Sixth Abyssal King. Flame-Crowned Empress of Carnate Depths.
She didn't even look at the guards. Aura alone forced them back. They bowed hastily, stammering greetings. She smirked as though acknowledging the world beneath her feet.
Behind her, a second woman bounced on the balls of her feet—short silver hair, mismatched stockings, and a cheerful grin far too bright for this dread palace.
Feje. Thirteenth Abyssal King. Jester-Fang Princess.
"Karuuuu!" she whined, waving a candy-lollipop-spear. "You always ruin the dramatic entrances! Let me go first next time!"
"No," Karuel answered without hesitation. "You'd trip, shatter a pillar, and we'd have to deal with paperwork for three cycles."
Feje puffed. "You bully."
The guards didn't dare stop them. They walked past the inspection barrier effortlessly—because who would question two abyssal monarchs at once?
I looked down, tried to stay invisible.
Don't provoke.
But Feje had already spotted me first.
"Oh! Orba!" she chirped like recognizing a neighbor she borrowed sugar from.
I froze. Karuel turned, fiery gaze sharp enough to cleave.
"It is you." She paused, smirk tugging. "The old war ghost finally crawls out of his hole."
My pulse thundered.
Stay cold. Stay Orba.
I lowered my chin slightly—Orba's known greeting: acknowledging without bowing.
"Karuel." My voice came low, rumbling, detached. "Feje."
Feje giggled and waved. "Hi~! Don't be so scary, grumpy fox-man~"
Karuel studied me. Not suspicion—evaluation. Then she turned away.
"Try not to sulk so much inside," she said lazily. "Even the Abyss gets bored of your gloom."
She strode into the palace. Feje skipped behind her, tossing a jelly-eyeball candy at a terrified demon footman.
Silence returned.
I exhaled.
I survived the first test.
The guard beckoned me again. "This way, King Orba."
I entered.
Chandeliers like encaged galaxies hung above. Floors polished to mirror every soul. Abyssal nobles lined the walls, clad in star-metal silks, whispering. I stepped among them—alone yet feared. Orba's shadow carried weight.
Eyes stared.
Some with respect.
Some with fear.
Some with hate still burning for wars past.
Good. Let them fear Orba.
I moved deeper into the gallery. Murals depicted abyssal conquests. Frozen rivers of blood. Thrones on broken suns. Then—central panel—thirteen thrones in a circle.
My future adversaries.
My future victims?
No.
My targets for alliance or annihilation—depending who stood in my way.
> "Power isn't only violence," Eras once told me. "It's perception."
Perception was everything here. I straightened my spine, made each step heavy, indestructible.
A sudden disturbance
A low gong echoed. The air tightened, gravity bending. Each noble stiffened.
A herald marched forth, voice booming like thunder.
"Prepare! The Abyssal Kings enter the High Atrium!"
Guards knelt. Nobles bowed. Only the thrones' heirs—us—walked forward.
A gate opened—tall enough to swallow mountains. Purple mist leaked out, cold and biting. Somewhere inside, a roar simmered. A monster? A king? Both were the same in this realm.
I felt it first—a presence sweeping the chamber like a divine spear. Its focus grazed me.
That wasn't Karuel. Not Feje.
It was subtle. Faint. Like a gaze not cast with eyes, but destiny.
Rusnumalung? The Eighth?
I kept walking.
The mask tightened. My heartbeat slowed, became methodical. Every footstep echoed eternity.
And then—
A familiar voice whispered in my head.
Not human. Not demonic. Mechanical yet alive.
> Void response: anomaly detected. Observation spike registered.
Someone—or something—was watching.
My fingers twitched. I suppressed it.
I crossed the final threshold into the High Atrium.
---
Rusnumalung Perspective — Eighth Abyssal King
Anticipation thrummed beneath my ribs like a restless serpent.
For cycles uncounted, these convocations were predictable machinery — arrogance, threats, posturing. Yet today, something fractured the pattern. I had felt it minutes before the gates opened: a tremor in the tapestry of foresight. Threads that once obeyed my command shivered, recoiled, blurred.
Change.
A disruptive one.
A ripple that did not originate from me nor any king I knew.
I sat upon my seat in the Eighth Throne's shadowed dais, one knee propped lazily over the other, chin resting on my knuckles as nobles flooded the High Atrium. Their whisperings were insects crawling through air thick with fear.
My perception stretched, a second sight unfurling like silver mist across the chamber.
Clairvoyance — my endless dominion.
Past and future, interlacing in obedient strands. Probability bending like wire under my fingers. I peered through them all, hungry for clarity.
Karuel's flame aura. Expected.
Feje's chaotic trail of unpredictable motes. Annoying, as always.
Then—
A void.
No, not void.
Even void is something — absence that can be defined, measured by what remains around it.
This was less than void.
An error in existence.
A blind spot in inevitability.
The figure stood near the lower archway, quiet as coiled winter.
Orba.
Orba?
It bore Orba's form. His height. His texture of menace.
Yet none of the future lines that once coiled around him existed. Not snapped. Not rerouted.
Deleted.
Erased.
My brows drew together. My senses sharpened, tasting the anomaly like ice and iron in the air. I probed again, deeper.
Every other being — light traced from them, a living thread extending through fate.
But him?
Gray.
Blurry.
A smear across time's glass.
Impossible.
My heart — if one could call the organ that fuels abyssal lords such a soft mortal word — constricted sharply.
My earlier intuition about Orba's death had been near absolute. I had seen it. A flicker of demise in a forgotten corridor of future-possibility. Abrupt, brutal, swift. His threads scattered like torn silk.
I had accepted it, filed him among the extinguished.
And yet here he stands.
Alive.
Present.
Observed by every witness.
The audience bowed as he passed, but I noticed it — a hesitation in their eyes. Something different. Not fear. Not respect.
Uncertainty.
So it was not only my sight failing. Reality itself paused around him, as if reluctant to include him.
My gaze locked onto him, pupils narrowing.
Orba walked with his old arrogance — slow, heavy-footed, imperial disdain in every step. But where was the gleam of abyssal hunger? Where was the signature unholy malice that once bled from his aura like rotting perfume?
He was cold. Silent.
Not rage — not despair — nothing.
A void wearing a corpse's memory.
I reached into time again, strands whipping around my fingers like silver wire.
Show me the truth.
The world flickered. His timeline appeared — then dissolved, untouchable. My sight bounced off him like blades against iron. A ripple of wrongness pulsed through my skull.
Pain.
Rare.
Unwelcome.
The future refused to shape itself when touching him. For the first time in epochs, my foresight stuttered, cracked, broke against an unseen wall.
Something is devouring causality around him.
He did not look at me. Yet I felt it — as if an ancient, starless thing blinked from inside that false flesh, acknowledging the attempt to peer into it.
My lips tightened.
I, Rusnumalung, Eight King of Abyss, Seer of Shadow Time — was denied sight.
I leaned forward, voice barely a whisper, a chill scraping it raw:
> "What… are you?"
No answer. Only stillness.
The meeting had not yet begun. Karuel chatted with nobles; Feje teased trembling attendants; others settled into thrones and claimed space like wolves circling. The room was motion — sound — dread.
Yet all faded behind the pulse of this singular impossibility.
For cycles I have charted the abyss like a composer writing inevitability. Kings rise and fall under my quiet observation. Nothing surprises me.
Nothing.
Until now.
If this is Orba reborn… how?
If this is someone else wearing his skin… who?
And if neither is true…
Then the Abyss has admitted a third state — neither alive nor dead, neither future nor past.
A threat to order. To fate. To me.
But I could not act rashly. Questions first. Patience sharp as winter steel. I do not move until the blade's shadow has struck long before the blade falls.
Yet answers evaded like mist in clenched fists.
Confusion slithered in — foreign, humiliating — an emotion unbecoming for a king.
My fingers drummed the armrest slowly. Deliberate. Quiet.
I would not look away.
Even as attendants announced protocols, even as other kings arrived in thunder and shadow and screams — my gaze remained fixed upon the figure standing alone at the atrium's corner.
Unmoving.
Unbreathing.
Unknowable.
I, the one who sees all, narrowed my eyes beneath my silver mantle and whispered to the veil between time and void:
> "If you are Orba, you should not be.
If you are not Orba, you should not exist."
And still, he did nothing.
Just stood there.
And the abyss itself seemed to tighten around the silence he carried.
I would watch.
Until truth revealed itself.
Or until I tore it from fate's frightened, trembling hands.