The air in Azrathiel's spire was thick with the scent of ozone and cold stone. Feredin sat on a bench of living crystal, his golden, melted mask dripping slowly onto the floor, where it sizzled and vanished. He was still.
"These Concepts are different," Feredin said, his voice the sound of bending metal.
Azrathiel stood by a pulsing, organic wall, a wild, hungry smile on her dark face. "Just as Existence warned us. They are not just Concepts. They are the Absolute ones. The fundamentals." Her eyes glazed over as if imagining the homunculi she could craft from their essence. "The flesh of a Nothingness… the bone of an Existence… the order in their blood…"
"You encountered Absolute Beings and managed to survive. Impressive."
The new voice was calm, almost gentle. They both turned.
Mor'vyre leaned in the archway of the chamber. He looked like a nobleman who had seen better days—fine clothes, but worn. The left side of his face was handsome, if tired. The right side was covered by a mask made of bleached, intricate bone, shaped like the horned skull of some terrible beast. Two different souls looked out from one set of eyes.
"Are you here to talk in riddles again, or do you have a point?" Feredin asked, his tone flat with annoyance. He'd never liked the Half-Horned Duke.
"Me? I merely came to understand," Mor'vyre said, stepping into the room. His gait was smooth, but his bone-mask side seemed to twitch independently. "Absolute Beings are forces that cannot be fully comprehended. They are laws wearing skin. For you two to face three of them and walk away… that means one of two things."
He held up a finger on his fleshed hand. "One: the Concepts are still weak. Newborns. But that's not true, is it? A Concept, even in a child's body, can unleash its nature without restraint. It is what it is."
He held up a second finger. "Two: the Concept has given full control to its bearer. The human mind is now the pilot of a cosmic principle. They don't just wield the power… they are the power. But they don't understand it. Not fully. They're like children who've been given the keys to a star-crusher and are trying to use it to open a locked door."
He let his hand drop, a smirk playing on the human side of his lips. "It makes me wonder what will happen when one of them truly wakes up. I should probably quit the Regalia soon."
"Coward," Azrathiel sneered, though her smile remained.
"It's not cowardice to leave a fight you can't win," Mor'vyre replied, his voice still gentle. "It's intelligence. Unlike you two, I have no desire to be unmade by a confused god. I'd rather fade back into the quiet places and—"
He stopped. The smirk vanished. His whole body went rigid. The bone mask seemed to grow colder.
Feredin stood up slowly. Azrathiel's smile finally died.
They all felt it.
A pressure. Not a sound, not a force. An absence of pressure. A silent, spreading negation of the very space around their citadel. The wards of narrative distortion—the spells that made the Umbral Citadel forgotten, unreachable—didn't scream in alarm. They simply… grew quiet. Thinner.
"Guess I was too late," Mor'vyre whispered.
Light in the chamber dimmed, not into darkness, but into a dull, grey flatness. The ambient hum of the citadel's power faded into a sterile silence.
Three more figures entered the chamber, drawn by the same silent alarm.
The first was a woman, Lunara. A beautiful, ethereal face was half-wrapped in a glowing, spectral maw of cosmic teeth that seemed to drink the light around her. She moved silently, her eyes wide and curious. "Something is eating the shadows," she murmured, her voice soft and dreamlike.
Behind her came Sereniel, the Pale Sovereign. He was tall, draped in pristine white robes, a simple silver crown on his brow. His face was calm, placid, almost holy. He said nothing. He simply observed the fading light with the detached interest of a scientist.
Last was Orison, the Dark Litany. Black tears, thick like oil, streamed permanently from his closed eyes, etching painful-looking tracks down his cheeks. A corrupted white halo, cracked and bleeding dark light, hovered behind his head. He was whispering, a constant, barely audible stream of words that sounded like a twisted prayer.
"Report," Sereniel said. His voice was clean, clear, and carried the weight of command. He was their leader.
Feredin gestured with a dripping hand. "The Absolute Beings on the target world. We engaged. There are three confirmed. Nothingness, Existence, and Order. A fourth, Death, is present but did not engage."
"Order?" Sereniel's eyebrow lifted slightly. "The stabilizing principle. Interesting. You survived engagement with three Fundamentals. Explain."
"They fight like mortals," Azrathiel cut in, her voice eager. "They use their power with intention, with strategy. They limit themselves. The Nothingness tried to erase me, and my Halo reversed his own energy back onto him. He was… surprised."
"They are not yet unified with their nature," Mor'vyre added, his bone-mask clacking softly as he spoke. "They are ghosts driving divine engines. Powerful, but predictable. For now."
"For now," Sereniel echoed softly. He looked toward the source of the growing emptiness. "And yet, something has found us. Something is unpicking the stitches of our home."
"It's him," Feredin said, the gold of his mask flowing faster. "The Nothingness. N'variel. He is not coming with an army. He is… unmaking the path."
Lunara let out a soft, hungry sigh. "He sounds delicious."
"He will consume you before you can open your mouth, Bride," Mor'vyre warned.
Orison's whispering grew louder, more frantic. "He comes… the Void-Before… the gospel of emptiness… his truth is that there is no truth…"
"Enough," Sereniel said, and the room fell into absolute quiet. Even Orison's whispers ceased, though his lips kept moving. "They are a unique threat. Not to be eradicated from a distance, but to be… disassembled. Studied. Their Concepts are pure. Uncorrupted. They could be useful."
"Useful?" Azrathiel's eyes lit up.
"Contained," Sereniel corrected, his holy demeanor giving way to something colder. "Harnessed. A battery of Nothingness. A forge of Absolute Existence. A template of Perfect Order. These are not enemies to destroy. They are resources to acquire."
He turned his gaze to the chamber wall, which was now losing its definition, its color leaching away into grey. "But first, we must greet our guest. It is poor manners to let a Fundamental feel unwelcome."
He raised a hand. "Lunara. Prepare the Eclipse. Dim his approach. Orison, begin the Litany of Unmaking. Speak the words that make reality reject itself. Feredin, Azrathiel—you will engage him directly once he manifests. Corrupt his form. Reverse his essence. Mor'vyre."
Mor'vyre tensed. "Yes, Judge?"
"You will observe. Split your souls. The prince will record the battle. The demon will be ready to intervene if their containment strategy fails. We take the Nothingness alive. Or we unmake him completely."
Mor'vyre's human side looked grim, but he bowed his head. "As you command."
Outside the citadel, in the non-space where it drifted, the effect was becoming visible. The stars around them didn't vanish. They simply ceased to be points of light, becoming dimensionless, grey smudges. The silent void grew quieter, if such a thing was possible. It was the silence of a vacuum that had forgotten it ever held sound.
A figure was now visible, standing on nothing.
Adam—or what had been Adam—stood calmly. He wasn't walking. He was being present. With each moment, the concept of distance between him and the citadel was erased.
He looked at the towering, grotesque splendor of the Umbral Citadel, the spires of stolen thrones and petrified nightmares. He felt the defensive spells—the curses, the distortions, the prayers of oblivion—push against him.
They didn't try to destroy him. They tried to make him forgotten. To erase his story from the cosmic record.
He smiled. They were trying to use a lesser version of his own nature against him.
He took a final, conceptual step.
And stood at the main gate of the Umbral Citadel, a gate made from the fused, screaming faces of a hundred fallen kings.
The gate began to dissolve before him, not melting, but losing its coherence, its history, its reason to be a gate.
From within the spreading grey stillness, two figures emerged to meet him.
Feredin, in his full, terrifying glory—a being of molten gold and shifting, corrupt authority.
And Azrathiel, the Dark Matron, her halo of reversal already blazing behind her, a mother ready to discipline a wayward child.
"Welcome, Nothingness," Feredin's voice grated. "To your end."
Adam, now N'variel, looked at them, his head tilted. His voice, when he spoke, was not loud. It was the sound of a closing book, of a final breath.
"You have something of mine," he said. "A debt. For a king you killed. For a girl you made cry."
He raised a hand, not in attack, but in simple, final statement.
"I'm here to collect."