CHAPTER 1 — THE THRONE
I learned early that thoughts have weight.
Not metaphorical weight—real pressure, like fingers pressing against the inside of my skull, testing for weakness. Every morning I wake before my eyes open, already exhausted, already bracing myself.
They're awake too.
You're late.
The voice does not come from a direction. It never does. It exists everywhere at once, woven into the folds of my thinking. It doesn't ask. It doesn't plead. It accuses.
I do not answer.
Answering gives them shape.
I sit up in bed and feel the familiar resistance—an internal tug, like hands gripping my nerves, trying to steer my movement elsewhere. I tighten my will. The resistance fades.
Control is not gentle. Control is pressure applied until something stops moving.
Good, another voice mutters. The calm one. The one that pretends it isn't desperate. You'll crack one day.
I swing my legs off the bed anyway.
The Throne is not a place, but it feels like one. A center. A point behind my eyes where decisions become commands. I sit there constantly, braced, unmoving. If I ever stand up—if I ever loosen my grip—someone else will sit in my place.
I have seen what happens when no one rules.
In the city, they call it psychosis. A word that sanitizes the horror of a body without an owner. I've passed them on the street—eyes darting, mouths moving out of sync with thought, hands twitching like marionettes with too many strings.
Those bodies are battlegrounds.
Too many souls. No throne-holder.
They fight openly, violently, all at once. Every impulse becomes action. Every voice demands motion. The body becomes a riot.
Inside me, the riot is silent.
Because I am louder.
Why do you get to decide? one of them whispers. A young voice. Thin. Angry. You're not special.
I bare my teeth at my reflection in the cracked mirror above the sink. My face looks ordinary. That's the cruelest part. No one can see the bloodless war behind my eyes.
I don't get to decide, I think back. I already did.
The water runs. The mirror fogs. For a moment, I almost don't recognize myself—my features blur, stretch, fragment. For an instant, I feel a shift. A pressure change.
A hand on the Throne.
My heart stutters.
No, I say. Not aloud. Never aloud.
The pressure withdraws, sulking.
Laughter ripples through my head. Not joy. Amusement. Hunger.
Careful, says the oldest voice. The one that remembers things I never lived. Even kings fall when they believe themselves eternal.
I turn off the tap and stare at the mirror until my reflection solidifies again.
I am not a king.
I am a jailer.
And every soul in here is waiting for the moment my grip slips—even for a second—so they can finally move my hands and prove that this body was never mine alone.
I press my palm flat against my chest and feel my heart obey.
For now.
The Throne is occupied.
And I will not step down.