SFX: KRRR… TIK… TIK…
The ruins exhaled dust and silence.
Stone fragments clicked and settled like cooling bones, echoes collapsing inward until only the slow hum of a dying world remained. Above us, the black sun bled thinner ribbons of violet light now, as if even it needed to breathe after what had been unleashed.
I stood at the center of the shattered cathedral.
Shadow and scale folded around me, settling like a second skin—alive, aware. Eclipse Aether coiled beneath my flesh, quiet but restless, like a predator that had tasted blood and learned patience.
The three women formed a loose triangle around me.
None advanced.
None turned their backs.
Sylvara held her moonlight blade low, the tip trembling just enough to betray the aftermath of adrenaline. Her breathing was controlled—but her grip was too tight.
Nyxara lounged against a collapsed pillar, one boot crossed over the other, twirling a dagger veiled in shadow. The motion was lazy. Deliberate. A test.
Elara remained on one knee, greataxes buried in cracked obsidian, chest heaving. Her golden eyes never left my face.
No one spoke.
Good.
I had ruled empires with silence.
I turned slowly, letting my gaze settle on each of them in turn.
Sylvara first.
Blade Saint heir. Moon-bound executioner.
Her silver hair had come loose during the clash, one strand plastered to her cheek with sweat. Her emerald eyes weren't afraid.
They were calculating.
She understood—not the name of what I had become, not the origin—but the shape of it. She had felt her sacred moonlight vanish into me like spilled wine into sand.
She knew that should have been impossible.
Nyxara next.
Shadow Sovereign. Poisoner of kings.
She met my stare without blinking. Amethyst irises flickered like dying embers, violet flames along her shoulders reduced to a slow, hypnotic pulse.
She was smiling.
Not wide. Not friendly.
The smile of someone who had just rediscovered an addiction.
Finally—Elara.
Dragonkin princess.
Ashen hair streaked with soot and blood—hers or mine, it hardly mattered. Crimson scales along her forearms gleamed like fresh lava. Her rage was a familiar thing.
I had seen that fire once before.
The night I burned her ancestral spires to secure my supply lines.
She had died screaming my name then.
Now she lived.
And stared at the same monster wearing a different face.
I broke the silence.
"Before we waste more time posturing," I said, my voice carrying easily through the ruins, "let's be clear about one thing."
I turned in a slow circle.
"You didn't come here by accident."
Sylvara's blade rose an inch.
"The Azure Guardian does not call abominations."
"Yet here I stand," I replied calmly. "Wearing its blood like a crown."
Nyxara laughed—soft, velvet-dark.
"He's not wrong, moonbeam. I felt it too. A hook in my ribs. Dragged me through three shadow-gates and half a battlefield." Her smile sharpened. "Ignoring it would've torn me apart."
Elara spat blood onto the stone.
"I don't care what pulled me," she snarled. "I care that I'm looking at the thing that drank my fire like cheap ale."
I spread my hands.
Black mist curled between my fingers, slow and obedient.
"Then let's test it again."
SFX: THOOM—
I stepped forward.
All three tensed.
I didn't attack.
I walked past them—deliberately slow—toward the throne at the far end of the chamber.
Chains of solidified starlight draped its arms like frozen lightning. The obsidian seat drank what little light remained, an absence shaped like authority.
I stopped three paces from it.
Turned.
"The Eclipse Throne," I said. "You know the legends."
Sylvara's voice was steel wrapped in silk.
"Whoever claims it can rewrite reality."
"Unmake gods," I added. "End epochs."
Nyxara hummed.
"Or start new ones."
I nodded.
Sylvara lifted her chin. "And you think you are worthy?"
"No," I answered honestly. "But I'm the only one here who doesn't care."
Elara rose fully now, axes dragging sparks across the stone.
"You'll have to kill us first."
"Possibly," I conceded. "But I'd rather not."
Nyxara's eyes gleamed. "Why?"
"Because you're more useful alive."
I raised my right hand.
The air recoiled.
Eclipse Aether answered—not as force, but as absence. Light bent away from my palm. Shadows deepened where they shouldn't.
SFX: KRRR… CLINK—
The chains on the throne rattled.
Once.
As if the metal remembered fear.
I pulled.
Not with muscle.
With will.
A thin thread of violet-black energy unspooled from my sternum and stretched toward the throne. It touched the first chain.
SFX: SHRRK—
It snapped.
One link.
Two.
Three.
Each break rang like a bell collapsing inward—sound devoured instead of released.
"S—stop," Sylvara said, stepping forward.
I didn't.
Another chain shattered.
"You're waking something," Elara growled.
"Good," I said quietly. "I like waking things."
SFX: WUUUUM—
The fourth chain broke.
The throne trembled.
And then—
Pain.
Three new threads erupted—not from me—
From them.
Moonlight speared from Sylvara's chest.
Violet shadow-flame coiled from Nyxara's core.
Molten crimson roared from Elara's heart.
All three struck the same point in my sternum.
Right where the serpent's fang had pierced me.
I staggered half a step.
Pain bloomed—sharp, familiar, almost welcome.
Sylvara gasped, clutching her chest.
Nyxara's smile vanished.
Elara bared her fangs.
"What did you do?" she demanded.
"Nothing," I rasped. "The serpent did."
The throne shook harder.
The remaining chains glowed—fractures bleeding violet-black light.
I straightened.
The pain receded.
What replaced it was colder.
Clearer.
I could feel them now.
Not thoughts.
Essence.
Sylvara—steady, radiant. A lighthouse in endless storm.
Nyxara—fluid, predatory. An ocean without shore.
Elara—raw, volcanic. A forge that never cooled.
And me—
The absence between them.
The eclipse that gave their light meaning.
I lowered my hand.
The threads dimmed—but remained.
"You're Eclipse Vessels," I said quietly. "Keys. The throne won't open for me alone."
Silence fell heavier than before.
Sylvara whispered, "If we refuse?"
"The bindings tighten," I answered. "Until one of us breaks."
Nyxara recovered first. She sauntered closer, stopping just beyond reach.
"So we're shackled," she murmured. "How poetic."
"Practical."
Elara slammed an axe into the stone.
"I won't serve you."
"You don't have to," I replied. "Just survive."
Sylvara lowered her blade—not surrender. Calculation.
"What happens if you sit it?"
I looked back at the throne.
"I finish what I started," I said. "I kill the gods who let my empire burn."
"And then?" Nyxara asked.
I smiled.
"Then I decide whether this world is worth saving."
Elara laughed—harsh and broken.
"You're insane."
"Probably."
Sylvara sheathed her sword.
Truce. Not trust.
"I will watch you."
"Fair."
Nyxara brushed past me, fingers lingering on my shoulder.
"Don't disappoint me, eclipse."
I caught her wrist.
Gently.
"I never do."
Elara turned her back.
"Coming?" she called.
I glanced once more at the throne.
The chains had stopped breaking.
But they trembled.
Waiting.
We left the ruins together.
Not allies.
Not enemies.
Something far worse.
Bound.
Above us, the black sun watched—leaking star-blood like slow tears.
The first eclipse had begun.