Aethelgard's Upper District was a fortress of gold and glass, a floating testament to the Dominion's absolute authority. Here, the air was filtered by purification wards, and the moonlight was amplified by hovering prisms to ensure that no true shadow ever touched the marble boulevards. It was a place of sterile perfection, inhabited by the High Synod and the elite bloodlines of the Church.
Sylas descended like a falling star of soot. The wing of bone and violet mist—a temporary manifestation of the Duke's pride and the Emperor's structure—vanished as he hit the roof of the Cathedral of St. Aris. The impact was silent; the [Shadow King's] influence, though not yet fully inherited, was already leaking through the "regrets" stored in the Duke's memories.
He crouched on the edge of a gargoyle, his bone armor retracting beneath his skin as a series of intricate, black tattoos. His eyes, still ringed with emerald fire, scanned the plaza below.
[Current Status: Dual-Legacy Resonance Active.]
[Estimated Mana Reserves: 42%.]
[Objective: Locate the Shadow King's Archive.]
The Duke's memory was a jagged map. Valerius had known that the Church's power wasn't just in its light, but in its archives—the stolen histories of every "villain" they had ever executed. To truly break the Dominion, Sylas needed to find the truth behind the third legacy: the Shadow King, the one who had nearly erased the Saintess from the records of existence.
"You move with the grace of a man who has already died," a voice whispered from the wind.
Sylas didn't turn. He felt the ripple in the air, a distortion that bypasses his [Grave-Sight]. A figure materialized on the neighboring gargoyle. He was thin, dressed in robes of shifting gray silk that seemed to bleed into the moonlight. His face was hidden behind a porcelain mask with no eyes.
"The Keeper of the Archive," Sylas said, his voice a low resonance.
"I am the one who watches the silence," the figure replied. "You carry the weight of the Duke and the Emperor. It is... heavy. Clumsy. You are a mountain trying to act like a breeze."
"Mountains crush," Sylas said, his fingers twitching toward the starlight shards embedded in his arm.
"And breezes dissipate," the Keeper countered. "The Saintess's Hand is already regrouping. The Golems you toppled are being reforged as we speak. You have minutes before this cathedral becomes a furnace of holy fire."
The masked man pointed toward the central spire. "The Archive is not a room. It is a secret. To find it, you must stop fighting the dark and start being the dark. The Shadow King did not build walls; he built absences."
Sylas looked at the spire. He could feel the golden wards pulsing like a heartbeat, ready to incinerate anything with a discordant mana signature. If he used the Duke's power, he would be a beacon. If he used the Emperor's, he would be a target.
He closed his eyes. He reached into the void within his soul, touching the cold, silent space where the third legacy waited. It wasn't an inheritance yet; it was a ghost.
Hush, the voice of the Shadow King whispered, smoother than the Duke and colder than the Emperor. The light is only dangerous because you believe in it. Disbelieve. Forget the self. Become the gap in the world.
Sylas let his mana go. He dropped the [Dread Aura]. He withdrew the emerald fire from his eyes. He stood on the edge of the cathedral as a blank slate. To the wards of the Church, he simply ceased to exist. He wasn't a heretic; he wasn't even a man. He was a piece of the night that had wandered too high.
He stepped off the gargoyle.
He didn't fall. He slid. He moved through the air as if the shadows themselves were a staircase. He passed through the stained-glass windows of the spire, the holy runes failing to trigger as his essence matched the frequency of the surrounding void.
Inside, the cathedral was a hollow shell of white marble. In the center of the nave stood a statue of the Saintess, her hand outstretched in a gesture of false mercy. Sylas landed at the base of the statue.
[Shadow King Integration: 2%.]
[New Skill Unlocked: Veil of Secrets.]
He placed his hand on the marble plinth. Instead of pushing, he pulled. He reached into the "absence" the Keeper had spoken of. The ground didn't open; it unfolded.
The world tilted. The white marble of the cathedral was replaced by a library of floating obsidian tablets. There were no torches here, only the soft, bioluminescent glow of ink that refused to be erased. This was the Shadow King's Archive—the stolen memories of the world.
"Welcome to the truth," the Keeper's voice echoed, though the man was nowhere to be seen. "Find the regret that fits your soul, scavenger."
Sylas walked through the rows of tablets. He saw the history of the "Great Purge," where the Dominion had burned entire civilizations for the sin of "seeking the stars." He saw the Duke's true crime: he hadn't been a demon, he had merely refused to pay the soul-tithe that kept the Saintess immortal.
He stopped at a tablet that was darker than the rest. It didn't contain text; it contained a pulse.
[Legacy Identified: The Shadow King.]
[Requirement: Absorb the Silence of a Thousand Lies.]
As he touched the tablet, the shadows of the room rose up like a tide. They didn't attack; they flowed into him, filling the gaps in his soul left by the Duke's violence and the Emperor's coldness. He felt the weight of every secret the Dominion had ever hidden. He felt the paranoia of the High Synod. He felt the silent screams of the "traitors" who had been forgotten by history.
[Inheritance Initiated: The Shadow King.]
[Authority: Perception / Information / Invisibility.]
Suddenly, the Archive shuddered. A beam of pure, white light pierced the obsidian ceiling.
"The silence is broken!" a voice roared—not Serafina's, but something deeper, more ancient.
High Inquisitor Malachi descended through the hole in the ceiling, his white robes glowing with the intensity of a dying sun. He held a staff of solid gold, and his eyes were twin orbs of fire.
"You think the shadows can hide you from the Divine Gaze?" Malachi laughed, the sound shaking the obsidian tablets. "I am the eye of the Light. To me, you are a fly trapped in amber!"
He swung his staff, and a wave of holy fire swept through the Archive. The obsidian tablets began to crack and melt. The "absence" was being filled with presence.
Sylas stood his ground. He didn't summon his bone armor. He didn't unleash the Duke's roar. He stood in the center of the melting library and smiled—a slow, terrifying expression that held no light.
"You look, Malachi," Sylas said, his voice sounding as if it were coming from every corner of the room at once. "But you don't see."
[Veil of Secrets: Active.]
Malachi blinked. The figure of Sylas began to distort. One became two, then four, then a hundred. The High Inquisitor lashed out with his staff, vaporizing a dozen "Sylases," but they were merely echoes of light.
"Where are you?" Malachi screamed, his holy aura expanding until it threatened to collapse the entire cathedral above them. "Show yourself, coward!"
"I'm right here," a whisper came from directly behind Malachi's ear.
The High Inquisitor spun around, but there was only a shadow. A shadow that had a hand.
Sylas materialized for a fraction of a second, his fingers—now tipped with obsidian claws—piercing Malachi's golden robes. He didn't go for the heart. He went for the throat. But he didn't tear it. He whispered into it.
"Inherit the silence."
He dumped the weight of a thousand lies into Malachi's mind. The High Inquisitor's eyes rolled back. He saw the truth of the Saintess—the rot beneath her gold, the thousands of souls she consumed every night to maintain her youth. He saw the "Great Parasite" that the Dominion worshipped as a god.
Malachi's holy fire turned gray. His golden staff lost its luster. He didn't die; his mind simply ceased to function, unable to process the contradiction between his faith and the reality Sylas had forced into his brain.
The High Inquisitor collapsed into a heap of white silk and broken gold.
[Assimilation Progress: 18% (Total).]
[Legacy Level: Shadow King - Rank 1.]
Sylas looked at his hands. They were translucent, flickering at the edges like a dying candle. He felt a new kind of power—not the strength to crush, but the power to redefine.
"The Duke's wrath. The Emperor's structure. The King's truth," Sylas murmured. "The Dominion is three steps closer to the end."
But the cathedral was falling. The holy fire Malachi had unleashed had triggered the final purification ward. The Upper District began to chime—the bells of "Divine Reckoning."
Serafina appeared at the edge of the breach in the ceiling. She didn't look down; she looked at the sky. Above Aethelgard, the prisms were shifting, focusing the entire city's mana into a single point of light.
"He's in the Archive," she said into her crystal. "Fire the Sun-Lance."
Sylas didn't wait to see the result. He merged with the shadows of the falling obsidian and vanished.
The Cathedral of St. Aris didn't explode. It simply evaporated. Where the grand spire had stood, there was now only a perfectly circular crater of white ash. The "villain" had been purged. Or so the High Synod would tell the people tomorrow.
But in the alleys of the Grey Quarter, a new rumor was already spreading. The Shadow King had returned, and he was no longer alone.
Sylas sat in a derelict tavern, his white hair now streaked with black. He looked at the emerald-and-violet ring on his finger. A third color was beginning to form: a deep, abyssal ink.
"Three down," Sylas said. "Now, I need a war."
He looked toward the northern mountains—the territory of the Fourth Legacy: the War Tyrant.