The invitation had been carved in solar gold.
Augustino Zenorth walked into the Great Astral Hall with his head held high. While the other twelve focused on their divine status, Augustino had spent his years focused on the responsibility of the 13th seat: maintaining the gravity that held the stars together.
He didn't see enemies. He saw his peers. His brothers.
"The balance is shifting, Augustino," the King of Capricorn spoke, his voice echoing off the marble pillars. "The Upper Gods are restless. We must discuss the future of the Serpent's Throne."
Augustino stepped forward, unarmed and open-hearted. "The future is peace. My people are thriving, and the void is silent. What is there to fear?"
The answer came not in words, but in steel.
The air solidified into chains of pure light, wrapping around Augustino's limbs and dragging him to his knees. He roared, his dark mana surging to break the seal, but twelve divine signatures slammed against his soul at once. He was a lion trapped in a cage of suns.
Then, the heavy doors of the hall groaned open.
Augustino's heart stopped. Pushed forward by the celestial guards were his wife and his young son. Their eyes were wide with a terror that no child should ever know.
"No..." Augustino's voice was a ragged whisper. "This is a meeting of Kings! Leave them out of this!"
"To erase a shadow," the Queen of Virgo said, her face a mask of cold divinity, "one must destroy the light that creates it. Your bloodline is a stain on the Zodiac."
In a flash of silver and gold, the executioners didn't hesitate. Augustino watched as the two people who were his entire universe were silenced forever. The hall, once filled with the "holy" light of the gods, became a slaughterhouse.
Silence followed. A heavy, suffocating silence.
Augustino stopped struggling. His head hung low, his hair shadowing his eyes. But the ground beneath him began to crack. The shadows in the room didn't retreat from the light anymore—they began to eat it.
He looked up, and for the first time, the 12 Kings felt a chill that reached their immortal bones. His eyes were no longer human; they were two voids reflecting a dying galaxy.
"You fear the 13th God?" Augustino's voice was no longer his own. It was the roar of Ophiuchus itself. "Then I will give you a reason to tremble. My body may fall today, but the Serpent never dies. I swear upon the blood you have spilled: I will carry this power through the abyss of time. I will wait. And when my successor rises... your heavens will burn."
They didn't wait for him to finish. Twelve blades converged at his heart, ending the life of the 13th King.
But as his body turned to ash, a single, dark spark escaped into the cosmos, drifting toward a future they could not see.