There were no colors in the darkness.Only pressure, only breath. Only the sound of footsteps against stone, each step vanishing as if swallowed.
Cassiel led. His sword was drawn but useless — you could feel it. This was not a place where steel mattered. Behind him, Mirae's hand brushed the wall, tracing the strange, living patterns etched into the stone. Bastion and Elior flanked Ilyan, who still limped, breathing shallowly, but steady.
None of them spoke.
There was no language here. Only the understanding that whatever they were walking toward would either save them or erase them.
The path twisted.The architecture turned inward, looping in impossible spirals, gravity pulling at them in weird ways. More than once, Bastion cursed as the walls seemed to breathe, shifting their steps into slippery slopes, then solid ground again.
And always, always, ahead — a pulse.
Like a heart buried deep beneath the world, beating slowly, insistently.
Ba-dump.
Ba-dump.
Ba-dump.
The first sign of what waited for them was the hall of mirrors.
They turned a corner and the walls vanished — or so it seemed — replaced by endless reflections.
Not reflections of themselves.Reflections of the choices they never made.
Cassiel saw himself wearing a broken crown, blood on his hands, standing over corpses he couldn't recognize.
Mirae saw herself walking away from a burning city, alone, smiling like a god who had finally been freed.
Bastion saw a battlefield littered with bodies, and himself kneeling among them, building a house from the bones.
Elior saw himself standing in a church, light pouring over him, and an altar made of betrayal at his feet.
Ilyan saw... nothing.
Only darkness.
Only the heavy feeling of absence.
They moved faster after that.
Ba-dump.
Ba-dump.
The second sign was the Garden of Drowned Bells.
A vast open space beneath the city, where bells of every size and shape lay half-sunken into stagnant black water. Some still rang — soft, broken chimes — but no one was touching them.
The air smelled of rust and forgotten prayers.
"We're close," Elior whispered.
"To what?" Bastion asked.
Nobody answered.
They picked their way carefully through the flooded garden, stepping on broken stones and submerged chains. Shadows flickered at the edges of their vision — sometimes statues, sometimes not.
Mirae stopped at one of the bells, smaller than the rest.
It bore her name.
Not painted.Not engraved.
It was grown into the metal, a part of it.
She turned away.
So did the others.
There were too many bells here, and none of them should be touched.
They climbed a stairway that led nowhere and ended up somewhere else entirely.
The sky above them now was not black but a deep, poisonous purple, streaked with veins of sickly gold.
The city had hollowed itself out around the heart.
Ashreign's throne room.
It wasn't a throne room in the traditional sense.No grand halls. No jeweled ceilings. No gathered nobility.
It was a crater.
At the center, a seat carved from the broken bones of the city itself.
A figure sat on it.
At first, they thought it was a statue.
Then it moved.
The figure wore no crown. No robes. Only bandages, wound tight around its body until it resembled a mummified relic.
Where its face should have been, there was only a blank, featureless surface.
It raised a hand.Not a threat — an invitation.
Come closer.
Cassiel felt the others tense around him.
"Trap?" Mirae said, her voice razor-thin.
"Of course," Ilyan rasped.
"But the kind you can't refuse," Elior added grimly.
They moved forward.
Each step felt like walking through syrup, memories clawing at them, whispering false futures, offering broken promises.
At the foot of the throne, the figure spoke.
Its voice was a choir of the dead, a thousand forgotten souls whispering in unison.
"You have brought the outsider," it said.
It did not point, but they all felt the shift toward Ilyan.
"The one who does not belong."
Ilyan's jaw tightened. His hands curled into fists.
"And you," the voice said, shifting to the others, "you seek meaning."
A soft laugh, like pages rustling.
"You seek absolution."
A beat of silence.
"But there is no absolution here. Only acceptance."
Cassiel took a half-step forward, sword held low.
"What are you?"
"I am the Throne Beneath the Dust," the voice said. "The heart of Ashreign. The memory of its sins. The whisper that the living deny."
Its bandaged hand moved, slow and sure.
"I offer you a choice."
A black flame appeared between the figure's hands.It hovered, pulsing like a second heart.
"Accept the forgetting," it said, "and be free. No burdens. No past."
The flame shifted, showing images — Mirae laughing in a golden city, Cassiel surrounded by comrades who had never died, Bastion drinking with friends who had never betrayed him, Elior preaching to a congregation that loved him unconditionally.
"You will be happy," the Throne promised. "You will be complete."
The flame twisted.
"And if you refuse..."
The images changed.
Their deaths.Their failures.Their loneliness.
"You will carry your burdens forever. Until they drown you."
The group stood frozen.
Tempted.Terrified.
Ilyan stepped forward first.
"I refuse."
The flame hissed, recoiling from him.
The Throne said nothing.
One by one, the others followed.
Cassiel. Mirae. Bastion. Elior.
None of them spoke.There was no need.
The Throne's bandaged hand lowered.
"You are fools," it said, almost gently.
Then the crater shuddered.
The battle began.
The Throne did not fight with weapons.It fought with memories.
Every step Cassiel took was a relived betrayal.Every swing of Mirae's blade felt like cutting down someone she loved.Bastion stumbled through flashbacks of wars he hadn't fought yet.Elior bled from wounds inflicted by his own doubts.
Ilyan moved differently.
The memories tried to grasp him — but found only void.
He was a gap, an absence, an error in the story.
The Throne noticed.
It hated it.
It attacked him — not with illusions, but with force.
Spikes of bone ripped from the earth, aimed straight at his heart.
Cassiel saw it at the last moment.
He threw himself sideways, tackling Ilyan out of the way.
A spike grazed his side — blood welled instantly.
"Get up!" he roared.
They surged forward together.
It wasn't a clean fight.
It wasn't a fair fight.
It was a war of attrition, of endurance.
Again and again, the Throne struck — weaving the city's grief into weapons, pulling statues from the ground to fight, ringing invisible bells that disoriented and crushed.
But the group refused to yield.
They fought like animals backed into a corner — desperate, savage, unrelenting.
And little by little...the Throne began to crack.
Hairline fractures appeared in the bandages.The voice grew thinner, more strained.
"You do not belong," it hissed, directing its rage entirely at Ilyan now.
"You are a mistake."
Ilyan smiled — a thin, wolfish thing.
"I know."
And he plunged the shard of the broken bell — the one Cassiel had secretly pocketed — straight into the Throne's chest.
The crater erupted.
When the dust settled, they stood alone.
The Throne was gone.
In its place was a small, unremarkable stone — a core of pure memory.
Cassiel picked it up, weighing it in his hand.
No visions. No voices. Just weight.
"Now what?" Bastion asked, panting.
"We find a way out," Mirae said.
But even as she spoke, the walls around them began to shimmer.
Doors appeared — a dozen, a hundred — each leading to a different part of the city.
Each one humming with choice.
Cassiel met Ilyan's gaze.
"You coming?"
Ilyan hesitated.
For just a heartbeat.
Then he nodded.
"For now," he said.
And together, they stepped forward — into whatever future waited.