The path to the throne of Shadow was not drawn on any map. It was a memory — a bleeding wound in the skin of the world, pulsing beneath broken skies.
Velas walked it alone.
No horse. No blade. Only silence wrapped around her shoulders like a second skin.
Behind her, the ashes of the council still drifted in the air — five thrones left burning. Not by fire.
By knowing.
They had seen what she truly was. And they had died knowing.
The world bent around her.
The ground beneath her feet refused to stay still — shifting between charred bones, molten glass, and soil that whispered secrets in languages no one alive remembered.
She passed the Forest of Knives, where the trees bled and screamed.
She crossed the Lake of Unlight, where the stars were drowned and forgotten.
Every place she touched — stilled.
Nothing dared move. Not the air. Not the night.
Even the demons watched from afar, whispering names to each other that hadn't been spoken since the birth of the Hells.
Above her, the sky cracked.
Not with lightning.
But with the sound of memory breaking.
Shadow knew she was coming.
And he did not hide.
At the Gate of Maw — a ruin built of jawbones from a thousand kings — Velas paused.
A voice like thunder mixed with weeping met her.
"You walk to death. You know this."
Velas didn't answer.
She placed a single hand on the gate.
It shattered like sand.
Inside, the wind stopped breathing.
A great chasm opened — the final descent into the throne halls of the Underking. Where even time dared not linger.
And there — sitting alone on a throne that pulsed with ancient hate, surrounded by burning sigils and chains of silence — was Shadow.
Not startled. Not angry.
Just waiting.
His eyes, twin storms of void and flame, watched her like a god studying a mirror.
"You're not real," he said.
Velas smiled.
"Neither are you."