The throne room was alive.
It breathed. Not with air, but with memory. The walls pulsed like veins, carved from obsidian and old pain. Chains hung from the ceiling — empty. As if waiting.
Shadow sat unmoved, one arm resting on the armrest, the other around the hilt of his sword. A weapon not forged, but born.
Velas stepped forward. Her boots left no sound, but the echoes of the dead followed her in.
"You knew this would come," she said.
Shadow blinked once.
"No one escapes gravity," he answered. "Even light must fall."
The silence that followed was not empty — it was full of centuries, of battles, of betrayal and blood.
She raised her hand.
Not in threat.
In remembrance.
"I buried them all. The Saints. The Judges. The Flameborn."
Shadow's voice was low, but it cracked the pillars.
"You followed them."
"I survived them."
Lightning rolled across the ceiling, slow and red like bleeding stars.
He stood.
The air screamed.
Velas did not flinch.
"You were never meant to reign," she said. "You are the storm, not the crown."
"And yet here I sit."
He stepped forward.
Each step burned reality.
Sigils broke.
The very rules of the room bled into shadows.
Velas closed her eyes. Her breath slowed. Her fingers glowed faintly — divine, distant.
"You killed the chosen. You destroyed heaven. What is left to conquer?"
"Myself," he said.
"Then why am I here?"
"To remind me what it costs."
She smiled.
Sadly.
"And if I don't?"
Shadow drew his blade.
The room bowed around its edge — space bending, air folding.
"Then I'll bury the memory of you deeper than the bones of creation."
They collided.
Light and shadow. Not like war — like revelation.
She struck first — divine light, pure and mournful. A relic of something older than hope.
He met it not with steel — but with his will.
The chamber cracked.
The throne screamed.
Reality blinked.
And in that space between, where sound dared not enter, they danced.
A god and the echo of one.
The impact shattered the throne room.
Not in pieces, but in meaning.
The walls no longer held form — they rippled, melted into ink and stars, into half-memories and forgotten screams. Shadow and Velas had left the world behind. The realm of gods and devils could not contain their fury.
They fought in the space between heartbeats.
One strike bent time — the next rewrote it.
Velas weaved spears of pure light, cast from the breath of the fallen. Each whisper summoned a name lost to war. Each blade burned with memory. She hurled them — not at his body, but at his past.
But Shadow was no longer man.
He was memory.
He caught the light, crushed it, fed it to the black flame of his blade.
"Your god is gone," he said through clenched teeth. "And you're still praying."
Velas bled light — beautiful and unbearable.
"And yet, I stand."
They spiraled upward, into a storm that didn't exist — a vortex of regret and rage. Old constellations shattered above them. Comets wept.
Shadow raised both hands.
And the world beneath them broke.
Not metaphorically. He tore open reality.
Below them, the battlefield returned — dead angels, burned skies, ash-covered bones.
"You want to save them?" Shadow roared.
"You want meaning?"
He cast her down.
Not to kill.
To force her to see.
She slammed into the ruins of the last divine gate. It collapsed with her — screaming with the voice of a thousand holy tongues.
Velas coughed stars.
Shadow descended slowly.
Like judgment.
"I'm not your enemy," he whispered.
"You are everyone's enemy," she hissed. "Even your own."
She raised her hands.
One last time.
And smiled — not out of hope, but defiance.
"Let them remember that I tried."
She charged.
He moved faster.
His blade didn't cut flesh.
It undid her — piece by piece — until she was nothing but memory again. Light, scattered like petals, swallowed by the void.
Shadow stood alone.
Ash fell like snow.
Above him, no stars.
Behind him, no throne.
Only the quiet — and the weight.
And for a moment, just one…
He looked up.
As if searching for something.
But there was nothing left to look at.