The war had ended without sound.
No trumpets. No chants. No light.
Just a man — if he could still be called that — standing where gods had once bled. Shadow walked through what was left of the final battlefield. His steps left no footprints, only heat. The air itself recoiled from him, afraid to touch what it no longer understood.
Ash covered everything.
It clung to shattered banners, melted armor, and bones that still radiated faint hymns of the Light. The Gate of Aeltherion, once the divine path to the Higher Realms, lay in fractured silence behind him. Velas's final charge had marked the last chapter of resistance.
And now?
Silence.
The kind that follows the end of belief.
Shadow entered the ruined palace. Not his.
Not yet.
It had been scorched, broken, and drowned in betrayal. Its black spires had fallen, its thrones shattered by war. But one thing still stood — the obsidian seat, untouched. Waiting.
Waiting for him.
He approached it like one approaches the edge of a blade. Slow. Deliberate. As if unsure whether to sit — or destroy it.
Behind him, echoes stirred.
A few demons crawled from hiding. Wounded, unsure, eyes glowing with fear rather than loyalty. Lightbearers, captured but alive, chained by will rather than steel. They stared at him.
And none spoke.
Not even when he turned to face them.
"The war is over," Shadow said, voice low and deep, like stone scraping against truth.
"The heavens bled. The hells burned. The chosen died."
He stepped up.
He sat.
And the realm shifted.
The throne welcomed him — not with fanfare, but with silence that bowed. The obsidian pulsed beneath him. The skies turned red. The air shimmered.
A new era.
Not of peace.
But of absolute rule.
"Let them come," Shadow murmured. "Let them scheme, rebuild, rise again."
He rested one hand on the hilt of his blade. The other on the cold armrest.
"I am the flame in the ruins. The last word in the book they tried to burn."
"Let history call me what it wants."
His eyes burned.
"I remain."