On the ship, Lucian stared into the abyss, thinking hard about his next move. The weight of the future pressed on him, heavy and undefined.
He stared at the horizon, seeing nothing but the endless blue waves swallowing the setting sun.
What was that word?
The question gnawed at him. Supermodel. The word he had thought of when looking at Seraphim. I haven't heard that word before. It felt familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. I cannot figure it out.
He looked up at the darkening sky, then back at the water. After a moment, he sighed, forcing himself to shift his thoughts to more immediate concerns.
Arthur had gone to sleep hours ago. And Seraphim... well, who knew where he was? The man had a habit of disappearing into the woodwork.
I can't read his intentions, Lucian thought, gripping his cane. Are all powerful people this mysterious? Or are they just dramatic?
"Sigh. I am alone, as usual."
Well, I cannot do anything about that right now.
His thoughts drifted to his advancement.
I need to test my new power on someone, he mused, tapping his finger against the silver head of his cane. Maybe I can find some pirates in this new territory we are heading toward. Just maybe.
Too much work, he decided, shaking his head.
He adjusted his silver cane and let it rest against the wall of the cabin. But the silence began to bother him. It wasn't just quiet; it was dead.
Wait. Let me talk to Arthur, he thought. If he knows anything more about the Memory Fragments, now is the time to ask.
Lucian pushed off the wall and walked toward the lower deck. But as he moved, he realized something was wrong.
The ship was silent. Completely silent.
There was no sound of the engine. No sound of the waves slapping the hull. No creaking of wood.
He didn't see any crew members. The sailors who had been scrubbing the deck earlier were gone.
He went to Arthur's room and pushed the door open. Empty. The hammock was still swinging slightly, but the Dragon was gone.
He hurried to Seraphim's quarters. Empty.
What the fuck is going on?
Lucian felt a spike of adrenaline. He wasn't scared—his Constraint suppressed the fear before it could paralyze him—but he was shocked. An entire ship full of people didn't just vanish into thin air.
He walked back out onto the deck to look outside.
The world had changed.
The sky wasn't just getting darker; it was being erased. A thick, unnatural fog was rolling in, moving against the wind, swallowing the ship.
Nobody told me about this, he thought, frustration rising. Why is this only happening to me? Damn it.
He cursed to no one as the dark fog reached him, wrapping around his ankles like cold hands.
He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath, trying to center himself. Think. Is this an attack? An illusion?
Then, he heard it.
A small murmur. A whisper, speaking directly into his ear, though no one was there.
It was spoken in Nepshi, the language of the Gods. Old Man Uriel had taught him that this tongue resonated with the very fabric of reality.
Suddenly, the whisper grew louder, echoing inside his skull like a bell.
"The Whisperer in the Tides." "The Womb of a Thousand Forms." "The Primordial Monarch of the Velvet Deep for Desire."
What?
Lucian opened his eyes.
He was not on the ship. He was not in the middle of the ocean.
The sound of the ocean had been severed instantly—not faded, but cut like a wire. The humidity of the sea vanished, replaced by an air so dry and sterile it felt like inhaling a vacuum. The darkness of the evening sky was bleached out of existence, replaced by a blinding, agonizing white.
Lucian didn't blink. He couldn't. He was frozen in the space between the tick and the tock of a clock.
Clack.
Lucian's boots made a sharp sound against a surface that shouldn't exist.
He looked down.
He expected wood. He expected stone. Instead, he saw the birth of a galaxy.
The floor was made of glass—perfectly transparent, flawlessly clear. Beneath his feet, suspended in an infinite void, spiral galaxies swirled in slow motion. He saw stars dying in supernova explosions that looked like tiny sparks from a flint. He saw the physical world—the Sapphire Expanse, the Continents, the Guild—as nothing more than a speck of dust miles below his soles.
Nausea hit him like a physical blow. The vertigo was absolute. His brain screamed that he was falling, that there was nothing holding him up over this infinite drop.
Do not kneel, his instinct screamed. Constraint Active.
Lucian forced his knees to lock. He forced his spine to straighten. He stood on the glass, floating above the universe, and refused to look away.
He looked up. There was no sun, yet the light was omnipresent. It cast no shadows. It revealed every pore on his skin, every thread in his tuxedo.
Rising from the glass floor were massive, twisting pillars. They stretched up into the white void endlessly. But as Lucian squinted, he realized they weren't stone.
They were bone.
They were vertebrae. Giant, translucent spinal cords made of crystal, twisting like DNA strands. Inside the crystal bones, a liquid moved—thick, sluggish, and glowing. It was gold.
Divine Marrow, Lucian realized with a shudder. I am standing inside a ribcage. I am standing inside a spine.
The silence was heavy. It pressed against his eardrums. It was the silence of a tomb, or perhaps, the silence of a courtroom before a verdict is read.
In the center of this cathedral of bone, sitting on a raised dais of jagged glass, was the object calling to him.
The Throne.
It was carved from a single piece of diamond-hard ether. It was tall, imposing, and terrifyingly beautiful. But it was not welcoming.
The surface wasn't smooth. It was fractured, like a mirror that had been smashed and put back together. The armrests were razor-sharp. The backrest was lined with spikes of glass. To sit on it would be to be cut. To lean back would be to bleed.
On the seat, pristine and terrifying, was a stain. It wasn't red. It was Gold. Dried, ancient ichor from the last being who sat there.
Floating above the headrest was a halo. It wasn't a ring of fire. It was a shattered ring of light, rotating slowly, grinding against itself with a sound like tectonic plates shifting.
Lucian took a step forward. The pressure increased. It felt like gravity had increased tenfold.
He looked at the reflective surface of the Throne's backrest. He saw his own reflection.
But the reflection wasn't Lucian the Tier 2 Morningstar. The reflection was grinning. Its eyes were black holes. It wore a crown of bleeding thorns.
[SYSTEM ALERT] [CRITICAL WARNING] [You have entered the Cenotaph of Pride.] [Authority Check: FAILED.] [Reason: Your Soul is too light. You will be crushed.]
CRACK.
The glass beneath his feet began to fracture.
The white void shattered. The sound of the ocean rushed back in like a thunderclap. The smell of salt hit him with the force of a punch.
"Hah!"
Lucian gasped, stumbling forward on the deck of the ship, gripping his cane so hard the silver metal bent under his fingers. The fog was gone. The silence was gone.
He was back.
He looked down at his hand, trembling slightly. There was a thin, paper-cut slice on his index finger, bleeding a single drop of red blood.
A souvenir from the Throne.
"What the actual fuck..." Lucian whispered, staring at the blood.