CHAPTER 12 — THE DAY THE THRONE SPOKE BACK
No one heard when the Throne speak..
Not the cult leaders who carved prayers into their own skin.
Not the false gods bloated on belief and fear.
Not the saints who drowned themselves in devotion, calling it salvation.
No one, except one. Arjun.
He stood alone in the ruins of what had once been a temple.
Its roof had collapsed centuries ago, letting moonlight spill freely onto shattered idols. Stone faces lay broken at his feet—gods with snapped necks, saints without hands, halos cracked clean in half. Old incense clung faintly to the air, soured by rot and dust. The prayers here had gone bad long ago. They lingered like spoiled food, heavy and useless.
The air felt thin.
Not empty—hesitant.
As if reality itself was unsure whether it was still allowed to exist here.
Rudra was gone.
The thought circled Arjun's mind again and again, refusing to settle.
Taken by something that left no tracks. No sound. No warning. One moment Rudra had been beside him, muttering about unstable zones and divine echoes—
The next, absence.
Not death.
Absence was worse than it.
Arjun clenched his hand.
The mark on his palm no longer bled.
That frightened him more than the blood ever had.
Instead, it ached—deep and hollow, like a limb that had been torn away but still screamed in memory. The Eye beneath his skin felt dormant, yet watching. Waiting.
You did this, he thought. Not to himself.To it.
"You wanted this," Arjun said quietly, his voice echoing against broken stone.
"Didn't you?"
No answer came at first. Reply??!
Then the world grew heavier.
Not suddenly.Gradually.
As if an immeasurable hand had rested gently on existence and begun to press.
Arjun's knees bent under the weight. His breath shortened. His heart hammered, every beat loud enough to feel like an accusation. The ruins blurred as his memories flickered—images crashing into one another without order or mercy.
The man who turned to ash.
The screaming shadow.
The prayers he had refused to answer.
The countless moments he had chosen not to kneel.
Measuring, he realized.
Not judging it but Weighing.
Then A voice came to his ears .
Not thunderous.Not distant.
It spoke with the terrible intimacy of something that had always been there.
"YOU ARE INCOMPATIBLE."
Arjun staggered back a step, boots scraping over loose stone.
"What?" The word slipped out before he could stop it.
The pressure did not lift.
"YOU DO NOT SEEK RULE."
The ground beneath his feet cracked, thin fractures racing outward like veins. Through the gaps, he glimpsed darkness—an endless void where chains floated, rusted and broken, turning slowly as if in water.
"YOU DO NOT SEEK WORSHIP."
Arjun swallowed hard. His mouth felt dry, his tongue heavy.
"So what?" he snapped. "That's supposed to be a flaw?"
The Throne did not react to his tone.
"THAT MAKES YOU UNSUITABLE."
For a moment, Arjun just stared at the cracked floor.
Then he laughed.
It came out rough, bitter, almost hysterical.
"Unsuitable," he repeated. "So you'll kill me now? Erase the mistake?"
Silence.
The weight shifted—not easing, but changing angle.
"NO."
Arjun's laughter died in his throat.
"IT MAKES YOU A CORRECTION."
Pain ripped through his palm.
He cried out, dropping to one knee as the mark burned anew. The Eye split vertically, its shape sharpening, losing anything that resembled sight.
This wasn't observation.
This was decision.
A verdict.
Arjun clutched his hand to the stone floor, teeth clenched as something slammed into his mind—not gently, not as a gift, but as a forced revelation.
Truth poured in.
Gods were not kings.
They never had been.
They were placeholders—temporary answers to a broken world. Systems built to manage fear, chaos, and belief until something better could be found.
And when they failed—
When they grew corrupt, stagnant, or drunk on worship—
They were meant to be removed.
Not by rebellion.
Not by faith.
By design.
By me, Arjun realized, horror coiling tight in his chest.
He saw it all in fragments—civilizations rising and collapsing, gods chained to thrones of belief, saints rotting from the inside out. He saw the system endlessly patching itself with divinity instead of fixing the wound beneath.
And now—
Now it had found something that didn't want the throne.
Something that could end it.
Far away, across cities and mountains, temples and hidden sanctuaries—
Every false god felt it.
Saints gasped mid-prayer.
Oracles screamed as visions shattered.
Immortals who had not known fear in centuries suddenly remembered its taste.
Because something had changed.
The Throne was no longer searching for a ruler.
It was preparing an execution.
Arjun gasped, breath tearing out of him as the knowledge receded, leaving him shaking on the temple floor.
"This is insane," he whispered. "You break the world and call me the fix?"
He pushed himself upright, legs trembling.
"You take Rudra. You burn this mark into me. You don't even ask."
His voice rose, anger finally cutting through the fear.
"If you want an executioner so badly," he said, staring into the empty air, "then don't sit me on your throne."
The pressure tightened.
"Don't make me rule," Arjun continued, quieter now, but sharper. "Let me end it. Let me cut the rot out and be done."
For the first time—
The Throne did not answer.
Instead—It opened.
Reality peeled back like a wound.
Before Arjun stretched something vast and unfinished—a corridor of light and shadow, of broken laws and unfinished judgments. Chains drifted apart, clearing a path that led somewhere deeper than sky, deeper than void.
Not a seat but a passage.
Arjun stood frozen, heart pounding, palm burning with the weight of what he had become.
An executioner did not command.
He walked forward.
And ended things.
He took a single step toward the opening.
The temple behind him groaned, ancient stone finally giving up, as if the world itself knew—
There was no turning back now.