Chapter 11: Echoes of a Crown
—The Mortal Path: Toward the Throne of Dust—
The air changed as Kael and Lira left the Ash Vale behind.
The skies bled a strange hue, somewhere between violet and bronze, and the land itself resisted their passage. Trees leaned inward with brittle groans. Stones turned underfoot when Kael wasn't looking. Even the wind whispered backwards.
The Throne of Dust was not simply forgotten—it had been unwritten from reality. That they could walk toward it at all was a miracle—and a warning.
"We're entering a place that was meant to be erased," Kael said, breaking their silence.
Lira looked to him, breath visible in the thickening air. "You created the gods…?"
His jaw flexed. "Not by choice. Not the way you think. When I first ascended… I was alone. I poured my divinity into existence itself, trying to bind it together. That energy sparked others into being—fragments of myself given shape by the worship and fear of mortals."
"They were born from you," she murmured. "And they turned on you."
"Because I threatened their autonomy," Kael said bitterly. "Because I remembered that they were never meant to rule."
They continued through a skeletal forest where all the leaves were white as bone. The path narrowed, bordered by stone monoliths carved with prayers—scratched out and burned.
Kael's abyssal eyes scanned ahead. He could feel the Throne calling. It wasn't a voice, but an ache. A pull in his bones, as if gravity itself bent around that place.
Lira reached for his hand as they stepped into a ravine filled with obsidian ash.
Their steps made no sound.
Far above, clouds churned unnaturally—stormless, but boiling.
Kael paused suddenly.
"What is it?" Lira whispered.
He looked up. "They know I remember now."
—Meanwhile: The Celestial Sanctum, Throne of the Highest—
Panic echoed in the divine chamber like a hurricane trapped in glass.
The Gods' Council, once majestic and resplendent, now seethed with dread and division. Pillars of starlight shook. Sacred flames flickered violently. The once-calm Pool of Origins boiled over.
At its center, the High Throne stood empty.
For even the highest of the gods dared not sit while Kael—the Thirteenth, the Betrayed—was stirring.
"He remembers," spat Toras, god of war and conquest, pounding his fist into a star-forged pillar. "The Oracle awakened him. You let this happen!"
"It was you who failed to destroy the Root Flame when you had the chance," snapped Elarya, goddess of fate and illusion, her eyes shifting like mirrored storms.
"He was bound by the Accord," murmured Vaelun, the god of silence. "He should never have broken free."
A ripple of golden light flowed into the room—then hardened into a sharp presence. Aeris, goddess of judgment, entered the chamber, her silver crown cracked.
She spoke only one word:
"He is whole."
Silence followed.
Then fear.
"He's heading for the Throne of Dust," said Elarya.
"Impossible," said Toras. "That place was dissolved from time. He can't—"
"He made it." Aeris' voice cut him off. "The spell that erased it unraveled the moment his flame returned. He remembers what we did there."
"Then he will remember the truth," said Vaelun, almost reverently.
"He will remember that it was you, Aeris, who gave the order."
Aeris' gaze did not waver. "And I would do it again. He grew too powerful. He was the pantheon. We were puppets beneath his shadow."
"We were fragments of his will," Vaelun said. "And we rebelled."
A silence deeper than space fell over the chamber.
Then, Elarya whispered, "If he reaches the Throne… he will remember how he died. He will remember who plunged the blade."
A single image shimmered into view above the Pool of Origins: Kael, standing at the edge of a black valley, the Root Flame at his side, Lira by his hand.
His white hair moved in an unseen wind. His black-irised eyes blazed with awareness.
"He's not just coming for answers," Aeris said.
"He's coming for us."
---
—The Mortal Path: Valley of Unraveling—
Kael and Lira stood before a vast plain of dead air.
Here, the laws of nature had failed. Mountains hovered in fragments above the ground. Rivers ran backwards in silence. Time stuttered in pulses, freezing and leaping.
And in the far distance, across a shattered bridge of bone and obsidian, stood a temple.
It looked incomplete—half-formed from starlight and soot, constantly rebuilding and decaying in the same breath.
"The Throne of Dust," Kael whispered.
Lira squeezed his hand. "Do you really want to see what they did to you?"
He looked down at her, his voice hoarse but clear.
"I need to. Because whatever they buried there… it's not just my memory."
His eyes narrowed.
"It's the reason the gods exist."