Chapter 12: The Throne of Dust
The valley was deathless.
No birds cried. No wind moved. Even the dust under Kael and Lira's feet refused to lift, as though the air had lost its will to stir. It was a graveyard not of life, but of reality.
The deeper they walked, the more the world lost form.
Trees stood like sculptures—perfect but petrified. Clouds loomed overhead, frozen in place as if painted by a mad god. Even time itself seemed unsure, slipping forward, then retreating in ghostly shudders. Lira clutched Kael's hand tighter with each step.
"I can't… I can't tell if we're walking forward or backward," she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
Kael's eyes, the black of abyssal night, glowed faintly as he scanned the path ahead. "This place was removed from time. Not destroyed—just made… unspeakable. Like a word you're not allowed to know."
He raised a hand.
The Root Flame flickered into existence—no longer wild, but calm, steady, a shard of his former divinity made loyal once more. Its presence stabilized the path before them, revealing a trail of silver light that guided them between chasms of nothingness.
And at the path's end—
The Throne of Dust waited.
The temple was a colossus of contradiction—half-ruined, yet still glorious; carved of starbone and shadow, yet rooted in soil that bled golden ichor. Its spires curved inward, like a crown cast down upon a god's tomb.
As they approached, Kael's heartbeat slowed.
Not from fear, but memory.
It was here, in this place, that his godhood had ended.
And something else had begun.
---
The temple doors did not open.
They remembered Kael.
And they yielded.
Massive stone slabs of ashen starlight shifted, releasing ancient dust into the still air. Inside was no sanctum—no altar. Only a single throne, draped in broken banners and surrounded by thirteen empty seats.
Lira walked beside Kael in silence.
And then the whispers began.
"Traitor."
"Creator."
"Tyrant."
"Savior."
Voices old as time echoed across the chamber, neither real nor entirely illusion. They pressed against Kael's ears like phantom claws, clawing at the edge of forgotten memory.
At the base of the throne, black glass spread like a wound across the marble floor. Kael knelt beside it, fingertips brushing its edge.
"I died here."
Lira didn't speak. She simply stood at his side, letting the memory breathe.
Kael closed his eyes.
The past surged into him like a storm.
---
—Long Ago: The Day the Sky Wept Blood—
He stood in this very hall, cloaked in gold and void, his crown made of starfire and silence. Around him sat the twelve—children of his power, once loyal, now restless.
Aeris stood first. "You are too vast. Too distant. We are your echoes—but even echoes wish to speak."
"I never asked to rule," Kael had said then. "I asked only to keep the world from tearing itself apart."
"But you are no longer of the world," Toras had growled, rising with spear in hand. "You hover above it. We suffer its burdens. You do not."
"We are gods because of you," Elarya had said softly. "But we are chained to you."
One by one, they turned their backs.
Except one.
Vaelun had stood at Kael's side until the very end.
Until the blade was forged.
Until it was given to Lira.
No—not this Lira.
A former life. A different face. Same soul.
The woman who had walked beside him for eons.
She had wept as she plunged the dagger into his back.
Not out of hatred.
Out of duty.
The gods could not kill him.
But she could.
Because he had trusted her.
Because he had loved her.
---
Kael staggered back from the glass, his hand clenched around a memory that still burned. Blood—his divine blood—had stained this floor. And now it shimmered faintly, as if responding to his presence.
"I remember now," he whispered, eyes wide.
"They were afraid I would become more than a god. That I would outgrow the shape they'd locked me in. So they betrayed me. But they couldn't kill me alone."
His voice grew hollow.
"They used you."
Lira stepped back slightly. "What are you saying?"
He looked at her—not with anger, but with a pain that eclipsed lifetimes.
"Not you, Lira. Not this version of you. But your soul. It was always there. Bound to mine. In every age. Every life."
Lira's lips parted. "Then… I…"
"You weren't a god," Kael said. "You were the anchor. The one soul who could walk beside me through all time. And they turned you against me."
Silence stretched between them.
But then Lira did something neither god nor memory had ever done.
She stepped forward, and she embraced him.
"Then let me choose now," she whispered. "Let me walk with you again—not as their weapon. But as your shield."
Kael closed his eyes, letting the memory pass through him like fire through silk.
And the Throne of Dust—once silent—shuddered.
Its broken banners flared with ghostly light. The thirteen empty seats trembled. A shadow twisted in the air above them, and a voice, ancient and hateful, echoed through the chamber:
"You should have stayed dead."
Kael turned slowly.
A shape emerged from the black glass.
Tall. Armored. Familiar.
The first divine threat had been a warning.
But this—
This was one of the Twelve.
And it had come to finish what the others had failed to do.