The Warden sat atop his throne of iron, watching a man drown.
Not in water, but in sound.
Crimson chains wrapped around the prisoner's limbs, dragging him deeper into a pool that shimmered with screaming light. His mouth gaped, silent, yet his body writhed in agony.
The Warden sipped black wine and smiled faintly.
"He lied," he said. "So I let the truth eat him."
The steward beside him didn't speak.
None of them did. Not anymore. The Warden's presence bent even words into obedience.
But tonight was different.
Tonight, a name had reached even this chamber, carved into the highest tower of the Chains.
Nihil.
The Hollow Beggar.
The Mock God.
The boy who turned fire on the Market of Flesh.
Who slew silver-masked bounty hunters without breaking pace.
The Warden swirled his wine.
"He's… poetic," he murmured.
Then he stood.
A rare thing.
Even the floor trembled at the shift in weight.
"Tell the Black Sons," he said. "Send the Chainbearers. No blades. No bombs."
He turned to the steward, smiling now, wide and sharp.
"Send the ones who whisper faith in agony."
"Tell them: I want Nihil's heart."
"But I want him to give it to me."
Elsewhere...
The wind above the city howled like a dying god.
Nihil stood on the edge of a broken cathedral's steeple, cloak rippling behind him, watching a procession below.
Priests.
But not the holy kind.
They wore robes of black iron-thread. Their faces hidden behind gold-plated masks. Each carried a bell with no clapper, and yet, the tolling sound echoed through the streets.
The Black Sons.
The Warden's personal faith-forgers.
Messengers of mercy through pain.
Executioners baptized in sacred cruelty.
And they were not hunting just to kill.
They were here to convert.
He watched them pause outside a gathering of beggars, sick, broken, hidden among rubble.
One priest lifted his hand.
The other began a sermon.
"This world is broken because you
deserve it.
Every chain is a prayer.
Every wound, a confession.
And in your blood… the Warden writes salvation."
The sick knelt in fear.
But Nihil had heard enough.
He descended like falling ash.
Three seconds.
Silence.
He landed behind the priests as the third one raised a branding rod, heated by coal and spite.
The rod never touched the child it aimed for.
Because it hit the ground instead, followed by the priest's arm.
No scream. No sound.
Just death.
The others turned, but the silence still reigned.
Their bodies hit the stone one after another.
Precise.
Brutal.
Clean.
When sound returned, the survivors stared.
And then, they knelt.
Not in fear.
But in something else.
Hope.
He hated it.
He turned away, cloak drawn high, disappearing once more.
Not a savior.
Not a god.
Just a wound walking on legs.
But far away, in the Warden's tower, a mirror cracked.
The Warden watched it.
Listened to the silence spreading like plague across his city.
And then…
He laughed.
"Good."
"Let the Hollow thing climb."
"Let him think he is rising."
He picked up a shard of the broken mirror, pressed it into his palm, and whispered:
"Because the higher he climbs…
the louder the fall will echo."