The Sovereign Court lay broken, a cathedral of power reduced to splintered marble and bleeding shadows. Shattered banners fluttered limply in the smoke-stained air, their once-proud colors now tattered reminders of loyalty lost.
Kaelen walked through the ruin with deliberate steps, his robes scorched at the edges, his staff cracked but still alive with a dim, pulsing glow. His presence alone bent the silence. Every step echoed, every breath seemed to thrum against the fractured walls as if the stones themselves remembered his defiance.
Before him, the bodies of the Sovereign's enforcers lay in grotesque patterns—splayed across shattered columns, buried in heaps of molten steel. Blood stained the white floors, running in rivers that pooled beneath his boots.
But it was the throne itself that drew his eye. Once a seat of divine command, it was now cracked down the center, jagged like the wound of a kingdom undone. He reached out, his fingertips brushing the ruined stone, and a strange, bitter smile tugged at his lips.
"They will call this blasphemy," he whispered, voice low, almost tender. "But history… history will call it correction."
From the shadows of the ruined gallery, one of his allies emerged—Serenya, her curved blade still dripping. Her armor was dented, her cheek split, but her eyes burned with feverish light. "The Executoner lies dead. Karlen fled into the storm. And Arcturus… Arcturus will never rise again."
Kaelen turned to her slowly, crimson eyes sharp as glass. "And the Sovereign?"
Serenya hesitated, lowering her head. "Gone. Slipped from the court in the chaos. But wounded."
Kaelen exhaled, a long, deliberate breath. For a moment, the weight of centuries seemed to settle across his shoulders. He looked once more upon the ruined throne, upon the cracked symbol of the power that had exiled him, branded him a heretic, condemned his name to whispers.
Now it stood broken. And the world would feel the tremor.
He closed his hand, red light searing from his palm. The fragments of the throne lifted, trembling in the air as if caught between rebuilding and shattering further. For a heartbeat, the ruined chamber glowed with raw, unstable magic. Then he let the pieces fall, clattering like bones to the floor.
"Let the Sovereign crawl," Kaelen said, his voice like the edge of a blade. "The chains are gone. The world is mine to remake."
Lightning split the heavens beyond the shattered roof, bathing him in stark white brilliance. And far from the Court, every seer, every prophet, every cursed soul felt the shiver of what had been unleashed.