The night following the fall of the Sovereign Court was thick with storm and silence. No horns announced victory, no banners rose in triumph. Yet the absence of ceremony made the act all the more absolute: power had shifted, and it was Kaelen who now stood at its center.
He had not sat on the throne he shattered. Instead, he chose the dais before it, where he spread the remnants of old parchments and relics that the fire hadn't devoured. Broken seals, fragments of law, scraps of prophecy—each piece gathered into his grasp like bones picked clean by crows.
Around him, those who had survived the clash waited. Serenya leaned heavily against a column, her sword still bloodied, her armor stripped of the insignias of her former masters. Others, once slaves of the Court, knelt in a wide circle, their eyes full of fear and something more dangerous—hope.
Kaelen raised his staff, cracked though it was, and the blood pooled across the floor shifted as though alive. It traced symbols across the marble, forming spirals of crimson that pulsed with faint light. His voice carried through the silence, deep and measured, every word echoing against the ruined pillars.
"The Court is ash. The Sovereign is wounded. The world is unbound. But chains are patient things—they will be forged anew unless fire tempers the steel."
He looked across the faces watching him. Once, they had called him exile. Heretic. Madman. Now, every eye was fixed upon him as though he were the only anchor left in a world adrift.
"You came here servants of a false order," Kaelen continued, his gaze cutting through them like blades of glass. "Now you will walk as architects of truth. Not a Sovereign's truth. Not a prophet's. Mine."
The symbols on the floor flared brighter, casting the hall in a blood-red glow. A low hum rose from the stone, a vibration that seemed to crawl into bone and breath alike.
One man dared speak. "And if we refuse?"
Kaelen turned, and for the first time, the full weight of his crimson eyes bore down upon him. A silence followed that question—not the silence of hesitation, but the silence of inevitability. With a flick of his hand, the man's body arched and split with red lightning. He crumpled, lifeless, smoke rising from his charred frame.
Kaelen let the silence linger, the lesson burn into their minds. Then, calm as ever, he spoke:
"Refusal is death. Allegiance is survival. Loyalty is power."
No more voices rose against him. One by one, they lowered their heads. Serenya alone kept her gaze fixed, lips curling in a smile.
The crimson glow spread further, weaving across the broken hall until the ruins seemed alive with veins of fire. For the first time since his exile, Kaelen stood not as an outcast but as master of a gathering, his circle bound not by oaths or crowns, but by fear and fire.
He lifted his staff, pointing to the storm outside the shattered roof.
"The Sovereign bleeds. The Court is gone. Now begins the purge. I will burn the false order from every throne, every kingdom, every hollow shrine they dare cling to. And when the fire fades, there will be only one truth left to carve into stone."
He slammed the staff down. The cracked floor shuddered. The storm outside roared as though answering his command.