The Void greeted me like an ancient cathedral.
Silence hung in the air — not the silence of absence, but the silence of attention. Every shadow seemed to lean inward as I returned to the place beneath the Black Sun, as if the realm itself waited to witness what would unfold.
The pulse of the new glyph etched on my arm had not faded since the echo. It beat in quiet rhythm beneath my skin, black and silver lines circling like a patient storm. With every step, the air shimmered faintly around me, bending in subtle ways that were neither natural nor forced.
I had not summoned the Codex.
It was already awake.
The invisible pressure of its presence thrummed inside my chest — a living heartbeat beneath my own.
I reached the center of the obsidian plain, where a jagged circle of voidlight marked the scar left by the Mirror Sun. My throne of blackened stone awaited me there, carved from star-debris and wrapped in veins of living shadow. I sat slowly, letting the silence coil around me like a cloak.
The Codex stirred.
It unfolded within me like a dark galaxy blooming in reverse. Runes flickered at the edge of my vision, not waiting for my will but acting on their own. For the first time, I did not control the opening.
The Codex invited.
[Zhæl'thur drien'thal kaen'vaen… Shorae'nir vel'thor drae'mor.]
(The silence bends toward the First… the hidden thrones begin to stir.)
The words appeared before me in a spiral of black fire, hovering in the air. Each glyph twisted slowly, bleeding faint silver at their edges. The cadence was older than language, closer to memory than thought.
My pulse quickened — barely.
I extended my hand. The glyph on my forearm flared softly in response, as if recognizing something familiar. When my palm met the dark light, the world split.
I was no longer beneath the Black Sun.
I stood in an endless void of stars — but they were not the stars I ruled. These were ancient, dim, on the brink of collapse. Their light flickered like dying candles, and between them floated two thrones suspended in the dark.
One throne was carved from obsidian and voidlight, its surface alive with flowing shadows. It pulsed faintly, like a dying star refusing to extinguish.
The other throne… was fractured silver. Pieces floated around it like shards of a broken mirror, each one glowing faintly. A slow, rhythmic pulse emanated from it — distant, cold, familiar.
[Vaen'thor drae'nir… Zhaen'thir kor'nath… Vael'tarus vrei'nath Azael'ith.]
(The twin dominions remember… the stars hold their breath… The Second remembers the First.)
The Codex's voice thundered through the vision, but beneath it, I sensed another. A faint whisper that was not translation but origin.
Around the thrones stretched crowds of beings, kneeling in endless ranks. Their forms were alien, radiant, monstrous, divine. I saw silhouettes unlike any I had encountered — winged colossi of crystal, beasts with halos of screaming stars, humanoid figures made of liquid shadow and silver fire.
And among them… three stood apart.
I could not see their faces. Only their presence — three radiant flames bound in different colors: one black, one violet, one silver-white. They stood at the threshold of the twin thrones, bound by some invisible law.
A flicker passed through me — something sharp, ancient, buried.
I turned toward the thrones.
My feet touched nothing, but the void beneath me responded like ripples on water. The black throne flared faintly as I neared, shadows swirling like a cloak around its structure. My silver spiral glyph burned on my arm in answer, harmonizing with the pulsing light from the fractured throne opposite it.
The space between them thinned.
A crack formed — a line of raw light cutting across the darkness.
[Drae'kor shorae'nir… Vel'thor kaen'drel… Azael'ith drae'mor, Vael'tarus thren'nir.]
(The law fractures… the thrones awaken… The First must rise, the Second must stir.)
I felt my jaw tighten.
This was not merely a memory. This was a recording etched into the fabric of the Codex itself — a history older than my conscious existence. A truth I had never been shown until now.
The black throne was mine.
The silver throne was his.
And the Codex wanted me to remember.
The crack of light widened, and the stars around the thrones began to flicker violently, as if existence itself strained to hold this vision together.
I stepped closer.
The black throne pulsed as I neared, the shadows wreathing it tightening like living chains waiting for their master. The silver throne answered with its own faint, rhythmic glow — fractured, hesitant, but present.
And then the Codex changed.
The language that had always been carved into its invisible pages began to rewrite itself. Glyphs unraveled and coiled into new shapes, spirals intersecting with mirrored sigils I had never seen. Lines of script formed in the air before me — blank, glowing, waiting.
It wanted me to write.
[Kaen'drel Azael'ith… drae'nir vel'thor… shorae'nath vaen.]
(The First awakens… the hidden law unfolds… the silence opens its page.)
For the first time, I lifted my hand not to read the Codex, but to answer.
My fingers traced through the air. Silver-black energy followed their movement, etching glyphs into nothingness. The moment I finished the first spiral, the Codex flared — a deep, resonant hum filling the void like the breath of an ancient beast.
The glyphs I drew remained.
They anchored themselves into the fabric of the Codex, pulsing softly, as if acknowledging their author. The sensation was strange — like commanding something that had once commanded me.
A new section of the Codex appeared before me. Unlike the endless pages of prophecy and law I'd seen before, these were blank, untouched.
For the first time, the Codex was no longer merely a scripture.
It was mine to shape.
The vision shifted.
I saw the twin thrones again, but this time, figures moved between them. Celestial beings, ancient races, whispering shadows — all gathering under the silent gaze of two powers. My throne shrouded in black flame. His in silver light.
The three flames near the threshold grew brighter: black, violet, silver-white. Their outlines flickered like living prophecy, neither fully formed nor entirely imagined. I could feel their presence searing into the back of my mind, like names on the tip of a tongue not yet spoken.
[Drae'nir vel'thor thae'nath… Zhaen'thir kor'nath vael'thal.]
(Three flames shall rise beneath the throne… bound by law older than stars.)
My gaze lingered on them. Three, bound to me.
The Codex whispered then, not aloud, but directly into my mind — a whisper as cold and intimate as breath against my ear:
"First and Second… the flames will burn where dominion collides. Author, heir, and end shall rise beneath your shadow."
The thrones faded. The vision folded inward.
I opened my eyes beneath the Black Sun.
The Codex hovered before me — open, silent, waiting. Its new blank pages shone faintly. My new glyph pulsed on my arm, echoing the rhythm of the black throne I'd seen.
Something had changed. Not in the Void. In me.
I was no longer just a reader of ancient law. I was becoming its author.
The shadows bent closer as if they too sensed the shift.
I closed the Codex with a slow movement, the pages folding into darkness like wings. My aura rippled outward, bending the air around me in a subtle display of dominance.
I looked up at the Black Sun, my expression cold, a faint glimmer of something dangerous beneath the surface.
"If the stars remember," I whispered, voice echoing like iron through an empty cathedral, "then I shall teach them to kneel."
The Void listened.