The Ashen Cabal's sanctum floated above the shattered world, suspended on a gravity-defying archipelago of obsidian islands in the sky, tethered together by veins of crystallized starlight. At its center rose the Hollow Cathedral, a soaring necropolis built from the fossilized remains of slain star-beasts. Towering spires reached toward the void, and between them hung bridges of bone and entropy-threaded glass.
This skybound kingdom pulsed with eerie life. Fissures ran across floating platforms, leaking entropy that shimmered like mirages. The air thrummed with a dirge only those marked by the Crucible could hear, a mournful hymn carried on the windless heights. Starfire candles burned in sconces made of memory-ivory, and shadows cast across the cathedral floor wept slow, viscous tears of black light.
The Gilded Maw sat upon the seventh throne, his jeweled mask tilted in contemplation as he gazed across the circle of horrors. The dais, suspended in the heart of the Hollow Cathedral's highest sanctum, was ringed by twelve jagged thrones, each carved from cursed starlight and wound-bone, and each occupied by a figure that defied sanity. Limbs bent in impossible geometry, masks wept ichor or sang dirges, and some forms flickered between light and void as though trapped between dimensions. These were the Twelve Thrones, apex of the Ashen Cabal, not mere beings, but fractures in the design of reality.
The Gilded Maw's voice broke the tense silence, silken and sweet, "Let the others watch from their veils for now. We will draw the Anchor to us, and when he stands in this chamber... they will have their turn."
One throne remained shrouded in pulsing blackness, its occupant unseen, but the weight of its presence bent the space around it.
Even the Maw bowed his head toward that unknowable absence.
A hollow figure rose, its skeletal frame wrapped in a robe stitched from the skin of frozen victims. No mouth moved, but its voice echoed in every mind present.
"You risked exposure for a child, Maw. The throne hungers for progress, not sentiment."
"The Anchor's weakness is his heart," the Maw said, voice silken. "Corrupt the girl, and he will follow."
He lifted a gloved hand. Nestled in his palm: a shard of Kio's flesh, crystallized by the Crucible, pulsing faintly with throne-light.
"When he comes," the Maw said, "we carve open his Crucible and feed."
A hiss of approval rippled through the thrones. Somewhere, the Silent Hymn let out a note that turned candlelight to liquid.
The Gilded Maw smiled beneath his mask. The game had begun.
Dawn in the Blackwood was a lie. The sky was bruised with ash, lit faintly by a dying star straining against collapse. Tatsu and Sayuri emerged from a sewage tunnel hidden beneath the roots of a hollowed wyrmwood tree. Kio staggered between them, skin pale, veins threading her arms in black crystal. Her breaths came shallow, body trembling with latent entropy.
The relic embedded in her chest, a shard of the Dawnshard had halted the scream frost's advance but at a terrible cost. The Crucible within her now pulsed with volatile hunger, tethered to the throne in ways none of them understood.
"We need to reach the Starforge Spire," Sayuri said, checking the obsidian-bladed dagger at her hip. "The star-born there have rites that could purge the relic's taint."
"If they let us in," Tatsu muttered.
A shimmer in the air. Lira flickered into view beside Kio, her form barely corporeal.
"They're close," she whispered, voice a breath on glass. "The Cabal. I can taste their rot."
But they never made it to the spire.
They were halfway across the Shatterplain when the first wave hit. Emberlings exploded from nearby ruins, eyes fever-bright, hands coated in wet ash. They screeched as they hurled globes of black fire that consumed light and swallowed sound.
Tatsu reacted instantly. His star-mark flared across his back, glowing white-blue. He stepped into a fissure and vanished.
He reappeared behind an Emberling and drove a starmetal blade through its spine. It convulsed, then burst into cinders. But more kept coming.
Emberlings: Armed with star-ash daggers and crude Ashfire bombs. They swarmed in numbers, sacrificing themselves to exhaust Tatsu.
Husk Knights: Towering figures in rusted armor, dragging chainswords that screamed with each swing. They targeted Kio, exploiting her instability to trigger Dissonance.
"Behind me!" Tatsu shouted, slicing through another Emberling.
Kio stumbled as one Husk Knight slashed her side. Her crystallized arm ignited with black flame, and a burst of
Entropic Ice exploded outward, flash-freezing the Knight mid-roar.
Sayuri danced between two Emberlings, her star-forged dagger moving in blurred arcs. She severed a Husk Knight's arm but froze when its helm cracked open, revealing a face that looked disturbingly like Tatsu's.
Her hesitation cost them.
High above, the Gilded Maw stood within the crumbling spire of a forgotten clocktower, his jeweled mask reflecting the battle below. The voice of his daughter whispered from within his belly, each word a tick of a clock winding down.
"They're weakening," she said. "The girl's breaking. You promised you'd let me go."
"Soon, my starlight," the Maw purred. He reached into a pouch and withdrew a memory shard, a stolen recollection of Kio's first time holding a sword. He bit into it, and the truth curdled in his mouth. He vomited it into the air, a shimmering illusion of Kio screaming in fear, projected across the battlefield.
Below, Kio clutched her head. Her control slipped. Her ice faltered. The throne's light pulsed in her veins.
The ground split. From the fissure rose a nightmare stitched from regret: the Hundred-Handed Mourner, arms translucent and weeping. It seized Sayuri with twenty hands.
"Debt unpaid," it moaned, dragging her into the crack.
Tatsu turned too late. A Husk Knight's chainsword hooked Kio's ankle. She fell, screamed, and her Crucible erupted in a blast of Dissonance.
Dissonance Effect: Temporal Fracture
The battlefield split into three mirrored timelines:
Kio frozen solid, a statue of black crystal.Kio engulfed in Ashfire, screaming as she burned.Kio alive, eyes void-black, whispering in the throne's voice.
In the disarray, the Gilded Maw descended. His mask split like petals. A tongue of starlight slithered out, wrapping around Kio's throat.
"You'll thank me later, Anchor," he whispered, before yanking her into the fissure.
Kio awoke strapped to a slab of star-forged obsidian. The air smelled of decay and ozone. Strange machines hissed in the dark. This was not the Twelve Thrones' chamber—it was one of their lesser branches: the Hollow Helix, a gene-coven of the Ashen Cabal dedicated to biological experimentation.
Hooded figures in thorned robes moved around her. The Genepriests. Their mouths were stitched shut, their thoughts projected in pulses of ultraviolet light.
Above, tendrils of surgical thread danced like spiders. Tools made of frozen screams hovered closer.
The Gilded Maw watched from a balcony, hand pressed to his trembling belly. His daughter's voice whimpered.
"Begin the Harvest," he said. "Let's see what happens when we graft a Crucible to the throne."
Kio screamed.
But the sound was no longer hers.
Tatsu stood amidst the battlefield's ruins, Sayuri gone, Kio's crystallized blood staining his hands.