In the realm known as Verdict, where laws took form and judgment was a living force, the Court of Glass convened.
It was not a place that belonged to time.
The courtroom stretched infinitely in all directions—a fractal cathedral of mirrored obsidian and starlight, suspended in a silence that even gods dared not disturb. The benches were not made for mortals. They seated beings who remembered when the First Realm bled its first light, and who had sworn never to let such a fracture repeat.
At the center stood the Seat of Echoes, and upon it, presiding today, was a silhouette in shifting armor. He bore no name, only a designation:
❖ [Speaker for the Veil]
❖ Council Rank: Primordial Consensus
❖ Age: Incorporeal Pre-Singularity
He raised one hand.
A memory shimmered to life in the air. Not a vision, not a hologram—an actual fragment of a broken timeline, extracted from the Choir of Silence's remains.
They watched.
The fragment replayed in slowed pulses.
The moment the Thronebreaker severed the glyph of Nullify.
The scream of paradox.
The mask cracking.
The face beneath.
A murmur rippled through the glass benches. Several members of the council flickered with sudden dissonance, as if even observing such an event risked unraveling their composure.
"Impossible," whispered the [Warden of Entropy], her voice sounding like falling sand. "No system under Tier 7 entropy control should be capable of Symphony-Cut interactions. Paradox cannot stabilize under broken Crown Protocol."
The Speaker for the Veil did not blink. "And yet... it did."
The echo ended. The mirror sealed.
Then a new message hovered in the courtroom, transmitted from deep within the Central Multiversal Registry.
❖ Threat Review Update
❖ Subject: [Thronebreaker]
❖ Former Identity: Unknown (Memory Locked)
❖ Current Realmbase: Abyss-Sanction
❖ Status: Exile-Class Threat
❖ Anomaly Rating: 9.8 [Active Cataclysm Tier]
❖ Suggested Action:
– Inquisition Deployment
– Realmwide Quarantine
– Protocol [Heartsunder]
The suggestion of Heartsunder sent a cold pause across the court.
That wasn't exile. That was erasure.
Total cosmological deletion—mind, memory, origin, concept.
Only one being had ever received that sentence before.
And he had sat the Throne.
"Is it him?" asked a [Chrono-Magister], her voice glitching with every syllable. "The same soul? The King Who Burned the First Realm?"
The Speaker did not answer at once.
He turned to the Judgment Engine behind him—a massive core of interwoven timelines, throbbing with input streams from all corners of existence.
A single confirmation flickered:
❖ Soul Signature Match: 72.3%
❖ Divergence Index: 27.7%
❖ Judgment: Inconclusive
He looked at the court. "Close enough to be dangerous. Different enough to be worse."
The echoes of ancient wars stirred in their silence.
Back in Abyss-Sanction, the boy walked through the quiet ruins of what had once been his realm's most stable ridge. The Choir's impact had splintered several stabilizers, and reality here still bent at weird angles. Trees bent toward the sky unnaturally. Gravity pulsed like a heartbeat.
He liked it.
"Crucible," he said. "Scan the outer vectors. Any signs of breach?"
❖ Negative. Realm Perimeter Restored.
❖ No Traces of External Anchors Detected.
❖ Choir Memory Remnants Absorbed: 87%
❖ New Skill Tree Available: [Soundless Dominion]
His eyebrows rose slightly.
"Details."
❖ [Soundless Dominion]:
– Passive: Immunity to Sound-Based Disruption & Temporal Interference
– Active: [Mute Field] – Silence a battlefield, disrupting casting and comms.
– Active: [Resonant Collapse] – Shatter defenses with vibrational bursts.
– Ultimate: [Zero Voice] – Eject a singularity of null-sound to erase a 100-meter radius temporarily from all physics, logic, and sound.
He whistled.
Which promptly didn't happen.
Sound vanished. Even the wind stopped.
He grinned. "Ironic."
Then toggled the passive off.
The Crucible added a final line:
❖ Warning: Using [Zero Voice] may attract deeper Choir entities or trigger Multiversal Watcher attention.
"Let them watch."
But he felt it—that weight again. Like something ancient was now staring back, intrigued by his refusal to kneel.
He needed to keep moving. Power wasn't his endgame. It was the path.
And the next realm on his list?
Was one of his own memories.
Or rather—the memory of a throne he had once rejected.
Inside the Chamber of Forgotten Crowns, he stood before the fracture gate. It shimmered like a torn piece of memory, held open by a stabilizer forged from pure regret—one of the many bizarre materials generated by the Crucible's memory forge.
❖ Realm Selected: [Vel'Tharos – Crown of Bone]
❖ Estimated Stability: 43%
❖ Former Status: Grave-Realm
❖ Current Status: Contested Zone
❖ Dominant Force: [The Bone Concordat]
❖ Warning: Former Throne-Fraction Detected
"Open it," he said.
❖ Fracture Gate Engaged…
The portal pulsed. He stepped through.
Vel'Tharos reeked of old blood and newer betrayals.
The skies were black, not from night—but from bone clouds swirling above massive spires made from calcified corpses. The wind didn't howl—it chanted. And far in the distance, a structure loomed.
A throne made of marrow and memory.
As he stepped forward, the Crucible pinged.
❖ Incoming Message:
– Source: ???
– Type: Residual Mental Echo
– Encryption: Thronebearer Level
It began playing without prompt.
A voice—his own.
Younger. Colder. Full of fury.
"I tried. I really did. To lead. To kneel. To build. But thrones don't want rulers. They want sacrifices. I died here once. I left part of me behind."
The message ended.
His hand tightened on Nullfang.
Somewhere in this realm, a past version of himself had left a piece behind.
And he needed it back.
But before he could take a step, the sky above him screamed.
Dozens of winged skeletal constructs descended like meteors. Their wings were serrated, and their chests bore the emblem of the Bone Concordat—a stylized ribcage wrapped in chains.
Leading them was a figure twice the size of the rest.
A Throne-Warden.
She wore white armor crafted from rib-bone and obsidian. Her face was wrapped in silk-bandages. In her hands, she wielded a double-bladed scythe that pulsed with ancestral energy.
❖ Incoming Combatant:
– Title: Bone-Prayer Solenne
– Class: Warden of the Forgotten Throne
– Authority: Grave-Level Dominion
– Threat Rating: 8.2
– Relationship: Former Ally / Betrayer
The Crucible pulsed again.
❖ Emotional Spike Detected
❖ Memory Fragment Resurfacing…
A flash in his mind.
Her eyes. Her voice. A promise.
"If you fall… I'll guard what's left of you."
Now, she was here to destroy him.
The scythe swung.
Nullfang met it—and the sky cracked again.