Seven thrones of light floated in a void woven from psalms and stardust. Each throne pulsed with a different hue—sunfire gold, oceanic teal, bleeding rose, void silver. At their center hovered the Throne of Edicts, unmanned but burning brighter than all the rest.
Only six were occupied.
The Seventh had not spoken in millennia.
Until now.
A rift opened in the center of the Concord, its edges sparking with tainted lightning. Screams echoed from it—not of pain, but of judgment. A recording of divine trauma.
The attending Archons stirred, some recoiling, others sharpening into battle-readiness.
“He returned,” hissed Seraph Vael, high blade of the Third Throne. His wings folded tight, and his eyes blazed with furious understanding. “The child was executed. His soul shattered. Yet he breathes.”
“More than breathes,” rumbled Domina Luriah of the Second, her voice like bells tolling over graves. “He summoned Thundering Requiem. In a sacred zone.”
“The traitor goddess’s touch is on him,” muttered the Archon of the Sixth Throne, a being made entirely of mirrored glass. “Necrotica. That blasphemous wench. She’s merged with a conduit of our stormlight.”
“The class shouldn’t exist,” Vael spat. “Lightning is purity. Death is end. Their fusion is a paradox.”
“It is not fusion,” came a new voice—ancient, distant, spoken by no mouth.
All turned.
The Seventh Throne, long dormant, had lit like a dying star reigniting. A shape sat upon it now—blurred, terrible, and half-forgotten.
The Seventh, once the Judicator of Contradiction, had returned.
“A soul fractured beyond death becomes a mirror,” it said. “And mirrors reflect both light… and shadow.”
The Concord trembled. Some Archons bowed. Others clenched weapons of light.
Vael stood.
“This cannot be allowed to fester. We must strike. Full sanctified incursion. No proxies. No mortal agents. We descend.”
“No,” intoned the Seventh. “You will send champions, yes. But you will not erase him. You will test him. If he stands—he earns it.”
“Earns what?” snapped Luriah.
The Seventh didn’t answer.
But far below, in the mortal plane, the skies above the city groaned.
Not from thunder—but from attention.
Across the realms, divine cults stirred. The Order of the Thorned Crown whispered oaths to hunt the lightning lich. The Choir of Final Mercy began their chants. Even the Bone Court of Necrotica fell into chaos, unsure if Caelan was an heir, a threat—or something new entirely.
A storm was rising.
And Caelan was at its eye.
The celestial silence shattered like glass beneath the weight of prophecy.
From the rift came visions—memories stolen from the storm itself. They poured into the Concord like floodwater: flashes of Caelan rising from the alley’s corpse-littered grime, of lightning bursting from necrotic veins, of judgment seared into flesh and death bent to the will of a boy who should have been dust.
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The Sixth Archon—Glass Saint Verrid, speaker of reflections—trembled as the images passed through him.
“The Cycle was broken,” he rasped. “No Reaping. No Ascension. Not even a Fade.”
“He did not pass through any gate,” added Luriah of the Second, her fingers digging into her throne. “Not heaven, not underworld. He broke the Veil.”
“Because he was called back,” said the Seventh.
The gathered thrones twisted as one toward that ancient voice.
“We did not summon him,” Vael of the Third said coldly. “Necrotica must have.”
The Seventh said nothing. Only the subtle flicker of a smile played across the haze of his form.
“She did not summon him,” the Seventh said eventually. “She mourned him.”
A pause.
And then, horror.
Even Luriah leaned forward, eyes wide. “She wept?”
Necrotica, the Queen of Dust and Silence, had never been known to cry. She had accepted every death, honored every soul laid in her name, but she did not grieve.
“She saw the boy’s soul fracture,” the Seventh said. “And in that fracture, she saw a mirror. One that reflected her loneliness.”
Silence again.
Until Vael rose.
“I motion for censure. Strike the boy down. Erase the hybrid class. Cleanse the plane and burn the data threads.”
“Seconded,” muttered Verrid.
The Seventh raised a hand, and all sound died.
“He was judged unjustly. His death was murder. And we… we failed to intervene.”
“You are the Throne of Contradiction,” Vael growled. “You always speak in riddles and reversals. This is no time for parables.”
The Seventh leaned forward, voice like thunder wrapped in velvet.
“This is not a riddle, Vael. This is penance.”
Far below, in the realms of mortals, divine factions stirred.
In a mountain monastery carved into the spine of the world, the Order of the Thorned Crown assembled. Their armor was gilded with solar metal, their eyes sewn shut and mouths sealed with golden wax. Only the Voice of Thorn, a priest with a cruciform halo nailed into his skull, could speak.
He trembled as the visions of Caelan’s resurrection reached them through divine relay.
“Lightning born from death,” he whispered. “Judgment without permission. The bastard son of sanctity and sin.”
From behind him, relic-hunters and martyr-knights knelt, praying with bloodied fists.
The Voice raised his head.
“Find him. Bind him. Break him. No mercy to the false divine.”In a salt-washed cathedral of bones rising from a poisoned marsh, Necrotica’s Bone Court shook with dissent.
Liches argued over old scriptures. Bone-scribes clawed through prophecy-graves. The death goddess’s avatar—a mourning figure cloaked in flowing silence—stood still before her black mirror.
She saw the boy’s lightning-wrapped soul flicker across its surface.
And for the first time in centuries, her lips moved.
“He called me mother.”
She turned to her court.
“He will not be hunted without consequence.”
In the Library Eternal, deep beneath the temporal crust of reality, the Chronoscribes opened a sealed scroll never meant to be read again.
Its title was etched in celestial static:
“The Child of Fracture: The One Who Burns Death.”
A dozen timekeepers gathered around the unfurling prophecy.
“He should not exist,” one whispered.
“But he does,” said another.
“And that means the war begins anew.”
Back in the Celestial Concord, the debate had evolved into threat.
Vael’s wings unfurled to full height, lightning snapping from his fingertips.
“I will go myself,” he snarled. “Let the heavens see that we still have teeth.”
“You will do nothing,” the Seventh said, power rippling beneath each syllable. “You will send a champion—no more.”
“I will not—”
“You will.”
And with that, the Throne of Contradiction stood.
It was a slow, terrible movement. The very act of rising shook the entire realm.
“Do not mistake absence for apathy,” the Seventh said, his voice no longer human. “I may dwell in paradox, but I am still a god. And this one… this child… is mine as much as yours.”
Vael bowed, though his fists were clenched so tight they bled light.
“Then let us begin the trials.”
The Seventh sat back down.
And somewhere in the mortal world, far from the alley where Caelan had risen, a temple bell rang.
Not for prayer.
For war.
In the ruins of a broken chapel in a distant desert, a warrior opened her eyes.
She was wrapped in chains of penance, her skin marked with branding sigils, her eyes filled with stormlight.
Her name was Seraphine, the Judicator-In-Exile. Once a holy weapon, now a wanderer cast from the fold.
And as the bell rang across planes, she knew her purpose had returned.
She whispered to the dust.
“Caelan.”
Back in the alley, Caelan’s fingers curled around a shard of broken metal—a fragment of the bullet that had ended his first life. It shimmered now with traces of divine energy.
He didn’t know yet what kind of hornet’s nest he’d disturbed.
But he felt it.
In his bones.
In the pulse of the grave rat now curled at his feet like a pet.
In the thunderclouds forming again overhead.
He looked up.
His eyes sparked with light and shadow, like eclipsed stars.
“Come and get me.”