The Forge Throne burned with a light no longer resembling flame.
It was something older.
Hungrier.
A void-touched inferno that consumed not only the flesh but the concept of resistance itself.
Darius sat upon it like a monarch of endings, his silhouette fractured between god and aberration, his crown now a twisted band of shifting code—unstable, ever-expanding.
Before him knelt the remaining loyal gods, no longer radiant beings of worship, but diminished echoes of their former selves. They bore the scars of the Annihilation Rite, their forms cracked, leaking divine essence like fractured vessels.
And yet... they still clung to hope.
Fools.
They believed loyalty would preserve them.
Darius would show them the truth.
"You will no longer serve," Darius spoke, his voice a decree of cosmic syntax. "You will become. Vessels. Avatars of the Voidborne Oath."
