Beneath the fractured sky of the Third Realm, where constellations howled like dying gods and the air burned with memory, the Hall of the Sins remained not untouched, but unchallenged.
It was no palace of opulence.
It was a scar stitched across existence.
A monument to what the world dared not remember.
Seven Thrones stood suspended in an abyss, forming a perfect circle — each resting upon a thread of reality bent into submission. The floor beneath was translucent, revealing a bottomless void that reflected no light, only the watcher's fears.
These were the Chairs of the Demon Realm, formed not by artisans or time, but by the primal forces of human failure.
Each throne was alive, pulsing faintly — not with heartbeats, but with sins that had never been confessed.
They did not creak.
They shivered.
She rose first — not because she led them, but because the realm itself compelled her to move.
Valasynth the Beautiful, High Sovereign of Pride, stepped down from her obsidian throne of fractured mirrors. Her skin shimmered like the first wound of dawn, her eyes twin halos of fire and glass. She was beauty refined to cruelty — and cruelty refined to divine certainty.
A hairline fracture had appeared on the arm of her throne.
She traced it gently, almost reverently.
"Something ancient stirs," she whispered, each word laden with perfume and poison. "Something older than us… yet born of our sin."
Her voice echoed through the hall like prophecy.
Across the circle, the Throne of Wrath flared — not in anger, but panic masked as fury.
Drakhar the Infernal, his flesh forged from volcanic iron and flame, stood with trembling fists. His greatsword, embedded in the floor since the sealing of the last age, now rattled in place as if begging to be drawn again.
"We erased the Thirteenth," he growled, heat rising from his breath. "Burned their name from the Song. I tore their banner from the sky myself!"
"They never fell," came a voice behind him, quiet as frost on a dying leaf.
Envy, robed in emeralds and rot, stepped into the flickering light. His eyes never blinked, his gaze never rested.
"They were chained," he said. "Not broken. And chains, too, rust… when forgotten."
From above, the ceiling cracked. Not stone — but truth itself. A red tear ran down the carved sigils of judgment, exposing something beneath: a symbol long erased from the celestial codex.
The Sigil of the Thirteenth Throne.
It did not shine.
It bled.
Sloth, once half-asleep within a mist of dream-vapors, stirred. His lips barely moved, but the whole hall leaned forward to hear him.
"If even the Void stirs… then we are no longer the deepest realm."
Lust licked her lips from her throne of serpentine shadows, crossing her legs with slow precision. Her voice caressed the air like a velvet noose.
"Shall we intervene, then? Or let the world tremble a bit more before we squeeze?"
"No," Pride answered sharply, standing tall. Her hands curled into fists at her side. "We act in knowledge, not haste."
She turned from them all — toward the shadows beyond the circle. Toward the unseen eighth point, where no throne had ever sat.
Yet something waited there. Always had.
Something not bound to Sin, yet born from its marrow.
A figure emerged from the dark — faceless, ageless, nameless.
The Servant of None, known only in whispers as the Black Index.
He wore cloaks of living scripture, eyes hidden beneath a mask carved from paradox.
He had served all Sins, yet belonged to none.
He had once walked with angels.
He had once buried one.
"Send him," Pride ordered.
"Let the boy know… even gods of sin remember. Even we dream of the Thirteenth. And fear it."
Far below the thrones, beneath miles of blackened stone and buried time, something stirred.
A chamber wrapped in soulfire, sealed with twelve bindings of silence, pulsed once.
Then again.
A sleeper, not living, not dead — merely forgotten — opened a single eye.
The fire recoiled.
The air screamed.
His voice did not echo.
It devoured echo.
Ashardio.
He whispered the name.
Not with hate.
Not with love.
But with a familiarity that suggested kinship… or design.
The Thirteenth was not returning.
He had never truly left.
And in the unraveling thread, the sleeper saw something even worse:
Ashardio had begun to choose.