The veil between realms was not meant to be torn.
But it did not tear for him — it bent. Softly. Without resistance. As if even reality knew not to oppose the one walking between laws.
He had no name, not truly. The world called him many things: The Black Index, the Threadless Walker, the Sinless Servant. But names could not bind him. He was memory made flesh — a cipher wrapped in bone, a relic left behind by a godless silence.
And now, he walked.
Across the boundaries of realms, unannounced.
No ritual. No breach. Just his presence.
A wind without sound.
A question without language.
⸻
The mortal world recoiled at his passage — but not loudly.
Subtly.
Leaves forgot how to rustle.
Crows blinked and forgot why they were flying.
The stars over Vaethor Hollow dimmed as he stepped beneath them, not out of fear — but reverence.
His feet made no mark upon the frostbitten earth. He moved like a thought unspoken, or a dream that lingered just beyond waking. His robes were woven from the threads of collapsed stars — each fold a graveyard of forgotten light. Beneath his hood, no face was visible — only a shimmer of what might have been eyes, if the Void ever dreamed of seeing.
In one hand, he carried a sealed tome — the Black Index — a book whose pages could not yet be read, for they were still being written by the deeds of the living.
In his other hand… nothing. And yet, that emptiness carried weight. Intention. The kind of weight that shifts a fate, or ends a kingdom.
He had not been sent to kill.
He had been sent to watch.
The wind pulled against the ruins of an old monastery — once a sanctuary of light, now riddled with frost and shadow.
Ashardio had passed through this place once as a child. He had wept by a statue of a goddess whose name no one remembered, and whispered to stones that bled when it rained.
Now, that same cold stone pulsed as the Index entered the hollow grounds.
He touched nothing.
He simply stood — and listened.
And the world spoke.
The trees whispered in cracks.
The stones cried in silence.
The stars held their breath.
Because they remembered him.
He who bore no Sin, yet had served them all. He who had walked beside Kaelith once — before the memories in her mind were sealed behind a veil of golden dust.
He who once whispered to Ashardio's mother as she lay dying, and told her what her child truly was.
⸻
Far away, Ashardio stirred in his sleep.
In the depths of the forbidden catacombs beneath the training field, amidst shattered glyphs and relics drenched in ancestral secrets, his breath hitched.
Something was watching him.
Not near.
Not far.
Within.
He sat up — eyes wide. Sweat lined his brow though the chamber was cold. His hands trembled as if he'd touched a thread stretched too tight.
Then, without understanding why, he whispered:
"The one without a throne… walks again."
And in the Hollow, the Black Index closed his eyes.
Not in peace.
Not in dread.
But in recognition.
The Thirteenth Thread had begun to sing.
And even the Sinless must now prepare to choose.