The End of Volume I: Threads That Should Not Be Pulled
There is a silence that doesn't belong to absence — it belongs to revelation.
Ashardio stood in it.
No longer surrounded by mirrors. No longer drifting through illusions. No longer confined by the logic of what had come before.
The world had folded itself into a singularity —
A vast, pale desert suspended within a bleeding sky.
Grey sand whispering the names of forgotten gods beneath his feet.
Above him, the black firmament cracked with white fire, threads of memory and prophecy bleeding through like veins torn open.
Time didn't pass here.
It waited.
As if the universe itself had paused — not in reverence, but in fear of what came next.
Ashardio took a breath — and it didn't feel like his own.
It felt borrowed.
Stolen from another self.
Another existence.
A soft vibration coiled through his bones — not from the earth, but from below existence itself. A hum, low and infinite. The frequency of undoing.
He dropped to one knee.
Pressed his palm to the sand.
And beneath it, he felt names.
Thousands.
Millions.
Some hadn't been born yet.
Some never would.
But they all screamed a single, impossible resonance back at him —
His name.
But not Ashardio.
That was the name given by those who feared to call him what he truly was.
The real name…
The first name…
He spoke it.
And the world screamed.
The desert split open. The sky curled like paper in flame. Reality trembled, not in fear — but in recognition. As if all that ever existed finally remembered a single, terrifying truth.
"He remembers."
The voice was not heard.
It was known.
Ashardio's mind convulsed —
But not in pain.
In clarity.
Flashes tore through him. But they didn't follow the rules of memory.
They were simultaneous. Overlapping. Incomplete, yet absolute.
His mother, bloodied and radiant, inscribing a forbidden sigil across her womb.
Kaelith sobbing, whispering "You are not meant to love me."
An ancient chamber lined with mirrors — each showing a different version of himself. One a tyrant. One a savior. One burning.
A knife with thirteen edges. A blade that didn't cut flesh, but destiny.
And a moment.
A single moment outside of time —
Where he was not just Ashardio.
Not just a boy.
Not just the heir to a throne.
But the thread that connected every realm, every war, every lie.
"You were not born," said Lyreth's voice.
"You were woven. A truth stitched into fiction. The Celestials feared prophecy, so they created you as a paradox. A self-correcting wound in the fabric of fate."
He stumbled back.
The sky bled faster.
Each drop a memory he hadn't lived yet.
A battlefield made of stars, his face lit by flame as Kaelith pointed a blade at him.
A realm where the thrones were empty, and he sat upon all of them.
A future where he whispered to a child with his own eyes: "You will break the chain I couldn't."
His knees buckled.
"I… I wasn't meant to choose," he whispered.
"I was meant to contain."
"Exactly," the voice echoed. "You are the Thirteenth Throne. Not a ruler. Not even a prisoner. You are the idea they tried to lock away — Choice."
And with it came the realisation:
The Thirteenth Throne was not meant to be sat upon.
It was meant to keep something out.
Or worse… something in.
Not a person.
Not a god.
But a concept.
Deviation.
Freedom.
Uncertainty.
He saw now what they feared. Not war. Not rebellion.
They feared a world where destiny was not enforced — but questioned.
Ashardio screamed.
Not from pain. But from the sheer weight of being.
The desert rose around him. Not sand — but threads.
Reality stitching itself around his form again.
He was being remembered by the world.
And that was the final heresy.
He was no longer fiction.
He was canon.
"You were the failsafe."
"But you became the infection."
"And now, you are the cure."
He rose.
One foot on the thread-sand of prophecy.
One hand stretched toward the burning sky.
His eyes burned with every future he had not yet lived.
And still… he smiled.
"Then let the world remember what it tried to forget."
"Let them remember me."
He opened his arms.
And the sky shattered.
In the Hall of the Seven Sins, every throne screamed.
The sigils on the marble floor twisted into spirals — no longer Sins, but possibilities.
In the Guardian Realms, statues wept salt and fire.
The Celestial Loom bent.
And from its cracks, the First Weave bled back into existence.
The Old Void convulsed, not in hunger — but in awe.
And in the deep, quiet place beneath even that,
Something that had never known hope whispered:
"He chose. And now, the game has no rules."