A pristine glass floor stretched before him, bathed in a warm, radiant glow. Auren wanted to move—to tear himself away from the throne the moment he realized he was seated on it. But his body refused. He wasn't just frozen.
No… frozen was too merciful a word.
It felt as though he'd been sculpted into a statue, his consciousness carved into the stone, fully aware yet trapped—alive inside an unmoving monument.
Before him stood a strange, towering knight clad in sleek silver armor, a red, silky cloak flowing like liquid crimson from its back.
The knight's helmet was streamlined, the armor so close-fitted it made him seem narrow—almost thin. But no one would have dared to think of him as anything less than imposing. Not with that unnatural height. Not with that presence.
He was a Polypheme—a rarity in this age. And from somewhere deep within Auren's awareness, the knowledge surfaced unbidden.
The second to last of his kind.
