The boy led Royce through twisting corridors that seemed stitched together from the nightmares of dying gods.
Each step echoed like a death knell.
The stones beneath their feet wept blood from invisible cracks, and the air grew colder with every breath until it burned to inhale.
Eryndra hung limply in Royce's arms, her skin turning whiter by the second, as if the shrine itself was draining her soul.
"Where are we going?" Royce rasped, his voice brittle against the oppressive silence.
The boy never looked back.
"Where sorrow is heavier than death itself," he said softly, almost lovingly.
"Where you will learn to hate yourself for surviving."
---
They emerged into a vast hall where the ceiling was lost in shadow and the walls bled ink.
At the center stood a throne—crumbling, splintered, and wrapped in chains that moved like living things.
Above it hung a massive iron bell, blackened by centuries of despair, its clapper a tangle of human bones.
Seated on the throne was a corpse.
No—something worse than a corpse.
The figure wore a Pale Crown forged from broken promises and shattered dreams.
Its head lolled sideways, and where its heart should have been, there was only a hollow cavity, pulsing slowly like a dying star.
The boy walked to the throne and bowed low, pressing his forehead to the bloodstained floor.
"Father," he whispered.
The crowned corpse stirred.
Its eyes snapped open—voids so deep and ancient that Royce staggered under their gaze.
The Pale King had awakened.
---
"You have brought a stray," the king's voice echoed—not in Royce's ears, but inside his skull, dragging his thoughts through muck and despair.
"One who smells of guilt… and ruin."
Royce fell to his knees, unable to resist the weight pressing down on him.
The boy stood and smiled sadly.
"He is not ready yet. But he will be. His grief will make him beautiful."
The Pale King's skeletal fingers twitched.
Chains slithered from the throne, wrapping themselves gently around Eryndra's body, lifting her from Royce's grasp.
Royce tried to fight, to scream, but he was paralyzed, trapped in a nightmare given flesh.
"A gift," the king intoned. "You may have her soul... when you earn it."
The chains dragged Eryndra into the darkness beyond the throne.
Royce howled in voiceless agony, his fists pounding uselessly against the blood-slick floor.
The boy knelt beside him.
"Listen," he said softly, "I was once like you. A dreamer. A fool. But dreams die easily here."
He reached into the shadows and drew forth a mirror—cracked, tarnished, its surface crawling with whispering shadows.
"Look," the boy urged, pressing the mirror into Royce's shaking hands.
"Look, and remember what you truly are."
Royce hesitated.
A part of him screamed to resist.
But the shrine—the Pale King—the very air—demanded obedience.
He lifted the mirror.
And he saw—
Not his face.
Not the man he remembered.
But a creature, hunched and broken, with hollow eyes and a mouth stitched shut with sorrow.
A marionette of regret and forgotten dreams.
This was his true self.
Royce dropped the mirror, gasping, but it did not shatter.
It merely laughed—a cold, dead sound that gnawed at his sanity.
---
"You must become worthy," the boy said, voice almost tender.
"You must embrace the mourning within you. Only then can you wield sorrow as a blade—and save what little you still love."
He pointed to a door, nearly hidden behind the throne—a jagged crack in the wall, bleeding darkness so pure it devoured the light around it.
"Beyond that door lies your first trial."
Royce wiped the blood from his mouth.
He had no choice.
He had come too far.
Lost too much.
If Eryndra's soul was the price, he would pay it a thousand times over.
Even if it meant tearing the Pale King from his throne.
Without a word, Royce rose and stumbled toward the door.
Behind him, the boy watched with an expression too old for his young face—an echo of grief that would never fade.
And somewhere deep within the shrine, the Ashen Ones stirred, whispering his name like a prayer.
A prayer for ruin.
--