NOVPUBHis aura flared with a new intensity. Now not just wings, but a crown—one forged of glistening bloodlight and soulflame—appeared behind his head. His dominion now reached even into their opponents' blood.
He reached out—and the Maw froze.
Its veins boiled under his will. The blood of everything it had consumed became a liability. It twisted against the chains. It howled.
"Sovereigns don't hide in cages," Asher growled.
He descended—scythe in both hands.
And struck.
The blow split the Maw of Chains from shoulder to hip—not killing it instantly, but tearing loose the essence that held its soul bound. A surge of screaming spirits erupted from the mouth in its chest, flooding the cavern with ghostly wind.
The Disciples shrieked. One tried to flee, but Valeris simply said, "No."
The word was all it took. His body froze in mid-teleport. His head separated from his body an instant later.
Asher turned, scythe dripping bloodlight, breath steady.
More were coming.
He could feel them.
But he wasn't afraid.
They will juts perish just like this one.
As the last echoes of the Maw's death scream faded into the walls of the cavern, the air slowly stilled. The blood-slick ground pulsed once—acknowledging the dominion of its new master—then quieted. In the silence, Valeris turned her gaze forward, her eyes calm but sharpened like glass blades.
"There's no point in wasting time here," she said, her voice low and crisp. "Let's move."
Asher nodded, the glow of the fourth vein slowly fading from his skin. The crown behind his head dissolved into mist as his Soul Passage condensed into a smooth, curved blade again. The air still reeked of ruin, but the battle had passed.
They didn't speak as they left the ruins of Hal-Kareth's sanctum behind. The shattered throne room faded into shadow, its last occupant gone—and with it, a legacy of silence finally ended.
Outside, the sky was blackened and heavy with brewing energy. Asher looked up briefly.
***
Elsewhere—far from the tomb, deep beneath the surface of the Hollow Bastion
A great convocation of rot-slicked thrones shifted in a cathedral of bone and chain. The sky above was not sky at all, but a roof of inverted corpses hanging like forgotten stars, mouths open in eternal screams. At the center, upon a pulsing throne made of fossilized organs and screaming runes, sat a figure wrapped in shadow.
It bore no name.
Only titles.
The Word-Eater.
Around it, lesser figures stirred—each cloaked in chain-threaded robes, their heads bound by silence-hoods soaked in ichor. When the void-rip formed in the air before them, they felt it before they saw it.
The Maw of Chains was dead.
Its death-throes radiated along the web of tethered souls that tied the higher cult together.
The Word-Eater stirred. One of its eyes opened—black and violet and leaking memory. It did not scream. It did not curse. It simply spoke.
"…the Warden falls. The Maw breaks. The Silence fades. All expected."
One of the Disciples at its side trembled. "Shall we deploy the Mouthless Choir, Master? Or perhaps the Apostate Chain-Lords—?"
"No."
The Word-Eater raised a hand—a gesture that silenced the void itself.
"They are nearing the sixth. The Keeper of the Gluttoned Seal."
A breath passed—though none among the cult truly breathed.
"Let them reach it," the Word-Eater whispered. "Let the Sixth Key test them. If they are to inherit the Sovereigns… they must suffer as Sovereigns do."
Back in the living world…
The landscape had shifted.
The sixth key was located in a place forgotten by most living records: the Ashen Conflux, where three ley rivers had once met before being burned to ruin during the Sovereign Wars. It was a scorched valley where ash never stopped falling, and where nothing stayed buried for long. Every step kicked up cinders. Every breath tasted of soot and memory.
Black trees—dead, skeletal—lined the ridges. They looked more like petrified bone than bark.
"This is it," Valeris said, halting at the edge of the broken gorge. "The Keeper of the Gluttoned Seal rests below."
"How sure are we this one isn't like Hal-Kareth?" Asher asked.
Valeris gave a faint smirk. "He's worse."
And deep below the ground, something stirred—not in slumber, but in waiting.
Chains didn't bind this Sovereign.
Hunger did.
A presence awakened beneath the ruined Conflux—vast, slow, and ancient. It had never wept. It had only consumed. And now, it hungered for two new names it had never tasted before:
Asher.
Valeris.
They stood in silence for a moment, wind dragging ash across their cloaks. Far below, the valley exhaled. Not air. Not heat. Hunger. A breathless void that licked at their souls.
Asher took a slow step forward, boots crunching the blackened bone-dust beneath him. "Let me guess," he said, eyeing the mouth of the gorge, "this one doesn't talk much either."
Valeris's smile was grim. "He talks plenty. You just wish he didn't."
They descended.
The world changed with every step. Not just darker—emptier. As if light itself gave up the right to exist down here. The ground became soft with ancient fat and brittle with charred marrow. Craters yawned open, carved not by battle, but feeding. Something immense had scraped its way through here once—and not all of it was gone.
And then they reached the altar.
Or what was left of it.
Once, it had been a monument of law: etched with runes, crowned with relics. Now it was a broken tooth in the earth. Chained husks hung from shattered pillars—bodies too dissolved by time to be truly identified, yet somehow alive. Their mouths moved. Repeating a name.
A Sovereign's name.
"Zar-Kethel, the Hungering Saint."
A hiss passed beneath the ground, long and wet, like meat dragged through fire.
Then the altar twitched.
Not broke. Not collapsed.
Twitched.
Something enormous surged from beneath the ground in a burst of gluttonous force. Chains—veined with tongues and bone—snapped upward, scattering debris. A vast, skeletal mass rose from the depths, more carcass than body, its ribs spread like the fingers of a dying god. At its core, seated upon a throne of mouths and hunger-forged relics, was the Keeper of the Gluttoned Seal.
Zar-Kethel.
He was larger than any Sovereign Asher had faced before—twenty feet tall, maybe more—but it wasn't size that made him monstrous. It was the emptiness. His form was collapsing in on itself, constantly devouring its own mass just to exist. Black ichor leaked from every joint. Souls flickered in the gaps between his ribs, still screaming, still being digested.
His voice bled through space, not through ears.
"You took silence…"
"…now offer gluttony."
"…Let me taste your souls."
