The Throne Room
He entered through the towering gates of carved obsidian, where the throne room sprawled vast and cold like the interior of a tomb. Pillars of bone twisted toward the ceiling, each one shaped from the remains of long-forgotten tyrants and heroes alike.
At the far end sat the Lich King, cloaked in silence. He did not move, but his presence pressed down like gravity. Black flame burned within his eye sockets. Kyris stood at his side, ever watchful.
Morte stepped forward, bowing low. "You summoned me, Father?"
The Lich King gave no verbal reply, but Morte felt the answer bloom in his mind like a whisper behind his ear. "You are growing. I would see the results."
But before the Lich King could test him, Kyris stepped forward—a rare break in formality. His skeletal face, though unmoving, carried a warmth Morte had always known.
"You've changed," Kyris said, voice a raspy echo of courtly speech. "You walk like a prince but, carry exhaustion. What have you been working on this time, little master?"
Morte couldn't help the small smile. "A new spell. Or… maybe a new being."
Kyris's socket-lights flickered with interest. "A construct? Or something more?"
"More. It's called Null. But it doesn't have a soul. It's... self-learning."
Kyris tilted his head. "So, a golem then."
Morte nodded solemnly. "I guess you could call it that in a way."
A pause followed just long enough to make Morte shift his feat in anticipation before Kyris stepped back to the Lich King's side.
"Enough of that let us see the fruit of your training," the Lich King intoned, rising like a storm.
The Lich King descended the throne's steps, robes trailing like smoke behind him. Each step echoed with finality—stone groaning beneath a weight that was not physical. Kyris stepped aside without a word.
Morte straightened. The air had changed—like it gained a weight to it, sharp like breathing the cold of winter. He let himself adjust to the kings suffocating and cold mana before he readied himself. His father had not summoned him for praise. This was trial by presence. By pressure.
"You will demonstrate control," the Lich King said. "Then innovation. And lastly… understanding."
The floor between them shifted. A circle of bone rose from the black stone—sigils igniting one by one, not with flame, but with death. Necrotic mana pooled in the center like dark violet thick ink. Morte recognized the design: a catalyst pit, used to test unstable spell structures under stress. A very mana hungry method but he imagined it was nothing to the king.
Morte stepped forward, placing his hands at the edge of the pit. The air roiled with latent death—a dozen spirits, unformed, thrashing just beyond the veil. They clawed for him. Whispered. Tempted.
He ignored them.
Instead, he called heat—a simple elemental spell. Or would be if it wasn't for the way Morte cast it.
By using Necrotic mana as fuel, the fire burned a dark black but if you looked close enough you could see that it was actually dark violet.
A twisting stream of dark flame coiled from his fingers and licked the edges of the pit. The spirits hissed, recoiled—and then howled as he twisted the spell, interlacing it with frost. A contradiction. Fire that froze. Ice that burned.
The circle flared violently.
Kyris leaned in. Even the Lich King's eyes seemed to narrow, flame dimming slightly.
"Good," the Lich King intoned. "Now the second."
A skeletal hand burst forth from the center of the pit—followed by a second, then a full corpse, strung with mana threads and carved with holy script. A blessed revenant. Another contradiction Blessed items and Holy mana were corrosive to the undead. Something designed to burn undead on contact.
It lunged for Morte.
He didn't retreat.
Instead, he raised one hand, palm open, and absorbed the impact with a barrier—not made of force or bone, but vacuum. A shell of absence, silent and soft, where all magic unraveled. The revenant's blade—holy and brilliant—disintegrated as it entered the void.
Then Morte stepped in and placed his hand on the revenant's chest.
And altered its being.
The holy glyphs twisted, cracking under the weight of his command. Mana bent. The revenant gasped—its first and final breath—before collapsing into dust, no longer divine.
"A technique of your own creation i assume," the Lich King said softly.
"A method I discovered," Morte replied. "Reversal through contradiction. Death that purifies rather than defiles."
Kyris blinked slowly. "You wove holy properties into necrotic structure?"
"Briefly," Morte admitted. "It doesn't hold. Yet."
The Lich King raised his hand—and from the air itself, a shape formed. A black spear. No material, no weight. Pure will.
He hurled it at Morte.
No warning. No chant. Just death, given shape and speed.
Morte reacted without thinking.
His body shimmered—just for a heartbeat—as he shifted sideways using ethereal phase, a technique Herc had drilled into him. But the spear curved in midair, seeking.
So Morte drew mana—not from the air, not from the ground—
—from himself.
He bled energy into the air like ink into water. Not a spell, but something close. A breath. A whisper of unmade magic. Something at the edge of understanding and then it was gone.
The spear struck the glyph he hadn't drawn yet.
And unraveled.
Silence.
The Lich King watched him in silence, unreadable. Then he turned.
"You are unstable," he said at last. "But capable. The shape is forming."
Kyris hesitated. "Shape, my king?"
The Lich King did not look back.
As Morte caught his breath, distant figures stood at the shadowed edge of the throne room—observers draped in bone-etched cloaks. High-ranking advisors liches, soulbinders, and whisperlords who had served for centuries.
Some nodded, barely perceptible.
But others turned away.
One—tall, crowned in bone and shadow—watched with narrowed sockets. Not approval. Not awe.
Fear.