The Weight of the Crown

[Fate I]

The Crown Hall had not seen an assembly since the last one nearly tore the foundations of the republic apart. That gathering, meant to unify, had instead festered with pride and malice, leaving Acrix Solara’s upopata trembling at the edge of corruption—nearly consumed by the greed of one man’s ambition and the silence of too many others.

Yet the republic endured.
Despite the ruin, despite the prejudice exposed in the ash of that near-collapse, Acrix did not fall. The people of Solara, along with the neighboring cities, rallied in defiance. Stone by stone, hand by hand, they rebuilt what had been broken. Resources flowed, manpower surged, and within a fraction of the expected time, life pressed forward. But even as the scars in streets and skylines faded, deeper wounds remained.

The true devastation was not of mortar and steel, nor even of the razed historic landmarks that once stood as testaments to the Hellgates’ triumphs. It was the fracturing of trust—the tarnishing of the Hellgates’ image, the thinning thread of faith between the Crowns and the people they were sworn to guide.

When the summons came for this assembly, the weight of that fracture pressed upon every heart.
Balteus, the former Crown of Tyr, was the first to step into the hall. His presence was like a shadow cast long before him, heavy with memory. One by one, others followed: the current Crowns of Horus, of Florum, of Kiaht. Their footsteps echoed through the vaulted chamber, swallowed by silence too dense to break.

The Hall itself seemed to mourn.
Its vast expanse carried the quiet dread of history repeating. And there, carved across the great Hadal Stone that stood at its center—an ancient heirloom that marked the dawn of the Hellgates—lay a gash, deep and jagged. The wound marred the stone’s surface like a scar across the face of legacy, a reminder that even the eternal could be broken.

And still, the assembly began.

[Ovan Hellgate]

Ovan gently moved the billowing curtain out of the way entering the assembly behind Sorith, the current Horus Crown. As they entered the hall in the heart of Acrix Solara, Ovan recalled the last event at Acrix Solara that provided him the roadmap to the next step in his journey. For quite some time, he felt anxious about returning home to confer with his people., he knew his preference for a more light handed approach to life often drew the ridicule of more eager brethren. Still, he emerged from the Crown Jewel Ceremony as the heir apparent to the Horus without so much of raising a finger against the other candidates. His cunning and resourcefulness brought him the respect within he lacked as a pacifist, but Sorith recognized his need for a greater strength, not just of will, but of conviction. He tasked Ovan with a mission to return with a trophy from a mighty beast, a legendary creature of Muu that marked Ovan's growth into a Crown that could be trusted with the lives of his people.

Unfortunately. he returned with a few shards of the treasured material, splitting the spoils with an acquaintance he met on his safari ang his honesty informed Sorith that he found power in cooperation that day. Sorith, though disappointed, held him in higher regard returning with the Azure Shards still. He had little faith that the boy would return at all, let alone so soon. In under a year, he found the strength to overcome the Leviathan and achieve the pinnacle of Crystal Conjures with his Hadalstone halberd, Severwing. His resourcefulness indeed bought him attendance at the assembly's table.

Sorith sat and Ovan scanned the room for the other Crowns, looking for any sign of his cousins he finished the Crown Jewel Ceremony with. He paused to take a longer gander at the Hadalstone slab marked with a massive blemish and flinched silently, like he felt it shoot through his soul as he traced the scar with his eyes. Ovan absentmindedly let a hand glide to Severwing at his back, making sure it was still whole and without blemish and remaining silent as the rest of his contemporaries entered the room.

That's got to have something to do with this...

[Fate I]

They sat and said nothing.

Light from the high clerestory cut through the dust of the Crown Hall in thin, surgical blades, landing across the Hadal Stone and failing to warm the deep gash that scarred its face. Around that wounded heirloom the chairs had been set—four occupied, three empty—and the silence in the chamber felt like armor: thick, prescribed, and brittle.

Balteus of Tyre hunched the smallest of them all in his chair, a short, stooped figure made of stubbornness and years. His dark bronze skin was a map of sun and labor; his silver-streaked coils were cropped close to his scalp. He leaned on his carved cane as if it were the only honest thing left to hold, fingers knuckled around its shaft. His ochre and burnt-sienna robes were layered for both ceremony and wear, patched at the elbows where a lifetime of work had rubbed the fabric thin. He breathed slow, each inhale a small protest against age; his amber eyes—bright, accusing, tired—kept finding the empty places at the table. In his head the memory of the singularity tightened like a fist, and beneath that memory, a prickling shame: guardianship that had saved many but also allowed too much silence. He counted the dead crowns as one might count missing stones in a wall—Holgurd, Ahkkia, Obius—names that sat between his ribs like weight.

Vivi of Florum sat straight and unreadable, the posture of one used to cataloguing needs and contingencies. Her mahogany skin gleamed beneath the hall light; copper-streaked coils hugged her skull in a short, practical cut. The deep greens and warm golds of her robes pooled around her, embroidered with seed-and-root patterns that looked disturbingly like a ledger of harvests. Her fingers, stained faintly with soil no one else saw, drummed a slow, patient rhythm against her knee. Green eyes assessed the scarred stone, the empty chairs, then flicked to the corridors where the city’s murmurs of anger and fear crept up like heat. She was thinking in measures—how many mouths, how many seasons, what supplies—and beneath her calculations a sharper, angrier tally: the betrayal of Holgurd, the Vesta who fled, the way trust had been carved away from them as cleanly as the Hadal gash.

Sorith of Horus occupied his seat like a question. His ebony skin drank in the light until the crystalline seams on his indigo robes seemed to glow of their own accord. Twists of black hair framed an expression more used to listening than to speaking; his violet eyes did not so much look as parse. He kept his hands folded over a small circle of polished Hadalstone—an old, private habit—and when his gaze drifted to the scar it was not merely with judgment but with the flicker of a seer noting resonance. The spiritual imbalance whispered to him like a half-remembered name: the Herald of Death, the Ravagers—these were not only mortal threats but metaphysical disruptions, contagions of the Unseen. He catalogued omens, traced threads he could not yet make whole, and felt the tribe’s ancestral duty thrum under his ribs; the loss of three crowns and the abandonment by Vesta were not only political failures, they were rites left unattended.

Iryndel of Kiaht sat rigid as a blueprint came to life. Her deep-umber skin and braided hair threaded with fine metal made her look like a sculpture fashioned for utility; steel-gray eyes tracked angles and tensions in the hall as if the space itself might need reinforcing. Her bronze-and-gunmetal garments were tailored, pockets and belts carrying small instruments that winked when she shifted. She rested one gloved hand on a strap of tools and let the other brush the edge of the Hadal Stone—not in reverence but in appraisal. Her mind filed damage reports: structural, logistical, mechanical. The Herald’s sorcery worried her because it promised contamination of matter itself; Ravagers—bodies perverted into thralls that retained power but lost image—posed new engineering problems no manual had prepared for. She watched the empty chairs with a craftsman’s suspicion: failures had fracture patterns; subterfuge left signatures. She wanted lists, schematics, proofs.

Between them the empty seats were as eloquent as any accusation. Where Holgurd once sat, a faint scrap of darker fabric clung to a chair back like a memory; the places of Ahkkia and Obius remained bare and accusing. The Vesta’s absence was a different cold—an empty space the tribe had once trusted to stand between people and chaos, now revealed as a gap in the cordon.

The hall breathed in unison with them: a long, deliberate silence that kept the litany of losses and the new, whispering horror at bay for only a little while. No one yet spoke of Vescrutia’s distant crises or the reports of Ravagers shuffling at the city’s edge; no one yet named the Herald of Death aloud. For now they wore the crown’s weight in posture and fabric, in the tiny, telling gestures of hands and eyes—each thinking the thoughts their tribes would fault them for either acting on or concealing.


The silence cracked first under the steady weight of Vivi’s voice.

She rose with deliberate grace, the green and gold of her robes rustling like leaves in a windless garden. Her eyes traced the room slowly—first across her fellow crowns, then to the massive doors of the hall, and lastly to the chair left empty for the Myotis. A hollow place, carved not only by absence but by betrayal.

“I would like to apologize,” she said, voice carrying the clarity of clean water poured into a vessel. “To the Myotis we wronged. Even if they are not here to hear it. Especially because they are not here. It would not feel right to say nothing and just… carry on, busy as usual.”

Her words lingered, heavy and naked, and then she pressed her right hand to her chest and extended it outward in the Hellgate salute, bowing her head. For a heartbeat she stood alone in the gesture—until, one by one, the others followed.

Balteus groaned as he pushed himself upright with his cane, the ochre of his robe hanging loose around his stooped frame. His amber eyes softened with the weight of memory. “You’re right, my Vivi,” he rumbled, voice coarse with age. “But it should not stop with the Myotis. We owe respect to all we’ve lost. Ava of Ahkkia. Valir of Obius. Their deaths… believed, aye, but unconfirmed. Still, they were crowns. They gave themselves to the people. That service deserves honor.”

He raised his weathered hand, saluting in echo of Vivi, and his head bowed lower than most would expect from a Tyre.

The hall seemed to contract then, as if listening closer. Sorith’s violet eyes lifted, and when he spoke, it was not only to the crowns present but to the shadows that gathered with them.

“It is known,” he said, his tone low and precise, “death is not only a passage, but a rite. The body and the spirit must be seen to, each in their own way. Without the body....Without the rite, there is an imbalance.” His gaze settled on the scar in the Hadal Stone, then the vacant chairs. “ Ava and Valir leavung no bodies to return to us… it troubles me more deeply than I wish to admit. For we...have always guided the fallen into rest. Now, we cannot be certain whether they rest at all.”

His hand, too, lifted in salute, though his fingers lingered a moment longer over his chest, as if feeling for a heartbeat that wasn’t his.

The silence that followed was heavier than the one before, yet not the same. This silence carried reverence, and the unspoken knowledge that the empty chairs were not only symbols—they were wounds that would not close.

The chamber still held the weight of their salute, silence echoing after the gesture. For a long moment, it seemed no one dared to speak—until Iryndel, Crown of Kiaht, let his voice cut through the heaviness.

“Respect has been given. And deserved.” His tone was low, deliberate, neither sharp nor soft. “But the dead are not staying dead.”

He leaned forward in his seat, pale hands folding over one another, his armor whispering faintly with the movement. “The Subterfuge eats at us already. Every Ravager that rises is not only a monster—it is a weapon that was once ours, turned against us. Each soldier slain weakens us twice. Once in their loss, and again in their rebirth.”

Iryndel’s gaze swept from crown to crown, lingering longest on Vivi. “We may honor them until our bones are dust, but if we do not act, there will be no one left to honor.”

He paused, letting the thought hang, then added—sharper, colder now—

“The Herald of Death has changed the rules of war. We cannot afford to sit here tangled in regret while the world burns.”

Vivi’s jaw tightened as Iryndel’s words settled over the hall. For a moment, her eyes flared with something raw—frustration at his clipped tone, at the cold dismissal of the grief still heavy in her chest. But she said nothing. Her lips pressed into a thin line, and she sat straighter, folding her hands in her lap, the movement sharp enough to betray her restraint.

The silence stretched, broken only by the soft hiss of torches. When she finally spoke, her voice was level, but quieter than before.

“…You’re right.” The admission came with reluctance, each syllable weighed. “The Herald of Death has left us no time for mourning, no mercy for dignity. We cannot let the Subterfuge run unchecked.”

Her gaze lingered again on the empty Myotis chair, softer now, before she turned back to the table. “We move forward. For their sake… and ours.”

Balteus shifted in his chair, the old wood groaning under his weight as he leaned onto his cane. His lips curled in a half-sneer, half-smirk.

“So this Herald of Death—bah.” He spat the title like it tasted sour. “Every new whelp with a spark of sorcery calls themselves something grand. What’s cooler than being a herald of Death, eh? A dark name to frighten children and impress other… what do they call themselves now anyways?” His chuckle was dry, but sharp enough to echo in the chamber.

Sorith did not laugh. Instead, his long fingers tapped slowly on the table, as if weighing thoughts one by one.

“Perhaps the name is nothing,” he allowed, his voice even. “But the changes it heralds…” His eyes narrowed, dark and gleaming. “The Traversing Mirror was defiled not long after its arrival. Spirits have begun to snag in our world, unable to move beyond. And these Ravagers—no spell cleanses them. No chant, no rite. It spreads across Vescrutia, everywhere, as though death itself has been rewritten. That is not the trick of some arrogant child.”

The air hung thick after his words, the torches guttering low as if in agreement.

Iryndel’s voice cut in, sharp and deliberate, carrying no patience for dread.

“No known spell works without end. No known spell works without source. Yet this Subterfuge persists, spreading on and on, as if it were eternal. Global. That is… impossible.” His gaze raked across the chamber, steady and unflinching. “So the question before us is simple. If this is no spell we recognize, then what is it?”

[Aerys Hellgate]

((..Continued From..))

The skies above Acrix Solara split with a deep, echoing boom as a violet streak cut through the clouds like a falling star. Citizens and guards alike craned their necks as the sound thundered across the clouds, followed by a rush of displaced air that rattled windows and stirred banners. Aerys descended from the heavens with his hands shoved lazily into his pockets, a 6 '7 figure of raw power that didn’t need pomp or ceremony to announce his arrival.

His casual attire stood in sharp contrast to the tradition bound grandeur expected of a Hellgate Crown. He donned a short sleeved button-up that framed a physique sculpted by training, combat, and genetic superiority. While his shorts, cut just above the knee, looked almost contemptuous in their simplicity when compared to the flowing ceremonial robes and armor of his counterparts.

But Aerys didn’t care.
He wasn’t here to dress like a Crown. He was here to act like one.

The towering doors of the Crown Hall were already open, but Aerys’ shoulders shoved them wider as he stalked through. "..oi, make way.."

The vaulted ceiling was still faintly trembling from the shockwave of his landing, causing banners to sway like startled ghosts. He took note of the gathered Crowns, aristocrats, and advisors murmuring amongst themselves—a few of them scandalized by the Tyr Crown's lack of formality considering the circumstances, but Aerys didn’t spare them a glance.

He was looking for someone.
The apparent strongest among them. The man he understood might have grasp of the peril that loomed beyond Muu. “..."

The hall reeked of tension. Even without his own advisor's hurried briefing prior to his flight here, Aerys could feel it. And it definitely didnt feel like the unifying colloquium it was meant to be.

While he’d been trapped in a medicated haze, recovering from wounds inflicted by some eldritch demon, his world had been imploding.

Civil war had raged in the streets of Solara.
The Holguard Crown, Antares, had sparked a bloody conflict between the Vesta Crown, Zeik Hellgate, alongside his heir, and the Myotis Crown, Inari. The clash had nearly razed the city itself, leaving fires still smoldering in certain plots and districts throughout the city. However, in the end, Antares was slain—but not before nearly toppling the very pillars of Acrix Solara.

Aerys’ jaw clenched as he strode deeper into the hall, his bare feet slapping softly against the polished stone. He had been named a protector—a warrior who'd proven himself worthy to embody the Tyr’s pride and strength. He thought himself ready.. primed to be both the sword and shield of his people.. And yet, while thr kingdom trembled and burned, he had been sleeping..

..while he was lying unconscious in a bed, useless. The aforementioned titans of his tribe fought and bled for Solara. Protecting their people.. protecting him. "..ugh.." The muscles beneath his golden shirt rippled with restrained fury. "..for fuck's sake."

And to make matters worse, beyond Solara’s political fractures loomed an even greater nightmare.

The Bhalian Empire, a remnant of a prehistoric world, was moving in the shadows. Cities had been erased. Entire regions, like Helidor and the Onyx Trench, turned to ash overnight. The threat was no longer a rumor—it was marching toward them, and the Hellgate Crowns were too busy clawing at each other’s throats to act.

That was going to end today.

Aerys’ purple eyes swept the room like a hunter, skipping past ceremonial robes and jeweled crowns. He wasn’t here to make friends, and he certainly wasn’t here to play politics. He was looking for the man Tal’m hailed as the strongest among them—the reclusive WizardKing of The Astral Kingdom, and the only one Aerys thought possessed the answers he was looking for. He was looking for Zeik.

[Inariel Myotis]

The Acrix Solara. The very name seemed etched into his soul, a persistent echo in the vast expanse of his existence. No matter how far Inari journeyed, through realms shimmering with alien suns or the hushed, ethereal planes between worlds, the pull of Solara was an undeniable constant. It was here, amidst its ancient spires and bustling thoroughfares, that fate had a peculiar habit of ambushing him. Each return was heralded by a subtle shift in the air, a tremor of anticipation that was equal parts foreboding and exhilarating. For every grand revelation, every eye-opening boon bestowed upon him, a sacrifice, often greater than the gain, was demanded. His millennia-long life had been a chaotic, unplanned pirouette between acquisition and loss, a desperate scramble for knowledge that invariably led him back to the humbling realization of what he already possessed.

Yet, as his gaze swept over the vibrant tapestry of humanity weaving through the city's arteries, a warmth, surprisingly gentle, unfurled in his chest. In these times, when shadows crept and insidious plots festered like disease, when the agonizing weight of a thousand years of vengeance threatened to consume him, the memory of Aurelius remained a piercing ray of moonlight. It was this very essence, the gilded fleece of his twin moon, that had inspired the preamble to Zeik, Nagase, and Inari’s edict of unity, a decree that had rewritten the tragic conclusion Antares, the tyrant, had sought to impose upon the city. It was the steadfast, unwavering glare of Aurelius’s brave sacrifice that had illuminated Inari’s pivotal choice: to attempt to mend the fractured heart of their lineage, a decision born from witnessing the profound bond of the First Kings that had, in the beginning, forged the nine families of Hellgate.

There had been countless moments, of course, when the allure of the Myotis Crown had whispered seductive possibilities. He’d contemplated, with a wry curl of his lips, the path not taken – the one where he’d shunned peace and embraced the visceral satisfaction of retribution. The thought of such a release, a primal purging, was a temptation he couldn't entirely deny.

But then Aurelius’s spectral voice, a chorus of hope against the encroaching darkness, would resonate: “Live, my crown. Live and become all that you desire and then some. Lead our people to the sanguine waters that have restored purpose to my once meaningless life. Make them drink.”

Aurelius’s words, a balm to his tormented spirit, permeated the dark contemplation. The weight of what Inari now carried was profound, a burden far deeper than the siren song of retribution. He was an inheritor now, a catalyst for the nascent dream of his Moon, the germination of his family’s growth, his people’s prosperity, his crown’s destiny. And in accepting this legacy, Inari understood that he would find other means to sate his ancient craving for blood. For now, his purpose was to be an envoy. To be the very glue that could hold his fractured family together, or, if necessary, the sharpened claw to cleave away the persistent, toxic disruptions that threatened their fragile unity.

From his elevated vantage point atop the grand hall, he observed the fiery descent of the Tyre crown, followed by the arrival of the Horus candidate and the others. The assembly was now complete. Inari drew a deep, centering breath, and his physical form dissolved into a swirling vortex of blackened mist. It coiled and slithered past the stoic Garuda sentinels stationed outside, rising like heat haze towards the ceiling, directly opposite the ominous Hadal Stone.

“So the question before us is simple,” the Horus crown inquired, its voice sharp with urgency. “If this is no spell we recognize, then what is it?”

It was then that Inari solidified, his presence commanding the space. “It is a perversion of law,” he declared, his voice resonating with an ancient authority. “A heinous amendment, a seizure of the living right to a peaceful end.” As he spoke, wings of deepest ebony unfurled, cloaking him like a vast, dramatic mantle. An enchantment woven into their very fabric caused those who looked upon him to perceive not feathers, but the trails of moving smoke and encroaching darkness, while his eyes blazed with the fearsome, crimson hue of a blood moon. Yet, it was not raw anger that fueled his words; intuition, he mused, was a more fitting descriptor.

His form shifted once more, dissolving into the ether only to re-emerge beside the Hadal Stone. Ovan and Aerys, faces etched with a flicker of recognition, met his gaze. Though his current manifestation differed from their last encounter, they would undoubtedly sense the familiar core of the being they knew. He was draped in a fleece of void-black fur, a shimmering, obsidian cloak that seemed to passively repel the ambient light, lending him an ethereal, fleeting appearance, as if he were a conjured illusion existing only within the folds of their perceptions. However, his long, flowing mane of scarlet hair remained unchanged, as did the profound, imposing aura he subtly emanated, the constant, disciplined effort required to suppress his immense presence.

“A law that, by all rights, should be immutable,” Inari continued, his gaze now settling on Sorith, the Holgurd crown. “But given that our foe possesses the ability to mute the immutable… well, quite the dire state we find ourselves in.” He then turned his attention toward ViVi, the Florum Crown. “The Myotis have heard your kind words. But they are mere trinkets of grandeur, nothing you could say should vindicate you… any of you, from the shame rooted within your guts.” His eyes then drifted from ViVi to Balteus of the Tyre, a living monument to Hellgate’s long and storied history.

And from him, Inariel’s eyes found a flicker of solace upon Ovan and Aerys. Though Inari was vastly older than both, he recognized the three of them as the youngest of the Crowns present. They represented the nascent foundation, the fresh soil from which the family could begin to mend, to heal. However, a score remained to be settled between him and Aerys, a debt that, in time, would be acknowledged with cold, hard stone. But for this moment, his focus was firmly fixed on the council, on the pressing matter at hand.

“In another life… that might have been the case,” Inari declared, his voice a low rumble that commanded attention. “Yet, in this one, I come as Inariel Myotis, The Crimson Crown… as an aid, and an heir, to the Hellgate name.” His eyes then swept across the assembled council, and with casual grace, he took his seat amongst them, occupying the long-vacant chair of the Myotis Crown. The silence that followed was pregnant with anticipation, the air thick with the unspoken histories and the uncertain future that now rested, collectively, upon their shoulders.

[Fate I]

From the skies he tore his way down in a violet blaze, a streak of stormfire that split the clouds and sent banners snapping against their poles. The glow clung to him as he touched stone, purples and golds dancing across his frame, casting long shadows that wavered like flames along the Hall’s threshold. Even as the brilliance bled into the dim interior, it left a ghost of color on the polished floor and in the eyes of those who watched, as though the chamber itself had been branded by his arrival.

The doors groaned open, and Aerys stepped into the Crown Hall barefoot, the echo of his stride swallowed by stone. No cloak, no regalia — only short sleeves and raw presence, a body carved by ordeal rather than ceremony. The light from the clerestory windows caught the lines of his shoulders, each step carrying the weight of a man who had not come to be adorned, but to remind them all that power did not bend to ritual.

The Crowns did not greet him. Silence, brittle and involuntary, pooled across the chamber as though the Hadal Stone itself demanded it. It was not courtesy withheld but certainty absent — a tension that prickled like static in the air. None dared speak, for none could name why his disregard for custom felt like a challenge, or why his bare arrival unsettled them so deeply. Aerys’ unadorned presence cut through their ceremony like a blade, forcing them to face what they had buried in protocol: crowns did not make kings, and robes did not shield nations.

Unspoken among them was the knowledge that the walls of this hall had grown hollow with division. No council, no decree, no title could shoulder the weight so long as every voice dragged against the other. They had ceremony, they had power, but not the unity to bear what pressed upon Acrix Solara. And in that silence, Aerys’ arrival was less reassurance than revelation: their grandeur had become brittle, and the world outside would not wait for them to mend it.

The hall had not yet stilled from the echo of Aerys’ entrance when another presence bled into the chamber — colder, sharper, and wholly unexpected. Inariel did not descend in violet fire, but in silence that seemed to drain the warmth from the banners themselves. Where Aerys was a disruption to ritual, Inariel was an interruption to certainty, a figure they had long believed would not return. His appearance struck like the crack of an unseen blade, cutting through every unspoken assumption the Crowns had clung to.

They did not rise, nor did they greet him. Instead, the chamber thickened with a silence far heavier than the one Aerys had summoned. It was not the weight of reverence but of fear — fear that his return could mean nothing but war. Inariel was a name bound to blood and unrest, a memory of fire and fracture, and for many here, his sudden reemergence was less a restoration than a prelude to ruin. The Crowns sat rigid, their jewels and robes dimmed in the shadow of what his presence implied.

And so, with Aerys standing as a challenge to their ceremony and Inariel as a specter of conflict they could not contain, the hall itself seemed poised to shatter. No words were spoken, yet the fear hummed in every stillness: that this convergence of powers — one unyielding, the other unforgotten — was not council, but the first breath of war.

Inariel’s words fell into the chamber like iron cast into water — heavy, unyielding, rippling outward. The Crowns received them in silence, their faces unmoved though their thoughts clenched tight. Guilt lingered in the air like smoke from a long-dead fire, but none reached for it. There was no point. To defend or to confess would only fracture them further, and the hall could not bear more division. Better to let the wound stand unspoken and turn their gaze to the greater danger: the perversion of law itself, a distortion of truths that had always been immutable.

Vivi was first to speak. Her voice was measured, though beneath it tension coiled like roots beneath stone. “Then we must assume the Herald’s power is not his own. This corruption… this rewriting of law. It smells of an origin not of Vescrutia, nor of any planet in its reach. Something older. Something foreign.” Her green eyes shifted from the scarred Hadal Stone to her fellow crowns. “The Subterfuge does not spread like spellcraft — it spreads like invasion.”

Sorith stirred, violet eyes narrowing as he drew a small, shimmering shard from his robes. Its light was faint, but unmistakably unnatural — a pale-blue fire that flickered without fuel. “This,” he said, voice low, “is a fragment of the Azure Flame. The flame still lives, deep in the peaks of the Azure Mountains, not far from the ancestral seat of the Hellgates. It is not myth. It burns where no wind reaches, where no mortal dares climb. And it answers not to us, but to what is beyond us.”

Kiaht’s steel-gray eyes glinted with skepticism, and her voice cut through the chamber with sharp edges. “Fairy stories. A fire in the mountains? An old home buried in snow and legend? You would have us build our strategy on whispers.”

But before Sorith could reply, Balteus’ cane struck the floor with a crack that stilled the air. “It is no whisper,” the old crown rasped, leaning forward with weight. “I have seen it written. The Boundless Scrolls — the ones Zeik stole before his wandering — they spoke of this flame. They spoke of the Hellgates once dwelling not in Dunes but in the Forest of Resonance, until war burned their oasis to ash. The Azure Flame was their remnant, a truth the world forgot.”

Sorith’s jaw tightened, his violet eyes darkening as though the revelation cut too close. The silence between him and Balteus trembled with unspoken accusation — that this knowledge had been hoarded, withheld when it might have mattered. But Balteus pressed on, not pausing to be challenged. His voice deepened, almost reverent, almost afraid.

“And the scrolls spoke of more. Of creatures that could bend divine law, warp it to their will. Not sorcerers, not kings. Not even gods as we know them. Creatures whose very presence rewrote the order of things.” His amber eyes, old and burning, swept the table. “When they walked, even the heavens bent. Their shadows split rivers. Their voices shook the bones of time. I tell you, they were…” He faltered, the word catching like thorn in his throat, before spitting it with reluctant awe: “…Horsemen.”

The chamber quivered in the weight of the name.

Vivi’s voice broke the hush, softer than before, but carrying with it the terrible finality of recognition. “Before Zeik departed Acrix,” she said, her hand tightening in her lap, “he spoke of something he had seen beyond. A creature whose power wrote on the very lines of time and space — bending them as a poet bends verse, reshaping them like clay. He called them… Horsemen.”

Iryndel’s steel-gray eyes lifted from her folded hands, cutting through the tension with blunt pragmatism. “So Zeik returned to our ancestral home armed with the Boundless Scrolls and runes… to do what exactly?” Her voice was steady, stripped of awe or fear, a counterpoint to the horror still hanging over the hall.

She paused, letting the question linger, then continued with measured conviction. “I do not know Zeik well… at all, really. But what I’ve heard of him, what I’ve seen, places my faith in this: he must have found something there. That is why he never returned before. That is why he did not answer us sooner.”

The Crowns, still caught between dread and revelation, allowed her words a fragile weight. For the first time since Inariel and Aerys entered, the notion that some knowledge, some plan, might yet exist beyond fear and chaos seeped into the room — a reminder that strategy could still outpace despair.

[Ovan Hellgate]

Zeik had the right idea, Ovan thought to himself, listening to the dialogue between his family, his peers. He found himself uniquely fortunate in many areas of his life, his unique visual insights, his pragmatic nature, his thirst for knowledge, but at this meeting of the leaders of his community, he remembered why he opted for a more worldly life:

Hellgates can't escape the theatrics.

Ovan respected tradition, he visited with sholars from every reach of vescrutia and immersed himself into their cultures while he studied the stars and compiled the Uranometria. but often found himself yearning to escape metings of his own tribe whenever they assembled. Though this meeting was no different, he, a scientist and a man of perseverance, knew the importance of being present and attentive.

Brother Aerys entered the scene and Ovan recognized the solar gravitas as every eye descended upon his simple attire and bare feet taking his seat at the table. Ovan didn't have a chair himself and stood behind the crown he was to succeed when deemed 'worthy'. He didn't care much himself, eager to understand these meetings as a case study before stepping into the role uninitiated, but Aerys made his presence known in a way that Ovan admired.

Inarel, the counter force that, with Aerys, propelled him to the end of the trial with all necesasry keys in hand. To his recollection, Ovan was the only of his brothers who actually found the keys of the kings before them, but here were two he left locked in mortal combat with their seats at the table. Inari's shadowy nature and ornate appearance was a stark contrast to Aerys, definitely more traditional in the Hellgate sense, but also exuding a freshness that the more senior crowns seemed to... appreciate? Attune to...

For better or worse.

From his seat, standing at the right hand of the current Horus Crown, Ovan remained silent as the conversations surrounding the Horsemen swirled around them. Each of the elder crowns espoused their take on natural law and left space for dialogue, but Ovan's unique insight and visual acuity already offered him an interesting take on the changes besieging Vescrutia.

He hadn't been able to place it before, but descending the mountain after felling the Leviathan left him with a feeling that something changed. Within him, in the world, in the scope of his vision's unique acuity, the world shifted in a way he hadn't seen before. The council of his peers and predecessors spoke candidly with their takes on the matter, unsure of the manner of spellcraft that could change the planet so fundamentally, but his gift of visual prowess introduced him to the effects ot the Subterfuge firsthand in a way he always had trouble conveying to others. Though he worked as a scientist and educator abroad, Ovan rarely spoke more than necessary or without a certain level of certainty, and so many factors were at play at this congregation, he couldn't bring himself to add more unceartain information to the multi pronged conversation.

Hearing that Zeik made off with the Boundless Scrolls intrigued Ovan immediately. Ovan wanted to read the scrolls since he learned of their existence but never stuck around Acrix long enough to invest in researching them. But neither his intrigue with Zeik's plans for the scrolls in the wake of this new threat nor his interest in the discourse of the current crowns could peel his eyes from the scarred Hadalstone slab above the hanging above all of them.

The pinnacle or Crystal Conjures is a material that has been proven durable against all manner of physical strike and spell craft. This slab was a testament to the rugged, unflinching nature of the Hellgate lineage stemming from the first known Hellgate king. There were so many variables to consider, the calculations that ran through his head as his brethren conversed made his heart race. They came together to face a new paradigm, a new challenge for the fate of the clan, of the whole world.

What he lacked in raw power, Ovan knew he more than made up for in worldly insight, marking himself, Zeik, Aerys, and Inari as pioneers in this new, uncertain world.

[Aerys Hellgate]

The murmurs of the Crowns faded into a low hum, like wind pressed between iron gates. Aerys sat forward, elbows on the table, fingers steepled beneath his chin. His eyes, sharp and sunlit even in the dim hall, wandered across the assembled faces —not in reverence, but in assessment. Appraisal.

He didn’t feel like he belonged here. Not really, anyway. The polished marble, the measured tone, the gilded thrones — all of it felt like a performance to him, one he had no interest in acting for. Aerys was a warrior at heart—a leader maybe, but not a politician. His title of Crown wasn’t something earned in a council chamber; it was taken in battle, forged in blood, bone and fire.

And yet, as Inariel’s words echoed — talk of “perversions of law” and “immutable truths” — something in Aerys’ chest began to stir. The world did feel different somehow.. Hollow. Even the sunlight through the tall windows looked wrong—muted, sickly, as though the day itself had begun to rot.. And to make it worse, it seemed he was the last one to notice.

Aerys sat in silence at first, listening as the Crowns spoke through measured tones, careful diction, layers of politics He listened, not because he cared for ceremony, but because he needed to know who this enemy was..

He hated that feeling — the sense of being left behind. Tal'm had done well to brief him prior to this meeting, but to hear how each of his elders speak of the Herlads and their Ravagers with such solemnity.. made his Tyre flesh prickle.

It magnified the Veritas behind this unknown foe, more so than the looming threat of the Bhalian Empire. And while Aerys may have originally identified with Kihat's steely skepticism, the more he listened, the more he began to wonder.. For all the titles and ancient wisdom of the Elder Crowns, even they spoke of these things like children whispering about ghosts.

He leaned back, jaw tightening. The conversation twisted and turned—from the civil conflicts among the Nine, to the Subterfuge itself, to the absence of Zeik Hellgate. And immediately, at the lone mention of the legendary wizard, Aerys’ gaze sharpened. The name carried through the hall like a wind through old banners, stirring memories and discomfort in equal measure.

Aerys leaned forward in his chair and finally piped up. His voice smooth, but edged with the kind of weight that could cut through stale air.

“Lovely.. so we all agree..” he started, “that Zeik’s disappearin’ is the bloody center of this bloody circus...” He let it linger, long enough for a few wary glances to flick his way. “..and finding him would be a proper start toward sortn’ out a whole lot.”

He rose, the scrape of his chair echoing through the vaulted chamber. “Tell ya what— He should be here, and I'm not opposed to finding the ol’ man meself. Be nice to have a proper word, I think.”

The tension in the room thickened following his words, he felt it; a shift among his peers— a ripple of discomfort, or maybe even irritation—but Aerys didn’t care. The truth was simpler than they made it out to be. If Zeik still lived, then so did the answers they all danced around.

He'd stolen the Boundless Scrolls; an act of treason which alone should have warranted his presence before them. The knowledge Zeik possessed and yet refused to parley with his own clan drove them further into confusion than any single foe could have.

Of course, Aerys wasn’t blind to the irony. His own motives ran deeper than duty — a hunger gnawed at him, the same that had driven him through battle and blood to his seat at this very table. He wanted to see Zeik. To face him. To demand why a man of such strength would vanish during such a crisis.

His plum tinted eyes flicked briefly across the hall, finding two familiar presences amidst the council’s tension. Ovan — composed as ever, quiet as stone, but with that unfathomable depth behind his eyes that spoke of experience, not power. Aerys had always respected that kind of strength — the kind that didn’t need to be shown. The kind that lasted.

And then Inariel. The Crimson Crown. Their eyes met for the briefest moment — and something old and electric passed between them. A memory of battle. Of blood and moonlight. Aerys didn’t flinch from it; if anything, he drew a breath, as if steadying himself against the weight of recognition. The two of them had unfinished business, but that reckoning could wait. For now, they shared a stage, and a threat greater than a rival's feud.

He turned back toward the council, his hands pressed on the table as he leaned toward them—his haughty arrogance curling a smirk upon his mug. A mug wet with conceit and pearly white teeth. “Any objections? Oh, and I'm not big on passengers, but for the sake of family, I'm willing to baby sit one or two of ya if you want to tag along..”