The obsidian throne felt like a shard of winter beneath Lyra’s palms. It was not merely stone. It was a hungry, dormant entity that pulsed with the trapped frequency of Malphas’s essence. Each vibration against her skin was a jagged Morse code of agony and stubborn resistance. He was trapped within the geometry of the kingdom, a prisoner of the very power he had sought to destroy.
Lyra did not sit. To seat herself upon that chair was to surrender to the Architect’s game, to become the final piece in his grand design. Instead, she knelt, her ear pressed against the cold, smooth backrest.
"I can hear you," she breathed, her voice barely a tremor in the cavernous hall. "Stay with me, Malphas. Do not let the throne consume the edges of your mind."
A flicker of violet light sparked from the
