The throne broke in silence.
No shatter. No crack.
Only the absence of what it once was, as if even the concept of a throne could no longer sustain the weight of what sat atop it. The boy—the Claimed—stepped down from the ruin, his bare feet leaving impressions in the ghost-soil of the Remnant Vale. Where he walked, memory curled away like mist beneath a too-hot sun.
Jevan didn't run.
He couldn't have, even if he wanted to. The air around the Claimed wasn't just heavy—it narrated itself, fixing each moment into a state of absolute tension, the kind that forbade turning away. He stood as if bound by punctuation.
"You wear the Pact's thread," the Claimed said, circling him. "Yet you carry no blade. No chronicle. No divine mark."
"I'm not one of them," Jevan said. "Not yet."
A pause. A smile.
"But you want to be?"
Jevan considered that.
"No," he said at last. "I want to be something new."
The Claimed stopped.
