The sky burned grey. Charcoal clouds crawled across a wasteland where glass towers once touched the sun. Cities were bones now—steel ribcages jutting from the mud, roads stripped to naked earth, echoes of a civilization that ate itself alive. Wind moaned through shattered windows. Nothing lived here except crows, hunger, and something colder.
Rael walked through it all like a man on pilgrimage. His boots crunched over old bones and broken screens, his coat trailing the dust of a dead world. The throne called to him with every step—a pressure behind his eyes, a pull in his veins. He was thin but not weak. Pale, not sick. His hair had gone white from stress or power, nobody could tell anymore. He kept his face shaved, his jaw sharp, his gaze colder than the northern ice.
Most would say the world ended. Rael knew better. It regressed—back to claws, back to hunger, back to a place where only kings and monsters survived. He was both.
He moved without fear. Once, in another life, he had been a king, the youngest in the line of iron rulers. That life ended on the steps of his own palace, a blade in his spine and blood on his throne. He remembered it all. The betrayal, the cold, the pain. Then the world buckled, time fractured, and reality crumbled. Everyone forgot. Rael did not.
His throne still waited, buried beneath the ruins of the old capital. It wasn't just a seat of power—it was the root of everything. The world broke, but the throne endured. And so did he.
A pack of feral children crossed his path, eyes hollow, cheeks sunken. They watched him with the wariness of animals. Rael looked back, expression unreadable. One of them, a boy with a scar splitting his lip, stepped forward with a shard of metal held like a dagger.
"Food," the boy croaked. His voice was dry, desperate.
Rael stopped, weighing the child's courage. In another life, this would have been pitiful. Here, it was the currency of survival.
He reached into his coat and tossed a strip of dried meat at the boy's feet. The pack lunged for it, forgetting him entirely. They would live another day, or not. Rael didn't care. He was no hero.
He crossed the corpse of the river on twisted girders. The throne's call intensified, throbbing beneath the skin. Shadows flickered on the horizon—others drawn by the same ancient pull. Rivals, survivors, monsters who remembered just enough to covet power. Rael's lips curled. Let them come.
The ruins thickened as he neared the city's core. Ash drifted from the sky, clinging to the ruins in a fine grey coat. He passed the skeletons of cars, overturned and rusted through. Graffiti marked the walls—half-forgotten language, warnings, threats, prayers to things that never listened.
He heard footsteps behind him. Not the children—these were heavier, deliberate. Rael didn't break stride. The hunter always knows when he's being stalked.
A figure emerged from the rubble. Tall, wrapped in ragged armor, carrying a blade chipped from the bone of something long dead. She had hair like dirty straw, eyes like cracked glass. She was older than Rael, but moved with the caution of a survivor.
"You're heading for the throne," she said, voice rough.
Rael kept walking. "Move aside."
She blocked his path, blade raised. "Nobody sits on that throne anymore. The world's changed."
Rael looked her up and down. "Not enough."
She lunged. Fast, but desperate. Rael slipped past her swing, grabbed her arm, twisted. Her blade clattered to the ground. He shoved her back, unarmed. She hit the wall, gasping.
He picked up the blade, weighed it, then tossed it aside. "You're not the first. You won't be the last."
She spat blood. "Who are you?"
Rael stepped close, his voice a whisper edged in steel. "I am the only king this world remembers."
He left her there, struggling to breathe. The ruins grew thicker, the pull of the throne now a steady ache in his bones. Every corner crawled with ghosts—his ghosts. Friends who had betrayed him, lovers who had fled, enemies he'd buried and rivals he'd crowned. All of them lost in the regression. All of them nothing now.
He passed a burned-out church. Inside, figures huddled in silence, praying to gods who'd left them behind. Rael paused at the threshold, but their eyes never met his. They could sense what he was—something that refused to die.
The city's heart was a crater, filled with twisted steel and broken dreams. At the center, half-buried under ash and bone, was the throne. Black stone, veined with something golden, ancient as the world itself. No vines, no moss—just raw, defiant presence.
Rael approached, boots sinking in the mud. He knelt, pressing a hand to the throne's armrest. The world shivered. Power roared up his spine—a memory, a warning, a promise.
He sat.
The city seemed to breathe around him, shifting. The sky darkened, the ground trembled, reality itself bent to his will. Rael leaned back, eyes closed, heartbeat steady.
He remembered everything. Every victory, every betrayal, every moment he'd ruled and been cast down. Now he ruled again. The world could collapse a thousand times—it would never erase him.
The throne remained. So did its king.
Power surged through Rael's veins the moment he settled into the throne. It wasn't warm, wasn't welcoming—just raw, ancient force that felt like an old wound pressed open. Images blazed behind his eyes: the old world's collapse, fire swallowing the skyline, the flash of his own death, the endless night that followed. He gripped the armrest, feeling the stone pulse beneath his palm.
Out beyond the crater, he sensed movement. The throne amplified his awareness, extending his senses like claws through the rubble and ash. Survivors scrabbling in the ruins, too scared to come closer. Hushed whispers spreading: The throne's awake. The king's returned. Monsters—real ones, not just desperate men—circling at the edge, waiting for nightfall.
Rael's lips thinned. He saw everything he'd inherited: a world of ruins, hunger, and things with too many eyes. But the throne was more than a relic. It connected to something deeper, a current flowing beneath the world's skin. He focused, reaching out with will and memory.
Stone cracked nearby. A pair of hands, slick with blood and mud, clawed their way from under a collapsed pillar. A boy, no older than twelve, dragged himself free. Skin stretched tight over bone, eyes fever-bright, teeth clenched in silent agony. Rael watched him, expecting the usual plea for mercy or food.
Instead, the boy fixed him with a stare. "You're the one, aren't you?"
Rael said nothing.
The boy's lips twisted into a feral grin. "My mother told me about you. She said you were a god once, but gods can bleed. She made me promise—if I ever saw you, I should kill you."
He lurched forward with a rusted knife. The edge of the blade shimmered—not with steel, but with some sickly, green light, a fragment of whatever twisted magic the regression had left behind. Rael moved to stand, but the throne's grip tightened, pinning him down. It demanded a choice: power or freedom. If he rose, he'd lose his claim. If he stayed, he'd have to fight from the seat.
The boy screamed and rushed him. The knife came down. Rael caught his wrist, but the light from the blade arced into his skin, burning through muscle and bone. Pain flared, blinding. The world spun—the throne, the city, the sky—all tilted. Rael clenched his teeth, refusing to let go.
He twisted, wrenching the knife from the boy's hand. The child spat blood and bit Rael's arm. For a second, Rael saw something behind the boy's eyes—a presence, ancient and malicious, watching him through the child's ruined body. The world flickered. Voices whispered, not just in Rael's head but from the throne itself:
You are not alone, King. We are coming.
The boy slumped, unconscious or dead, and Rael dropped him to the ground. The knife burned a hole in the throne's stone, green sparks crawling up the armrest, eating into the veins of gold. Rael stared at it, heart pounding. The pain wouldn't fade. It grew, cold and deep.
He tried to stand, but the throne pulled him back. The city trembled as if the world itself sensed what had happened. All across the ruins, screams rose—first one, then dozens, then hundreds. Shadows moved in the alleys, limbs too long, faces stretched by hunger and rage. The edge of the crater filled with figures: old rivals, monsters, broken men drawn by the power unleashed.
Rael's vision blurred. The throne's voice, cold and absolute, thundered in his mind:
Defend your claim, or be devoured. The world will not regress again. It will end.
Night fell all at once, black as a burial shroud. Dozens of eyes—red, blue, empty—blinked from the dark, closing in.
The king gripped the throne. For the first time, he wasn't sure he'd survive the night.