The journey to the Vault of the Eternal Weaver was a path even the most powerful Judges feared to tread. To reach it, Malakor and three of his most trusted colleagues—Judges Thorne, Vesper, and Caelum—had to descend past the Hellos, past the forgotten voids, into a realm where time itself felt thick and viscous like tar.
The air here smelled of ancient ozone and rotting parchment. They arrived at a cavernous opening that resembled a massive, unblinking eye. Inside, coiled around a pillar of pulsing amethyst, was the Destiny Decider Dragon. Its scales were not made of flesh, but of shifting timelines, shimmering with the ghosts of a billion possible futures.
"Great Weaver," Malakor began, his voice trembling as he bowed low. The dragon's head, larger than a palace carriage, swung toward them. Its eyes were swirling galaxies of white and gold.
"You speak of the Butcher in the Silk," the dragon's voice resonated directly in their minds, a sound like grinding tectonic plates. "You speak of the woman who has turned the North Wind into a summer breeze."
"She is a parasite upon the Law!" Judge Vesper cried out. "She has ensnared our Sovereign. We wish to excise her. We wish for you to unweave her from the High Court and cast her back into the dregs where she belongs."
The dragon let out a low, rumbling huff of smoke that smelled of burnt cinnamon. "You ask for the impossible, little Judges. Her destiny is a tapestry of thorns and stars. It is not to be interfered with. Marianne is the needle; the afterlife is the fabric. She is the only soul in an eternity capable of redefining the proceedings of this entire existence."
Malakor stepped forward, his skeletal hands clutching his staff. "Is there no way to break the Sovereign's fixation? He is the High Judge! He cannot be ruled by a mortal heart!"
The dragon's tail shifted, cracking the stone floor. "I cannot overrule a Sovereign's choice of who sits by his side. That is the power of the Throne, not the power of Destiny. However..." The dragon leaned closer, its giant pupil focusing on Malakor. "There is a loophole in the laws of the spirit. A soul can be pulled by the gravity of a greater love."
The Judges leaned in, desperate.
"To stop her," the dragon continued, "you must venture back to the realm of the living. To the Earth she left in flames. You must find the One Soul who loves Marianne unconditionally with a heart that is pure and selfless."
"And if we find this man?" Malakor whispered.
"Bring him to the afterlife." the dragon hissed. "If you plant that soul within these realms, the friction between his love and the Sovereign's heart will create a storm that even Zoe cannot weather. But beware: unconditional love is a rare currency on Earth. You may find only flings."
The Judges left the cavern in a stunned silence. They stood on the precipice of the void, looking toward the shimmering veil that separated the living from the dead.
"A man who loves her?" Judge Thorne spat. "She is a mass murderer. She is the 'Devil Killer.' Who could possibly love such a creature unconditionally?"
"We must find him," Malakor resolved, his eyes cold. "If that's the only way to change her destiny, We will find this 'One Soul' and bring him here to reclaim what the Sovereign has stolen."
Malakor raised his staff, beginning the forbidden ritual to pierce the veil and send a spectral tether down to the mortal world. He didn't know who he was looking for—a father, a brother, a forgotten lover—but he knew that once this soul arrived, the High Court would become a battlefield of the heart.
The judges gathered in the subterranean Whispering Gallery, a place where the walls were lined with the fossilized ears of ancient watchers, ensuring that not even the Sovereign's shadow could hear their sedition. The air was thick with the weight of their decision. To reach the mortal plane, they had to bypass the cosmic checkpoint guarded by the Mighty Dreese, the Warden of the Veil.
Dreese was a colossal, multi-limbed entity who sat atop the Aetheric Bridge. He was neither a judge nor a prisoner; he was the Balance. His mandate was absolute: no soul from the afterlife could set foot on Earth unless their presence was deemed "Passive"—incapable of altering the natural flow of life, death, or the karmic scales of the living. To even request an audience with Dreese, one had to present a petition of "Non-Harm," a magical contract ensuring that the visitor would be nothing more than a ghost in the machine, a whisper in the wind that left no footprint.
"We cannot go ourselves," Malakor hissed, his skeletal fingers tracing a map of the three Hellos. "Our energy is too dense, too saturated with the authority of the High Court. The moment a Judge pierces the veil, the imbalance would scream across the cosmos. Dreese would crush us before we even tasted the oxygen of Earth."
"And if we send the Paradi?" Judge Vesper suggested. "Their souls are lighter."
"No," Malakor countered. "The Paradi are soft. They are pampered. They seek the High Court for comfort. To find the 'One Soul' on Earth, we need agents who have tasted the ash of the bottom rungs. We need souls who can put up with the filth, the noise, and the crushing weight of mortal reality without breaking. We need those who have endured the Hellos."
The judges exchanged glances of doubt. "Dreese will never allow a resident of the Hellos to cross," Judge Caelum noted. "He views them as contaminants. He rarely, if ever, grants passage to the 'Corrupted' or the 'Broken.'"
"We will find a way out for them," Malakor whispered, his eyes gleaming with a cold, manipulative light. "We will find three agents—from Hello realms. We will test their grit, their endurance, and their ability to remain silent. We will scrub their records and present them to Dreese as 'Redeemed Observers' seeking to perform a final act of closure."
They devised a plan of absolute secrecy.
"This must be timed perfectly," Malakor cautioned. "If we move now, Zoe will notice the shift in the guards' focus. We will wait. The Triad Selection of the palace maids begins in a fortnight. While the entire High Court is distracted by the dancers of the Paradi and the Sovereign's attention is fixed on the spectacle, our spies will finalize their selection in the Hellos."
The judges bowed their heads, sealing the pact. Beneath the grandeur of the High Court, a silent machinery was being set in motion. While Sana and the other maids practiced their veils and harps, and while Marianne prepared meals in the suffocating silence of Zoe's gaze, three souls in the darkest depths of the afterlife were being watched. They didn't know it yet, but they were about to be offered the impossible: a chance to return to the world of the living as the afterlife's first bounty hunters of the heart.