I. The Road of Revelation
High Envoy Valen had never walked more than a mile in his life. In the Trazarch Union, walking was for the poor. The rich were carried. The powerful floated above the muck in gilded carriages.
Now, stripped of his carriage, his slaves liberated, and wearing silk boots that were already fraying, he walked the Via Obsidia.
He had expected to die. He expected bandits, wolves, or the sheer exhaustion of the elements to claim him before he reached the capital. He was a soft man, grown fat on the corruption of the Ministry.
But the road defied him.
The black pavement was smooth as glass, fused into a single ribbon of stone that cut through the wild landscape. Beneath his feet, he felt a strange, humming vibration—the Fatigue-Reducing Field. He had been walking for six hours, yet his legs did not burn. The road itself was pushing him forward, sustaining him like a battery.
It is sorcery, Valen thought, wiping dust from his forehead with a ruined sleeve. They bewitch the ground to hide their savagery.
He passed a Praesidium at the ten-mile mark. He tried to ignore the Legionnaires standing on the walls, their black armor drinking the sunlight. They didn't jeer at him. They didn't throw stones. They didn't even acknowledge him. To them, he was less than a threat; he was traffic.
He saw the fields.
To his left, a farmer was tilling the soil. The man was old—white-haired—but he swung the hoe with the vigor of a youth. His skin was sun-browned but unblemished by the rot and boils that plagued the Union peasantry.
Valen stopped, leaning against a black mile-marker. He watched the farmer pat the flank of a massive, slate-grey ox that looked strong enough to pull a house.
"You there!" Valen called out, his voice cracking from thirst. "Peasant! Who owns this land?"
The farmer leaned on his hoe. He didn't bow. He looked at Valen with calm, dark eyes. "I do."
Valen blinked. "You lie. The Ministry owns the land. You lease it. You owe the tithe."
"Not here," the farmer said calmly. "I hold the deed. Stamped by the Prytanis. I pay my tax in silver, I follow the Tenets, and the harvest is mine."
Valen stared at the crops behind the man—Dark Harvest wheat that stood taller than a man, shimmering with a vitality that seemed almost metallic in the sunlight.
He realized with a sinking heart that the Imperium wasn't just militarily strong; it was free. And to a man who built his fortune selling chains, freedom was the most terrifying thing on earth.
II. The City of Lights
Two days later, Valen crested the final ridge.
Obsidios Iubeo lay before him.
He had expected a fortress. He had expected a grim, stone camp filled with barbarians.
He saw a metropolis.
The city had spilled over its original walls, the new Second Ring of housing districts glowing under the protective storm-shield of the Obsidian Ordo. The clouds above swirled in a slow, protective vortex, casting a perpetual, comfortable twilight over the valley.
It was evening. In Aurum, this was when the thieves came out and the poor barricaded their doors.
Here, the city woke up.
Valen limped through the main gates. The Custodes on duty—men in black scale armor wielding polished obsidian rods—checked his papers. They didn't ask for a bribe. They simply nodded and let him pass.
He walked down the main avenue. It was paved wide enough for two carriages, lit by the smokeless, violet fire of the Void Crystals atop tall iron posts.
He saw the Schola Minor. Through the open windows, he heard the chanting of children.
"A... B... C... For Corvin. D... E... F... For Freedom."
They are teaching the rats to read, Valen thought, a cold sweat breaking out on his neck. An educated rat is a dangerous rat.
He passed the Common Bathhouse, where steam rose into the cool air. Laborers were entering, laughing, carrying towels. In the Union, water was taxed by the bucket. Cleanliness was a luxury for the aristocracy. Here, it was a right.
Valen felt small. He was a High Envoy of the Ministry, representing fifteen million souls. But standing in this glowing, clean, impossible city, he felt like he represented a graveyard.
III. The Obsidian Throne
He was summoned to the Sanctum immediately. No time to wash. No time to change his ruined silks. The guards escorted him to the base of the massive central pyramid.
The climb up the Observa Tower was grueling, but again, the magic of the place seemed to carry him, the gravity lessening as he ascended.
The doors to the Hall of Judgment opened with a heavy groan of stone against stone.
The room was vast, lit only by the violet pulse of the Void Stone embedded in the ceiling. The air was thick, smelling of ozone and ancient power. At the far end, atop a dais of fused black glass, sat the Obsidian Throne.
And upon it sat Corvin Nyx.
Valen had expected a brute. A warlord pacing the floor, shouting orders, covered in furs and trophies.
Corvin was stillness personified. He wore a simple black tunic that absorbed the light. He sat with one elbow on the armrest, his chin resting on his knuckles, watching the doors open. He did not stand. He did not straighten up. He looked at Valen with the detached interest of a man watching a bug crawl across a table.
Standing in the shadows around the throne were the monsters of the stories: Marshall Garrus Vane, his arms crossed over his chest; High Envoy Warren, toying with a dagger; and the Vulpine Prefect Vora, whose amber eyes tracked Valen's jugular from the darkness.
"High Envoy Valen," Corvin spoke.
He didn't shout. He didn't project his voice. He simply spoke, and the air in the room vibrated. The Density of the Second Circle washed over Valen, a physical weight that made his knees buckle.
"You have walked my road," Corvin said softly. "Did you find any mud?"
Valen swallowed, fighting the urge to cower. He was a diplomat. He had a job. He straightened his spine, though it cost him every ounce of willpower against the crushing aura emanating from the throne.
"Your roads are impressive, Warlord," Valen managed to say, his voice thin and reedy in the vast hall. "But roads do not make a nation. Recognition makes a nation."
He pulled a scroll from his robe with trembling fingers.
"The Ministry of Commerce is willing to overlook your... aggressive expansion. We offer you the title of Grand Duke of the Eastern Expanse. We will recognize your claim to these lands."
"The price?" Warren Fulkom asked from the shadows, his voice dry as dust.
"A standard tithe," Valen recited, trying to look at Corvin but finding he couldn't meet those swirling violet eyes. "Forty percent of your grain harvest. Access to your iron mines for Union guilds. And the immediate disbandment of your 'Legions' down to a militia size of two thousand."
Silence filled the room. It was heavy, suffocating silence.
IV. The Weight of Judgment
Corvin didn't move. He didn't blink. He just let the silence stretch until Valen could hear the blood rushing in his own ears.
Then, Corvin moved his finger—just a fraction of an inch, tapping the armrest.
Thrum.
The Shadow Heart expanded.
Valen gasped. It felt like the gravity in the room had doubled. He fell to his knees, the scroll dropping from his hands. It wasn't a choice; his legs simply refused to hold him up against the pressure radiating from the man on the throne.
"You enter my house," Corvin said, his voice low and terrifyingly calm. "You bring slaves. You bring insults. And now, you ask me to starve my people to feed yours."
"It... it is a generous offer!" Valen wheezed, his face pressed toward the cold floor. "The alternative is embargo! We will starve you out!"
Corvin smiled. It was a cold, slight curling of the lip.
"Starve us? Valen, look at yourself. You are thin. Your slaves were walking skeletons. You are the ones starving. My granaries are bursting."
Corvin leaned his head back against the stone, looking down his nose at the prostrate Envoy.
"There will be no treaty. There will be no tithe. But I am not a cruel man. I offer the Union a path to salvation."
Valen looked up, sweat stinging his eyes. "Salvation?"
"Renounce," Corvin said. "Renounce the chains. Renounce the greed. Submit to the Tenets."
"And if we do?" Valen whispered. "We just... join you?"
"No," Corvin said. "You are tainted. The rot of the Union is deep in your soul, Valen. You cannot walk into the light with mud on your boots."
Corvin gestured lazily to the floor beneath the Sanctum.
"Deep in the roots of this tower, we are building a room. The Chamber of Obsidio Ordo."
"What... what is that?" Valen stammered.
"A pressure vessel," Corvin explained, his tone bored, as if explaining gravity to a child. "We channel the density of the Void into a single point. It presses down on your very existence. It weighs the soul."
Corvin's violet eyes bore into Valen.
"It is the Obsidian Trial. If a corrupt man enters, the pressure crushes his mind. He dies instantly. But... if he truly renounces... if he seeks absolution... the Void accepts him. He survives. Cleansed."
"Absolution or Death," Valen whispered, horror dawning on him.
"The Void does not care which," Corvin replied. "Nor do I."
V. The Message
Corvin waved his hand—a gesture of dismissal. The pressure lifted slightly, just enough for Valen to breathe.
"Go back to your masters, Valen. Tell them I do not want their title. Tell them that if they want my grain, they can buy it at the gate like everyone else."
Corvin closed his eyes, ending the audience.
"And tell them that when their cities are burning and their people are eating rats... I will leave the door open. But to enter, they must pass the Trial."
"Marshall Garrus," Corvin murmured. "Remove him."
Garrus stepped forward, hauling Valen to his feet by the collar of his ruined silk robe. As Valen was dragged backward out of the hall, he looked back one last time at the Obsidian Throne.
Corvin hadn't moved. He sat there, a dark god in a tower of light, indifferent to the ants beneath him.
Valen realized with terrifying clarity that the Nyx Imperium wasn't trying to negotiate. It was waiting for the Union to die