"To rule is to bleed. To reign is to be devoured. Only the broken may sit upon the thrones of monsters." – Epigraph etched into the Black Gates of Vel'Kaarn
The wind howled like a wolf with a broken spine as Leo, Fang, and Coal reached the first of the iron bridges that led to Vel'Kaarn.
The city was not built.
It had been summoned.
Floating above the Storm Chasm, held in place by anchors of sorrow and chains of pact-bound bone, Vel'Kaarn breathed like a living god, its towers twitching, whispering.
At every corner, thrones stood empty—broken marble, twisted silver, rotted wood—all the seats of long-dead kings who had once ruled monsters and failed.
And now, Leo walked toward the Court that had crushed them.
The Court of Broken Kings.
The Bridge of Names
The first test came before they set foot in the city.
The bridge itself was alive.
Each step forward was met with resistance.
A whisper.
A memory.
A voice.
The stones of the bridge were engraved with the names of every Tamer who had died in Vel'Kaarn.
"Tara the Merciful.""Irdrak, Chainlord.""Kiva Blackthorn.""Elias Rook.""Mira."
Leo paused at the last name.
"Mira?"
Coal tilted his head. "Someone you knew?"
Leo didn't answer.
He just placed his hand on the name.
A surge of pain hit his heart.
Mira.
The one who taught him to smile after his parents died.
The first person to believe in his bond with Scorch.
And the one who had disappeared after the Plague of Shifting Teeth took their village.
Now, her name was etched in the stone of Vel'Kaarn.
But Leo remembered no funeral.
No body.
No grave.
Only a goodbye note with a single line:"If I survive, I'll meet you at the Court."
Was she dead?
Or did the city lie?
Thrones of the Forgotten
Once inside, Vel'Kaarn swallowed them whole.
The city had no streets—only veins of obsidian, lit from below by green fire. Buildings bent toward them like stalks, watching. Gates had no hinges, only mouths.
And in the city's center stood a dome made from mirrors and smoke.
The Court.
Twelve thrones lined the circle.
All empty.
All bleeding.
Each throne bore the sigil of a fallen king, queen, tyrant, or god.
Above them floated a throne without legs, suspended by blades—its sigil hidden, but pulsing.
That was the Pale Sovereign's seat.
Fang growled low. "He's watching."
Leo nodded. "I can feel it."
Then one of the thrones spoke.
Voices of the Damned
"Who claims the right to approach?" said a voice from the obsidian throne.
It wasn't a person—it was the throne itself. A memory made into flesh.
Another voice followed from the throne of vines: "Do you come as conqueror, or supplicant?"
A third, from the throne of teeth: "Do you come to die?"
Leo stepped forward. "I come to end what you all failed to finish."
Laughter.
Twelve voices. Twelve failures.
Each throne now shimmered with the ghost of its former ruler.
An undead king still aflame.
A queen made from shadow.
A god in chains.
A beast with no name.
They circled Leo like judges at an execution.
"You are a child," said the burning king.
"You are unworthy," said the chained god.
"You are broken," hissed the queen of shadows.
Leo looked at each.
"I am what's left."
The Pact of the Court
The thrones shimmered.
The ghost of the beast with no name growled. "One test. One chance."
A pillar rose from the center.
Upon it, a beating heart.
But it was not flesh.
It was a memory forged into blood.
"The Trial of Kings," they called it.
Each king and queen had died trying to bind the Beast Beyond Names, the monster that guards the final gate to the Pale Sovereign's sanctum.
To pass, Leo had to do what none of them could.
Not kill it.
Not tame it.
Understand it.
The Beast Beyond Names
The ground split open.
From beneath the Court, something rose.
It did not crawl.
It did not roar.
It entered—as if reality were a curtain it pushed aside.
A creature as wide as the horizon, eyes like galaxies burning in sockets of pain.
It had no form. Only hunger.
The kings and queens vanished.
Leo stood alone.
Fang and Coal had been frozen in time, trapped in amber light.
This was his trial alone.
The Beast pulsed.
"Tamer."
Its voice came from within his bones.
"Speak."
Leo stepped forward.
"I know what you are."
Silence.
Then… a chuckle.
"Then you are the first."
The Mirror of Truth
Leo did not fight the Beast.
He spoke to it.
He asked it its name.
It had none.
He gave it one: "Remnant."
It flinched.
He asked it its origin.
It answered: "Grief."
He asked it what it wanted.
It answered: "To stop."
The Beast, it turned out, was not a monster.
It was the last emotion of the first Tamer who ever failed.
A god-like being who had loved too much, and lost too many.
The Beast was born of sorrow so deep it burned the sky.
And Leo?
He gave it something no other had.
A name.
A place.
A moment of peace.
Ascension
The Court shook.
The Beast vanished.
The heart on the pillar turned to stone.
The thrones erupted in flame.
One by one, they shattered.
Only the throne of the Pale Sovereign remained.
It descended.
But no one sat on it.
Instead, the Sovereign stepped forth.
Tall.
Skin white as bone.
Eyes like icicles frozen mid-scream.
Hair like falling snow.
And a crown made of black fire.
He looked at Leo.
"You pass."
Leo met his gaze. "Then let me through."
The Sovereign smiled.
"No."
Leo blinked. "What?"
"You passed the Trial of the Court. Not mine."
"Now comes my trial."
4o