"When gods grow bored, the world trembles. When monsters play, mortals die." – Inscription found carved into the skulls beneath Vel'Kaarn.
The Pale Sovereign raised one hand, and the Court of Broken Kings collapsed into ash and silence.
Twelve thrones, once invincible, cracked and crumbled, swallowed by the chasm below. The mirror dome above them shattered into a thousand razor-edged truths that never reached the floor—they simply ceased to be.
Vel'Kaarn was no longer a city.
It had become a stage.
And Leo, whether he liked it or not, had just become the lead in a performance where every misstep would be fatal.
Act I: The Invitation
"Come," the Sovereign said, his voice a smooth cut through reality, like a sword being unsheathed from the world itself.
Leo did not move.
The Sovereign tilted his head. "You are afraid."
"No," Leo said. "I'm tired of gods playing games."
"Ah," the Sovereign whispered, stepping forward. "Then we have that in common."
He waved his hand, and the surroundings shifted.
Vel'Kaarn peeled itself apart like pages from a book, and Leo stood suddenly in a grand theater—every seat occupied by faceless nobles stitched from memory and regret.
On the stage were three figures:
A boy with white eyes and a collar of iron.
A girl with silver hair, cradling a dead wolf.
A man—tall, broad, with a crown of glass and eyes that bled ink.
Leo watched in shock.
They were all him.
Act II: The Mirror Play
The boy cried.
The girl screamed.
The man bled.
Each represented what he had been, what he could become, and what he was now.
"Choose," said the Sovereign from a private balcony above the theater.
"Which version of you dies?"
Leo didn't speak.
He felt Fang and Coal pressing against the edge of the spell, still frozen, watching helplessly from beyond time.
The audience leaned forward, their mouths opening like wounds.
Leo stepped onto the stage.
He looked the boy in the eye. The boy whimpered.
He looked at the girl. She wept silently.
Then at the man—so close to what Leo feared he might become: a monster with too much power and no one left to care.
Leo turned back to the Sovereign. "I refuse your choice."
The Sovereign smiled wider. "Then all three shall die."
Act III: The Breaking of the Mask
Flames erupted on stage.
The boy's collar turned red-hot. The girl clutched her dead wolf as it caught fire. The man roared as his crown shattered.
But Leo moved.
Faster than thought, he leapt into the fire, wrapping his arms around the three.
The fire didn't burn him.
It recognized him.
This was his pain, his future, his past. He had already lived this trial.
And he had survived.
The flames died. The theater exploded into a whirlwind of masks, screams, and laughter.
And the Sovereign stood in the center of it all, now without his crown.
He was... smaller.
Thinner.
Older.
Leo looked at him not as a god, but as something far worse:
A man who had once been human... and abandoned everything to escape being mortal.
Act IV: The Game Unmasked
"Do you know who I was?" the Sovereign asked, voice cracking like frost underfoot.
Leo nodded slowly.
"You were a Tamer."
The Sovereign's eyes glinted. "The first."
Silence.
"I tamed death," he said. "I broke the world in half. And in the end… I became the last king of a kingdom with no subjects."
He stepped closer.
"You have bonded with pain, sorrow, rage, beasts, and fire. But you have not yet bound yourself."
Leo frowned. "What do you mean?"
"You tamed the Beast Beyond Names," the Sovereign whispered. "But you have never faced your own heart."
Act V: The Heart Within
The ground cracked.
From the earth below rose a mirror.
Not a magical one. No shimmering glow. No illusions.
Just a simple, dirty mirror.
Leo looked in.
And saw not himself…
…but Scorch.
His first monster.
His lost companion.
The wolf-dragon cub who had vanished the day Mira died.
Tears rose unbidden.
He reached toward the mirror—and the image moved.
Scorch stood inside, snarling.
Trapped.
Alive.
"He never died," Leo whispered. "You took him."
The Sovereign nodded. "Yes. He was the price for your first bond. The cost of your strength."
"Then give him back."
"Tame yourself, and he returns."
"Refuse... and the mirror shatters forever."
Finale: The Binding of Self
Leo reached into the mirror.
Scorch growled, but did not attack.
Instead, Leo saw himself—lost, terrified, angry.
All the parts of him he'd buried under strength, blood, and resolve.
He did not tame them.
He embraced them.
The mirror trembled.
Scorch stepped through.
The two embraced.
Leo wept.
And the Pale Sovereign?
He staggered back.
His power faded.
His skin cracked.
"No," he whispered. "You were supposed to fall apart…"
Leo stood, eyes burning with golden light.
"No. I'm not your echo."
"I'm not your heir."
"I'm me."