It has rhythms.
It has mornings without a sun and evenings without a moon. It has wind that moves because it wants to, not because the place is anxious. It has distance that behaves. The staircases mostly gowhere they claim. The marble doesn’t bleed shadows unless I ask it to. The dead don’t scream unless someone deserves it.
And by gods—pun intended—it’s intoxicating.
Not the power. Not the way the world shifts when I think too hard about a wall. Not the way my voice carries with the weight of law if I let it.
What’s intoxicating is the fact that, for the first time in my life, nothing is syphoning me dry. Nothing is trying to kill me. Or abandon me. Or control me.
No invisible leash.
Just me. Whole. Anchored. Me.
I roll my shoulders and feel the Crown braided through my soul like a second spine. It isn’t a snake anymore. Not in the way it used to be. It doesn’t hiss at me from the corner of my mind like a smug artefact with opinions.
It lives where it belongs.
Quiet.
Content.
Waiting.
“Your posture is terrible,” Tabitha says from the edge of the dais.
I don’t turn my head. I don’t have to. The realm tells me exactly where she is, like the air itself is reporting to me. “You’re early.”
“I’m punctual,” she replies, as if punctuality is a virtue worth worshipping. She steps into view and stops at the base of the dais, hands clasped behind her back. No kneeling. No bowing. Just a woman in neat black clothes with a face like a locked filing cabinet.
My oracle.
She stands in my realm and reads the threads of the universe like they’re spreadsheets.
And the worst part is—she’s useful.
I lift a brow. “Report.”
Tabitha’s eyes flick upward, as if she can see the lines between worlds. “The Pantheon’s fracture index has stabilised. The scars from the Devourer’s pressure are holding. Your laws are… accepted.”
“Accepted,” I repeat flatly. “By whom?”
“The realm,” she says, as if that’s obvious. “And the lesser gods who still have the sense not to test you.”
A flicker of satisfaction tightens my chest. It’s not vanity. It’s relief. Because if the realm doesn’t accept me, it doesn’t hold. And if it doesn’t hold, everything collapses into hungry nothing.
I tap two fingers against the armrest of the Throne. The obsidian answers with a soft thrum.
“Earth,” I say.
Tabitha’s mouth tightens. “You check on her every day.”
“And?”
Her gaze sharpens, but she doesn’t argue. She reaches into the air and draws a small sigil—order lines, clean and precise. It blooms and then opens into a narrow pane of sight.
Not a portal. Not a door.
A window.
