The stranger stepped closer, and the air around him held still, lips pursed with no answer.
Instead, he pushed his finger harder on the sigil, and a host of images flooded the shepherd’s mind.
A crown of ash, tapestries torn, seraphic storms that roared with thunder.
A parade of celestial monarchs descending on staircases of solidified light, their robes woven from the silk of dying stars.
He perceived citadels of bone floating in a sea of mercury where ivory towers pierced the bellies of clouds and thrones carved from the bleached carcasses of primordial titans.
Then the radiance fractured.
He witnessed the sky split like parchment, bleeding gold as warrior-deities clashed with blades of concentrated celestial flare.
Great wings of shadow eclipsed entire solar systems, and chariots of living fire collided in the vacuum, shedding sparks that birthed new nebulae.
The vibration of a myriad silver trumpets announced the fall of a throne, the resonance crushing mountains into granules and turning oceans into steam.
He navigated the transition from divinity to dust.
His eyes parsed a king stripped of his mantle, cast down into the dirt of a thousand mortal worlds, carrying nothing but the gravity of an eternal, lonely crown.
The shepherd tried to wrench himself free, to shove back against the vision.
With the same stubborn potency that let him kill beasts and break men.
However, the older man’smagistrength was an unbreakable lever, his will a momentous anchor.
When the stranger eventually pulled back, Idan was left gasping in harsh, ragged rushes of air.
The stranger smirked as the veil over his soul was stripped away.
Idan’s mouth twisted as recognition hit.
You!he rasped into the older man’s mind.I thought that you vanished into the scorched dimensions of The Cinder-Reliquary,for eternity.
Never,the elder growled, his voice a landslide of gravel and ancient spite.Not with my throne in the hands of traitors.
I’ve no interest in your royal seat, so leave me be.
Not now, when I have a specific use for you.
Idan’s jaw tightened.Why would you need anything from me?
I need your potency to reclaim my crown.
The dark, long-haired man recoiled, a visceral surge of disbelief and horror slamming into his gut, for that was the last thing any living soulfokkin’ needed.
If I refuse?
The older man’s smile never reached his eyes.I will decimate this world and the people you now protect, Simi’Ren Idan Caliostheles.
For a heartbeat, the name roiled in the wild-haired shepherd’s soul.
He had long shed it along with the titles, the honors, and the false esteem of his former life.
I go by Idan these days,he growled.
The older man cocked his head.Sawa,Idan.
