There he stood in the Giant's crystalline room. The ceiling, high above him, was rent with cracks that let through brilliant light, casting prismatic shadows across the chamber's expanse, light that seemed to dance to that vibration of ancient music.
The walls were shimmering in shades of blue and green, and the striated "veins" that ran through them pulsed sometimes quietly and sometimes with a vigorous throb, as if the walls themselves were breathing, an illusion made all the more convincing by the total lack of any other sound in the chamber.
He moved toward the ripped cloth that half-covered a broken stone slab, which might have once served as a bed. A weathered tag hung limply from one corner. He got low, elbowing dust away from the slab, and inspected the tag.
The certainty was absolute. The inscriptions were in Demonese.
His eyes scanned the flowing calligraphy of the tag, and his lips tightened. Old script. Formal dialect. Definitely produced in the Demon Realm. That word meant trade—exchange, diplomacy, and trust. He blinked. His mind was racing.
Did people really exchange goods with demons? he whispered, almost reverently.
It must have been a long time ago. Time flowed differently between the realms, and records showed that. A thousand years had passed for the Demon Realm. For the Human Realm, only a hundred had gone by. But here… this place wasn't either.
This planet—it had to be a planet—felt ancient. Not because of erosion or decay, but from the absolute stillness that suffused it. A death that wasn't time's doing, but the result of some tremendous force. The kind of silence that reigns after annihilation.
He was able to sense it in the atmosphere.
Erased.
Sunk.
Total Loss.
Obliterated.
Doomed.
Defeated.
Shattered.
Gone.
Wiped out.
This society was no more.
Buildings in ruins were overgrown with crystal instead of vines. Machinery half-buried in the ground like broken bones. This world didn't decay—it was entombed.
He shut his eyes, allowing the quiet to flow into him. A hush that spoke of a world under the United Realms Federation. Architecture that suggested unity, yet also a tasteful blending of design—human curves, demon glyphs, celestial stuff. In this realm, the Federation had brought some semblance of order to chaos. Or rather, it had tried to and then failed.
The war must have wiped them out. Whatever realm this was, it had been scorched clean. Not a single soul remained.
Back in the oasis, He didn't know how many loops they were in. Time fractured around them like glass. He'd given up trying to measure days by sunrises or meals long ago. But Xin had marks on his leg. A small thing. A smart thing only he could do. Carving a small notch for every day survived.
Sixty-seven.
That figure lodged itself in his mind. He didn't comprehend the reason. He'd tallied them the last occasion he and Xin were united before they were parted. Sixty-seven days.
That was some time ago. The actual number might be higher now.
It was probably.
He trained himself to function only when it was vital. To take in air with calm slowness. To reason, not to lose control. To keep his energy for the moments in which he really needed it. It was his only form of survival.
Sixty-seven days. That was the knife's edge of his limit. The maximum he could endure, body and mind, under pressure without beginning to falter. Beyond that, he would start to lose it. Sink into a bad place.
He reclined against a pillar of crystal, allowing the cold of it to permeate his skin. With his eyes shut, he took in a breath, then let it out, and slowed his body's rhythm down to near stillness.
What day it was, he didn't know.
He didn't know where Xin was located, Probably the summit...
But here there was a person...a person had made their home here. A person... who was like him.
It was necessary to keep the mind from fraying. It wasn't safe to stay too long in one place—not physically, and especially not mentally. One had to be on guard against the danger of too much rest, because if you let yourself sink into it, the silence began to talk back.
He sat up, swinging his legs off the edge of the bed, and took a moment to remember who he was. And where. The bed was behind him, cold and long abandoned, sheets still marked with the faded Demonese tag.
He roamed to the wall's end, where something large, lumpish, and draped in a thick, dusty blanket caught his eye. It was an odd, lopsided covering that was just about big enough to conceal whatever it was that lay beneath. But it didn't do a very good job of that.
Under the frayed edges, lines peeked through—etched curves, colors muted by the veil. Art. Something intentional. Something preserved. He stepped nearer, running his hand along the blanket's rough surface. His fingers caught a tear in the fabric. His pulse quickened.
The softness didn't belong here. The attempt at preservation in some other place that was dead and silent. It didn't belong. They didn't belong. And yet, here they were.
He took hold of the fabric and pulled.
The flat fight back.
For a second, he was enmeshed in it—limbs entrapped, face concealed, groping aimlessly like a phantom in search of visibility. He bubbled curses from somewhere within as he sought to rend the bindings asunder, the cloth cocooning him like some shoddy mummy. He leaned back, fell to the floor with a heavy grunt, rolled once then twice, and then was still.
Yet, inhaling intensely.
He ripped the last edge of the fabric loose and let it fall in a heap next to him.
He then saw it.
A wall mural was stretched, tall, wide, and hauntingly beautiful. The room had a crystalline glow—no, it wasn't glow. The central figure was not painted at all.
It was incorporated.
A real humanoid shape that was regal. Feminine. One would almost see that form as something similar to a human, were it not for the way it gleamed in the low light of the room. And were it not for what was so clearly the essence of something not human about it. Her face was calm, eyes shut. There was a half-smile that suggested serenity, not happiness.
Light flowed from her palms like cascading rivers—streams of raw, purified energy infused into the very fabric of the wall. The light traveled down, elegant and purposeful, moving toward the bottom of the mural where several smaller figures stood below her, looking up. Worshippers? Citizens?
But one figure drew his breath to a shallow level.
Just below the queen was a solitary figure. He was apart from the rest, set off from them somehow. He was on his knees just under the queen, but even so, he seemed to be separated from her, too. The figure was shadowed monochrome, unlike the brightly lit form of the queen. He was in greys. His body was cast in them, with edges that seemed rough, as if the artist had rendered them without a smoothing stroke. His shoulders bowed. He wasn't reaching for her. He wasn't basking in her light. Instead, he seemed to be cowering from it, actually, trying to not be seen, and the slumped-shouldered posture seemed to suggest some kind of shame.
He was still in the light.
He didn't have a choice.
He could not escape the direct assault of the 'Visitors'. They struck his back and poured all over him. They wanted to light him up, to send his sorrow spilling from him, and they succeeded.
The Solitary Heir.
His chest constricted. He fixed his gaze for longer than was appropriate, eyes glued to the odd prince standing beneath the crystal queen. He didn't know why it was happening, but it was like a nerve being struck deep in the chest without any kind of voice. It was like it was hitting a reflection, like it was raking across some kind of unhealed wound.
Same here buddy, same here...
He ran his fingers through his messy hair and turned away. Taking a deep breath, he steadied himself.
Then he saw the next object.
Yet another shape that is covered.
This one was standing up at the far end of the room, away from the mural, half in light and half in shadow. It wasn't as big as the mural, no—but it still managed to be taller than him by a head. Its outline was clearer than the implements of the airbrushed images: not wavy or indistinct but sharp and definite. Shoulders, arms, a head. A statue, maybe. A monument.
Beneath the draped cloth something waited.
He moved closer to it, deliberately. The boots scuffed loudly against the floor, This familiar yet confusing place was quite literally vibrating with energy. He could feel it deep in his bones, matching the pulse of his slow and steady heart. For all that he wasn't a fan of any sort of religious practice, he felt like he was on the verge of some kind of holy desecration.
Well he already desecrated a dead body...a statue wouldn't hurt.
He extended his arm, paused a moment, and then took hold of the cloth.
He took a deep breath, preparing to disclose any recollection that this site might have retained. His hands tightened around the rim.
Then he pulled.
The blanket slipped away with a quiet dusty sound.
And he was still.
It was Him.
The Lonesome Prince.