The throne did not feel like a seat, nor did it feel like a crown —
it felt like an altar upon which every version of Lucius, from every fragment of reality and lifetime, was laid bare and burning.
The cosmos did not applaud.
It knelt.
The moment he sat upon the jagged ivory structure — formed of splintered timelines and ossified paradoxes — the sky above the Memory Spire fractured like stained glass under a god's scream.
Shards of starlight scattered across the horizon.
Space quivered. Time choked. The Realms slowed their breath in unison.
A whisper rippled through the air, not of joy, not of welcome — but of wary acknowledgment.
Lucius had not just inherited the crown.
He had conquered destiny to earn it.
And Walter, old and proud and silent beside him, lowered his head — for the first time in millennia — not as a servant, but as a warrior saluting the one soul who had managed what none before him could.
