Prologue

The last thing I saw before the world abandoned me was a door.

Ancient stone, carved with prayers whose makers had already decided I was beyond salvation. Crimson light crawled through the inscriptions as the seal drank the last of my strength. My sight faded, returned, then faded again, each moment shattering like reflections upon disturbed water.

A figure stood beyond the threshold.

Not one I recognised anymore.

Their outline swayed in and out of focus—cloth darkened by ash, then merely a silhouette framed by the corridor’s dying light.

They looked back longer than a traitor should have.

Their mouth moved.

Perhaps it was an apology.

Perhaps a prayer.

The chains tightened.

“What… did you say?”

My voice scarcely crossed the chamber.

The figure lowered their head.

Then stepped away.

The door began to close.

I tried to rise.

The prison answered.

Sealstone had already swallowed most of my body.

The enormous black-grey monolith rose from the chamber floor like a tomb built around the living, its surface veined with glowing runes. The magic-suppressing stone encased my legs, waist and torso, crushing every attempt to summon power before the thought could become a spell. Only my head, shoulders and arms remained exposed, and even those had been spread against the stone by luminous chains driven through the monolith.

My wings dragged behind me.

Once radiant.

Now blackened shadows whose feathers dissolved into smoke whenever they brushed the restraints.

Above my head floated the fractured remnants of my halo.

Crooked.

Silent.

Broken.

The narrowing doorway gave me one final glimpse of the figure.

Their lips moved again.

Then darkness swallowed them.

Darkness swallowed everything.

For a while, I screamed.

Threatened.

Demanded answers.

Begged someone—anyone—to open that door.

Eventually, I stopped wasting my breath.

Time does not pass properly beneath the earth.

There is no sunrise to count. No moon to watch grow thin. Sometimes I awakened convinced only hours had passed. Other times, the silence felt old enough that mountains might have risen and crumbled while I slept.

“How long has it been?”

The darkness had always been an attentive listener.

It never answered.

I rested my head against the sealstone. A loose strand of pale hair fell over my crimson eyes.

Perhaps centuries had passed.

Perhaps thousands.

Perhaps everyone I had ever known was dust.

I closed my eyes.

And memory—crueller than any chain—opened its doors.

Seven days before, the world would begin to die.

I did not yet know that ages afterward, children would cheer beneath statues of a traitor. A False Saviour of the Heavens that defeated a demon. While my name survived only in warnings whispered about monsters and my throne sitting on top as their ruler.

Far beneath their celebrations, my broken halo would hang motionless in the dark.

And I would sleep.

Before Zyrion Caelaris became the monster beneath the world, he was the man who had saved it more times than history could count.