Dust fell from the high ceiling. The throne room now swallowed by darkness once shined, brighter then any jewel found in the lands of old and new. A wise voice laid silent in the dark. Sitting in his elevated seat of power. Feeble and old as the walls that surround him, but still, his words echoed throughout the empty halls.

Every movement calculated, an effort to save strength. Wrinkles and presence, the air of something more then human, that is what hinted at the amount his eyes had seen. Within the throne room four candles sat on the edge of each corner of the low stage as the pop of bones rung echoes across the air.

"When you think of the world, what comes to mind? Greed, pain, madness, hypocrisy?" Faded grey eyes ventured to the ceiling as the speaker leaned back in his favorite chair. "One could only wonder how many would answer genuinely. Me?" His scratchy laughter bloomed before slipping into a cough, bringing thunder upon his halls, shaking the ground and air.

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"Who knows what answer I'd come up with," the old one rambled as he repositioned himself for comfort. "But one thing has become very clear to me. Their, that, and this world’s rather ... consistent affair for irony will never fail to entertain me. How you ask?" His wrinkled fingers leaped to his chin. Tapping his withered skin and jaw slowly as he eyed the crawling darkness. "If something was born long ago, and it’s only act through such time was to observe these worlds; from broken to fixed, from dark to bright, good to evil, and all in between ..." The man's eyes fell consumed with intrigue. "Would you consider it alive?" After a pause of breath, the old one laughed again. "A taunting riddle, that one. But similar to it’s kind, the answer speaks much louder then the words." He smiled, shaking his head as a hand covered his eyes. "And to think in my younger days, I cared not for such riddles."