𝐀 𝐂𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐓𝐎𝐔𝐒 𝐆𝐎𝐑𝐄

.ೃ࿐ ᴴⁱˢ ᶜʳᵒʷⁿ ʷᵃˢ ᵗʰᵉ ˢᵗᵉⁿᶜʰ ᵒᶠ ᶜᵒʳᵖˢᵉˢ.

He was a child of a million deaths, a childish boy who was the epitome of space's immortality. The child was chaos, a dream wonderland of what their ancestors spoiled prosperity for. If the child's scars were laid in poison that slowly totalled his gifts, there would be no doubt that he would not have been as chosen as his multiple skins before him. —A Palace Of Ulric Labyrinths, Elvira Crest.

࿐IRENE ࿐

|Orcus—??|

THE GREAT PLANET of Orcus had swelled steadily still referred to its later weeks of war and bloodshed or its previous years of honourable composure illustrated through their wild plants of green, yellow, pink and blue that stretched among their structures as children hopped about the hospitable streets without a care.

Short spurs of singed smoke launched into the sky with wings of assault, their undersized seeds shaking with incendiary flames of carnage. Searing orange crawled between the atmosphere as rumbles that outmatched the world's innate reprisal of thunder boomed. The encompassing cities had failed to take notice of a call that should have had them gone days before—their civilian blood now slithering in with the fatal leakage of their soldiers. The sight of Orcus, the 13th planet of the Calignes system, was more than merely gruesome. Families' retention of a beloved past tarred black with the now gaunt flames, toys of probity branded jet, all because of a single person's hegemony as the last of the realm's humanity grinded into nothing. Before what many called the ill will incongruity, the air would pacify, clutching in its breath of life as it became deceased like the many million hearts surrounding it. The land would standstill on a spike, not for the supremes' overtures, but the Devil's one of frugal sacrifice.

The Devil's shameful redemption manufactured by his own uncut hands.

A finger twitched from beyond the brine of bodies, the ritual of blood around it enough to dent an ocean into being. The breaking finger twitched again, jerking away from the body that held securely atop the rest of its arm, revealing torn vermillion flesh and the body of a young woman. The bodies around her fell apart, diving away from her as if the planet had split in two and she was the reincarnation of whatever adversity had escaped the hellish forces below them.

"Remarkable, isn't it?” The Devil's voice wasn't as pretty as many claimed, just a cackle of lava sizzling over a raw slope of snow. It made people flinch out of the fear of getting burned.

The King of Gore stood at the rim of the piled bodies that partly barred her, his distilled robes a dotted flush of daylight in the scorched setting around them. His mask gleamed so bright, so horrid.

"Do you finally see it?" He took in the painting of his slaughter, dissecting every detail with a peckish gaze of chaos. "Do you finally see the image for my reasoning? The new recourse that has risen on this world because of me?"

Hate stirred her stomach at the sight of him. The lack of blood from the lives he had taken, the erroneous magnetism of disfigurement and soil declared for him.

"Recourse?" Her bitter laugh carried no humour as the King's eyes of ember found hers. "It seems your insanity still transcends the goodness of your reasoning, Your Highness."

Insane just like his older brother of madness.

"I've done you a great favour, Irene," The King sneered, watching her eyes streak from behind the strands of ginger that melted to her face. "A cunning little curse like you would have been shackled to the crimson towers if it were not for a king like me."

A curse. Irene was not a curse. Irene was a Rorau, meaning her power was far from the ruthless graces of curses—something that the people of her world neglected to legislate. Something her own kind now rejected to acknowledge. The curled ears that had bereaved her self esteem were much simpler to conceal compared to her pointed ones of rofen lineage that spoke from in between the reds of her hair.

She had been chosen, by a member of the thirteen graced. She had been blessed, gifted with a power unlike any other. Her necromancy, a cord to the dead.

A god touched, the children had murmured in awe, tiny fingers foraging the tips of her ears, She has been touched by a god.

A curse, their people had called, hunting the lone woman down to murder. She's a curse.

Who would've known the living were more cursed than the dead which clung to her?

The man with rack and ruin for carbon dioxide had fulfilled her faith. He had saved her and turned every lifting lung that had ever wanted her harm to ash. And at the very same time, he had managed to fade every faultless pulse into nothingness.

A nothingness that lesioned to ash—ash that pathetically welded to the bottom of their shoes as fingers of blame. They berated Irene Solstice for the exploited bodies being digested by the steams. Chastised the King of Gore for the sick ardour that roused within his chest at the horrid sight of their wastes.

Her grandmother had warned her that a skinned devil came in the form of a man and that the stomach-churning delights of his damaged psyche would forever be tattooed into his plagiarized skin.

A cunning little curse, The Gore King's tease withered as it rose into the air, with the pointed ears of a repudiated daughter.

Irene stood, slightly wobbling on her feet as she stepped between the bodies and away from the monstrous man. "Are you going to kill me now?" she asked blandly, hoping her stale question to be the last impression on her mind before his sword swallowed her blood as well.

"Kill you? I think there's been enough killing for tonight." The King's smile widened as he turned his woeful stare back to the massacre around them. "Besides, why would I want to kill you if I could just hurt you?" Irene didn't speak as he went on, the world around her bending and blurring. "I could burn you, damage you, impair you, ruin you until you're praying for nothing but death." Awful laughter fell from the glare of his lips. "But that would be a waste, taking considering how much you owe me." The king's smile grew. "Ah...I practically own you."

Faraway explosions reverberated in the distance, the brief shocks of blasts elucidating the contour of The Gore King's now unmasked face. No. Stood in front of Irene, smile as vicious as the legends of his debasement, stood none other than The King of Insanity. How had she not known this? Was she losing her mind? His smile sanded into something brutal, eyes knifed with his nasty fables of devilry.

A barbaric reminder: A torturer does not need to get stained to stain you.

Irene's pulse hurled with the coils of the raging orange ebullition around them.He had used his mask to conceal his identity, her disorientation teaming with him in his trickery. It was he who had used his grace to burn everything around them into the ground. He had killed everyone…not Kek.

Powerful grace. Reilat Chrisland’s grace of fire. A grace that was undeserving of him.

Why?…Why had you chosen him, Reilat? Why did you allow for this destruction?

I’m sorry, dragged a voice from below the dirt, gaining before depleting as it sizzled back into the realm of the dead. I never meant for this.

His grace…once his teacher’s grace…

I’m sorry.

Irene remembered the whispers of ancient grace wandering the divine planets like dust, wedging its way into the gorges of ears, the cavities of eyes and the vessel of noses before acuity hacked it off to multiple other oblivious louts. The gossips travelled as a humming breeze that spoke of blood magic pulsing naive blood a midnight shade of ebony, rituals bending the peeled skins of rabbits to diamonds, strange tongued enchantments scorching the Antichrist's beloveds to rotten powder, conjuration allowing a sole soul to confound cosmic armies without the labour of sweat, illusions letting the nefarious prom about with the face of another, veins destroying the layout of eternity and space itself, and predictions foretelling prodigious events that not even the firmaments' omnipotent visions could reach.

Powerful, true and archaic grace. A power now close to extinct, shared into 13.

"Did you know, Irene," Insanity began, hands clasped behind his back. "That there was once a story told on the heart of time? And that in this story, the wielder of time was a fool who possessed power greater than existence itself?" He faced her, eyes reflecting the commotion in the spectrum.

"They called his device 'The Dyson of Time'."

Insanity gave her a half-smile. "One lovely day, a rogue merchant had heard the rumours of the instrument—the power of it. It had piqued his interests so he scoured the system in search of the Dyson. It was said he had crossed the realm of patrons on his voyage, the planet of wolves and the planet of daggers before he found himself on the frosted and isolated territory of Orcus." His lips quirked with amusing irony. "His twenty years of yearning had led him to the front door of a run-down shack rented by one of the old labourers on the planet. It was an elderly man whose family had left him as a result of the mess his degenerating age had left him."

His slender hand soldered with the havoc as it slipped into one of the pockets of his robes. "It turned out the old man was using one of the most powerful tools in the solar system as his cup holder." His hand dragged out of his pocket, palm exigent and aglow from the cylinder object with the hallowed centre of a bracelet sitting in his palm. "The merchant made his way through the house, ash grating the soles of his shoes as he stopped before the very device he had drained two fateful decades hunting." Irene's open wounds palpitated a response as the crazed King swirled the object of indescribable strength in his grip. "And just as the merchant's finger grazed its aged material of power, he crumbled to ash. His beating heart had refused to tick one last time as he blended in with the ashes of the many unworthy people before him." The Dyson of Time hummed with The King's unsparing grin as if it were submitting his story's wicked alibi. "They held no capability. They held no power."

“As pitiable as it may sound, my mind can't help but wonder.” His despotic stare merged ungodly and angelic. "How one must feel being deemed worthless by their own universe while also not having the power to live or learn as to why they were simply not enough. "

Insanity stalked Irene with every uncertain and grasping stumble she took backwards. "Are you starting to figure it out?" His cold chuckle splintered into her ears. "The Dyson of Time can only be held by worthy hands, activated by worthy blood that is not of my...nature. Although I am worthy of holding it, Solstice, I cannot activate it without a limited piece of grace that can only be found in the purified blood of an Alerian." Her heart raced as he moved closer and closer, his conscious exhales feeding into her shaken inhales. "The blood of the old King’s selected." His smile was a crude wicked. "Your blood."

Irene trembled further back, her breaths slumped as Insanity leaned in, lips brushing the side of her face as his horrible smile ripped into her cheek. "Do you want to know how I realised what you truly are, Irene?" He pulled away, the space between them still taut as he gazed into her fearing eyes of brown.

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"Kek." His younger brother's name carried no tender as the three characters of Gore's real name released itself into the dead sky. "He had suspected something strange…unusual about the woman who he had claimed to have captured his heart." He scowled the last of his sentence in a plethora of aversion. "That her blood gushed a molten gold whenever she was exposed to his erratic grace."

Insanity seized her forearm, his fingers trailing the blue veins that marked her flesh. He traced the fading lines of greenish-blue, slightly adding pressure with every change of direction. "Did he tell you he loved you, Irene?" he asked into the hot gust, not taking his eyes off the skin he stoically tracked. "Did he not tell you that he cannot love?" Irene let out a flinch as his nails broke into her skin, granting loose a flood of upscale aureate.

Old king? Malcolm…was he? No…

"Gold," The King murmured with fascination, staring as tailored amber streamed from Irene's wound. His smile softened the blades of his dimples as he let her bleeding arm drop. "The old man was always so extravagant. Sevgi pride, how fitting."

The skies cajoled the sparks as the atoms around them bent to the sudden expel of his grace. It was nauseating. Irene was quickly on her knees, shrinking away as the dispatching pain of Insanity’s leaden grace bruising into her neck and shoulders. He was going to torment her and she could not stop him. He was going to kill her.

"Indeed," answered a voice that had obsessed her visions. Another King stood a few feet to the left of them, his eyes a murky stain of mystery as he scrutinized a forcefully kneeling Irene, then the complacent and devious King before her. "It's a shame that I missed most of your boring speech, brother." There was no way of her getting out of this. "Kek would've been disappointed to not hear it."

"Come to snag some of my glory, Lyr?" Insanity asked tauntingly, taking a step away from a coughing Irene. "How very like you, cretin."

"I'm not here for any of your glory,"Lyr spat with distaste, trekking closer to the scene. "I'm here because I've been put under an oath that I cannot allow you to bring to harm." His assessing concern drove across Irene for any injuries.

The corner of the Insanity King's lips rose in incredulity. "An oath?" He followed Lyr's gaze, his short confusion overridden with engrossed disbelief. "To protect the Emperor's waste?"

"Soak it in as long as you need," Lyr let out, yanking a weak Irene up beside him as he grumbled, "Just don't expect me to be here for it."

There was a reason the Ulric brothers were unprecedented compared to the lower monarchs of their system. Their black blood was said to have been assembled with Tayte, a rare mixture of grace that left many people in a daze just from its smell. The sweet scent of bewitched blood rippled in the draught as an explosion of crimson flames flung Lyr to Irene as he hauled the two of them out of the way of his brother's fury.

"We could be Gods!" Insanity exclaimed, flames biting at the tips of his robes as he took in the shy desire and avarice that hustled within his younger brother. "People would tear each other apart just to be blessed enough to see such powerful beings!" His eyes held no light as they landed steadily on Irene. "Would you really throw that future away to defend Kek's half-breed whore?"

Lyr took in the familiar scent of ruined bodies around him as he stood up again, standing as straight as the biting flame wounds would allow him. "I already told you, Corentin, I'm contracted to an oath of nobilia." Equatorial lime flared as conviction infected the casts of Lyr's eyes. "I could ruin this whole system if I wanted to and Alerian’s oath would still not allow a hair on her head to come to harm by another."

Alerian’s Oath...Zero…had he really foreseen all of this?

Lyr could feel it—a rapid lightning of atoms aiming to strike him down as the particles around him split, ferociously rattling around him with a touchy call. Instinct swayed him away from the hot blast inches from his skin just as cold metal ordered for his touch. He shoved Irene away from him as he pulled out an obsidian sword, its harshness embracing his grip of coldness.

A shuddered bomb of disdain charged the void of war as his sword clashed with his brother's eruption of a billion degrees.

"That was very bitter of you," Lyr spoke against the cracks of flames, flicking his weapon away from Insanity’s wrath. His expression hallowed out against his brother's bloody outbursts of appetite.

The Ulric brothers both held their ground, the two of them dragging cautiously as they circled and eyed one another like harpies. Lyr's lips parted for another snarky comment but The King of Insanity whirled for his hit, already heeding the sarcastic remark that was about to break his brother's lips.

Lyr obstructed the attack, the tip of his sword rattling in animosity as he twirled back for a blow. Irene squealed as an invisible force of blaze slithered past her feet, her body dipping down to the corpses on the ground as the boiling point of Lyr's sword skimmed the top of her head, lashing rabidly for the King before it.

"Stop this ridiculous game, Lyr," Insanity growled, flicking a heated wrist toward Lyr who had no trouble expunging the destruction of crimson. "I know no loyalty oath works on a liar like you."

"Oh, but I did make an oath, Corentin." A crazed grin shredded Lyr's previously casual demeanour. He smiled disturbingly, eyes strained with militant mischief as he pulled himself out of the fray. "Just not to that worthless man people call their liberator."

Irene hardly had time to react to the Orcus's cries for her as the King swung his weapon in her direction, his atomic and obsidian sword plunging into the centre of her torso with a sickening crunch. Irene staggered back, completely caught off guard by the sudden change of events. On the other end of her view, she could see Corentin freeze, gazing in a kaput turmoil as he watched her body laxly crumble to the ground, now degraded gold pooling her mouth with a ruby shade as Irene turned up to her assailant with betrayal.

A gurgled whisper exited the dying girl. "What?"

“What?” The King of Deception ignored the weak yells of Irene's perishing, his face shifting and changing into another."Were you not anticipating such a heart-wrenching plot twist?" he spoke with disgusting condescend, deliberately twisting the sword embedded within her chest without a care for her pain.

Body shifter...face stealer.

A sudden coldness shook violently inside the man as he stared into the fading eyes of his victim, the face of his absent brother cutting into her, a storm of emotions twirling roughly in the dimming of Irene’s eyes. How cruel…being forced to look into the eyes of her only love as she died. How cruel, Lyr. "She said I was destined to be a God of all Gods." He tilted his head to the side as he eyed the girl who strangled the world with her tragic expression, savouring the stolen face of her missing husband. "While you're both forever fated to be feculent bastards," he finished, pausing his stare on his older brother for a second more.

There was an unrequited trade of deliberation, a naked revelation, an unpredicted glut of impairment. Not for his younger brother, no. Only for another in absentia.

Her world spiralled out of focus as a clanging boom of wind wrapped her body away from the monstrosity of deception just as death's cadaverous numbness overtook her. One second her chest was heavy with unseen misfortunes, the next it was too light for even her soul to keep latched.

Although her sight was receding with every tide of her nausea, the figure which now towered over her was unmistakable. Zero Alerian. His bending words of reassurance prodded her stars of space like velvety cotton, melting consolation into Irene's membranes.

Hold on, Irene, his lips mouthed softly as his honey-glazed eyes unwound on her. It will be alright. Irene only ever required the mage's presence to know all would be alright.

This is not so bad, A murmur ran, Your mage could have arrived at a worse time. The drone of a smile lit up her decaying consciousness. A lot, lot worse time.

"How could you?"

Irene wanted to challenge the whispers of lost souls but the punished calls hushed her with swirling rainbows of witchery.

Her brain baulked as the unseen loop twined tighter and tighter into her realm of fiction.

"How could you?" Her lips managed. Fury trembled greatly within her stomach. A wrath that was so scathing that Irene could only gasp in horror as she struggled, scalding liquid burning her cheeks. Tears. She was crying. "How dare you?"

This was not her body. These were not her words of rage. This was not her hate. This was not her.

This was a vision.

Her teary vision blotted and bleared with the outline of the shaky body squirming below her. Arms high and guarding its battered face. I could just kill you. Darkness waned the range of her sight as the body began to writher. Unworthy backstabber. I should just kill you. Sobs gurgled out from underneath her. I should just kill all of you and be done with it.Screams that soaked sickening requiem into Irene's departing soul. I'm going to kill you. What was she doing! All of you!

"Stop! You have to stop!" A woman turned towards Irene, a daunting head taller than the red-headed Rorau as she surveyed her with vacant eyes, her face scarred with marking of what Irene could only describe as sin.

A curse.

She'd seen the markings bared by the cursed before, dusting in the ancient scrolls Kek kept in his study room of the forbidden. Symbols of half moons and triangles that would try to trick your brain into observing for words that were not all there.

Darkness, she could hear her husband's words of the past say, how could such a wicked thing like darkness embrace such a bewitching state.

Irene scanned the woman in a daze before realising she was no longer contained in the body of her vision—that all the grievance and hurt that was smothering her earlier was now only strangling the woman before her.

She said, spun the vile voices, I was destined to be a ɢᴏᴅ ᴏꜰ ᴀʟʟ ɢᴏᴅꜱ.

And then it clicked.

Alerian’s oath...

"Irene Solstice," Harpy Alerian’s voice was harsh as she spoke Irene’s name. Irene felt her stomach twist as the atmosphere clattered like the unstable sparks of a torn wire; sacrilegious atoms everywhere swallowing her intestines like a bloated balloon that was due to pop."And here I thought I was supposed to be unworthy of your presence."

Irene recognized the insatiable wrath in her eyes as she lunged forth. It was a flashing expression that she'd seen on many of her foes before.

Scorn.

Contempt.

But she had never suffered such a cannibalistic threat swell in the deepest cavities of her mind.

Her inevitable death.

She made an effort to dodge the jab that came at her from the right, and then her left. Her skin felt hot with every inching attack she did her best to dodge, concentration shrinking her attention from the rattle of particles around her until too late.

Grace...

The glare blinded Irene as she was thrown to the ground, atmosphere escaping the apertures of her lungs as she gulped for refusing air.

Irene Solstice, Irene flinched at the intruding murmurs emulating the voice of the cursed woman before her, I will annihilate everything you love.

"We're here," A rich and brassy voice purred into the air, carrying her out of heir vision of pain. Revolving to her left, a woman towered over her, lengthy raven hair flowing gracefully to the tips of her pale ears. Deep blue tore into Irene as she admired her—the Rorau's mind gnawing at her at the shaky familiarity the woman cast. Just glancing at her drew Irene into a vague trance, the women's voice hailing her in the same way Irene's childhood lullabies caught her in everlasting culmination. Irene's heart bruised her ribs with an emotion she hadn't felt yet in any of the dreams. Solace. This person brought her warmth.

It took her a while to process the slender hand held out for Irene, snowy fingers laced in an array of golds with symbols that bulged out to her. The emblems of several kingdoms sat lushly on the mysterious woman's knuckles, twinkling jeeringly with the slowly burning candles weaving on the crystal chandelier above the pair.

“Are you ready?” The lady asked, pigments knotting through the darkness to reflect a set of bluish-silver eyes glistening fondly as the woman peered down at her.

Those eyes. Irene recognised those eyes. Where?

Her body nodded without a second, the blazing sensation of moths surged her insides as she twirled back to a pair of greatly jewelled doors. Something life altering was behind those doors and she didn't know if she had the mettle to discover what.

Choppy footsteps spurted behind them, uncovering a set of armoured soldiers hurrying to both sides of the doors, heads not rising a hair as they bowed in their direction.

A bauxite, stiff chuckle fled the long-haired girl beside her, her cold and gentle touch dragging Irene's palm to the hook of her elbow.

“It's time,” she whispered to Irene, satisfaction wrestling her voice like molten metal as her eyes drove back to the golden encased doors.

The doors opened up, exposing the hundreds of uptight looking people that waited on the other side, all dressed up in the same formality as her and the gentian-eyed woman. Irene recognised a few of the family emblems there, nobles and leaders of several kingdoms, head-strong leaders and governors now with their eyes turned down—out of respect? Fear?—Irene didn't know.

The duo strode down the narrow throne aisle, arm in arm as two priceless looking pins relaxed meticulously on identical crimson cases, guarded by someone Irene recognised. The man who had deceived her sneered arrogantly at the moving duo as a fresh suit dripped extravagantly off him. Lyr. The person next to him was a girl, low navy dress clamped to her lean figure as she glowed eagerly up at a taller man next to her who fixed their hands as he nodded fondly back at the unusual girl. Corentin. The King who had wanted her blood to ruin their solar system stood there jovially, grinning against the stars of chandeliers as if he had never shed a wink of blood in his life.

What would your mother think? A whisper skimmed the woman's ear. It was so low anyone would assume it was the wind. The charming lights of the room sucked themselves out of her view, twirling to a dark abyss that Irene felt herself floating in.

The voice continued as the blank space began to fill itself with the colours of hundreds of stars, rocks and the endless path of the cosmos. What do you think she would say if she saw all you've done? All you've caused? Its words curled about her ears, stealing her from the deafness of space.

Would she praise you, girl? Would she still love you? It began again as sickness travelled up Irene's torso. It's just a dream. She can't get hurt here. How could she ever love a monster? That's what you see yourself as, right? A monster? At least that is what Irene told herself.

Monsters can't get second tries, The murmur ran just as a red star slowly dragged itself to her, every atom in her body tugging her to it. They were like forbidden magnets. Monsters don't get second tries.

That was the last thing Irene Solstice took in before her 26 years of validity evaporated into kindled nothingness.

And at long last, an unspoken prophecy was born.