The world was quiet.
Too quiet.
Zero knelt on cracked stone,
breathing slow, rhythmic—but far from calm. His fingers drifted
across the rune-scorched floor, where lingering heat still whispered
of something ancient, long buried.
Dust swirled through the stale air, disturbed only by the faint
pulse of magic within the candlelit circle that imprisoned him in
silence.
This wasn't a dungeon.
Not exactly.
It was something older.
Forgotten. Rejected by time itself.
He had awakened here after the Trial—jerked from one reality to
another, like falling between unfinished thoughts. One moment,
system notifications rang in his ears.
The next, the world had gone hollow.
A shrine, buried in ivy and
shadow. Not restored. Not remembered. A scar in space left to
fester.
He didn't know how he arrived.
Only that he had been
brought.
Bloodline Confirmed. Sovereign Protocol Active. Memetic Link
Established.
Then came the whisper.
Not a sound. A thought. An
echo.
"You breathe… but not as one of them."
Zero's eyes snapped open.
He was alone.
And yet… not.
The shadows at the edge of the shrine
moved—not like creatures, but like memories refusing to die.
Another
voice rose, cold and sharp, curling through his bones:
"You walk like prey… but carry our scent. Who taught you to
crawl, when you were born to command?"
His hand drifted to his
coat. Instinct screamed: Fight. Move. Vanish.
But the voice laughed.
"You are sovereign-born. We do not run from whispers."
He
clenched his jaw. "Who are you?"
There was no direct answer.
Instead, space itself cracked—and he remembered.
A memory not his
own.
Blood smeared across marble steps. A shattered crown. A war
cry in a tongue he'd never learned, yet understood as if it were
carved into his soul.
The last Sovereign.
I am what remains. Of a line unbroken. Of a
power unchained.
A battlefield burst behind his eyes—ten thousand
soldiers kneeling before one. A figure clad in obsidian armor, his
shadow stretching across the earth, devouring the sun.
Zero gasped,
stumbling back. He wasn't remembering.
He was reliving it.
The
weight. The command. The isolation. The price.
This is what it
means to rule.
His knees buckled. Sweat traced lines down his
temple. The system chimed again:
[Skill Awakening in Progress…]
Shadow Sovereign Core
Synchronization: 36%… 47%… 59%…
Warning: Mental Fortitude Threshold Reached.
It wasn't pain in the body. It was in the soul. His identity torn
apart, rewoven strand by strand.
He clung to his sense of self.
To
the sound of Scarlet's voice.
The roar of the tournament crowd.
The
memory of fighting—not for power—but for purpose.
"You fear the cost," the voice whispered, gentler now. "Good. A
ruler who does not fear power is already lost to it."
Zero opened his
eyes.
The shadows didn't loom.
They waited.
He stepped forward, past
the edge of the ritual circle.
His shadow peeled from the floor like
a second skin, elongating unnaturally, alive.
He felt it now.
Not
borrowed strength.
Inherited dominion.
A power not meant to be
taken—but answered.
"You are the last gate," murmured the Sovereign's echo. "The
threshold between silence and war. Between forgotten and
remembered."
"Will you open it?"
Zero didn't speak.
He extended his hand.
And the
shadows obeyed.
System Alert
Class Path: Shadow Sovereign – Eclipsed Monarch Unlocked.
Title Acquired: Scion of the Lost Throne
New Skills Obtained:
Sovereign's Command (Passive): Shadows
respond instinctively. Allies within your aura gain resistance to
mental manipulation and fear.
Obsidian March (Active): Summon a
shadow legion equal to 30% of your maximum mana. Illusory
constructs with semi-autonomous AI.
Echo Requiem (Active –
Conditional): Consume the memory of a battlefield. Replay the last
30 seconds of any combat in real time. Requires Sovereign Focus.
Inheritance – Crown of Dusk (Sealed): Locked. Requires full
bloodline synchronization.
Zero collapsed.
His body shook. His lungs burned. His nerves
screamed in silence.
But the shadows stayed.
Not menacing.
Loyal.
Long
denied their master.
He awoke somewhere else.
A rooftop. Familiar skyline. Unfamiliar
silence.
The city below buzzed with life, but to Zero, it sounded…
distant. Hollow.
Smaller.
He rose, adjusting his coat. The Mask of
Eclipse pulsed faintly in his hand—like a heart not quite alive, not
yet dead.
He slid it on.
"Welcome back, Sovereign," whispered the voice within—pride
hidden beneath sorrow.
The city didn't know it yet.
But a bad omen
had returned.
And it bore his name.
Zero turned west.
Where the sky
dimmed unnaturally.
Where the shadows whispered of what was to
come.
The Trial was only the beginning.
The real test lay ahead.
And the
world?
The world would soon remember what it had tried so hard to
forget.
What it means when a Sovereign rises.