Oron Karth was silence made stone.
Ash dunes swept across endless ruins, statues of long-forgotten rulers gazing skyward with empty eyes. Every wind carried echoes—laughter, screams, vows—all drowned in dust. The world itself seemed to mourn.
At the summit of a shattered palace, they found it.
The Dead Throne.
Obsidian black, veined with starlight threads, it pulsed in answer to the Dreaming Crown.
Ethan felt it—the weight of lineage, the echo of a million decisions. He stepped forward, Crown in hand.
Aelira caught his wrist. "We do this together."
And then it moved.
From the throne, a shape rose. Not Kaelen's ghost. Not memory. Will made flesh.
It wore Kaelen's face. His pride. His pain. The last, unbroken desire to rule alone.
The Throne's echo spoke:"You would desecrate what I built. With love? With weakness?"
Ethan stepped beside Aelira. The Crown flared between them, projecting not dominance, but unity. Two Sovereigns. One soul, mirrored across two hearts.
The throne-echo attacked—its power immense, a flood of Sovereign energy unleashed like a dying star.
But Ethan and Aelira fought as one.
No hesitation. No fragmentation. Their moves were fluid, intuitive—his blade and her light, his will and her grace.
Every strike was a memory. Every defense, a vow.
The throne could not contain what they had become.
With one final cry, the shadow screamed. It fractured—not in defeat, but in denial. It could not accept a Kaelen who loved, who shared, who chose unity over control.
It shattered into stardust.
[STATUS UPDATE: Dead Throne Broken – Echo Sovereignty Established][Companion Bond: Unshakable]
Ethan looked down at the empty throne.
It no longer called to him.
It was time to build something new.