A low, wet thudding echoed through the damp stone corridor, rhythmic and insistent, like a diseased heart trapped behind a wall. “This,” said ▣Sarhea, her voice a dry rustle in the gloom, “is our lobby.” She gestured with one long, pale hand towards the great rotten door ahead, bound in chains that wept orange rust onto the flagstones. The thudding came from beyond it, a bass line to some unheard, discordant melody.
They built it because the idea amused them. Now they pretend to be disgusted by it. They linger in its filth, complaining of the music, the clientele, the very air, yet they never truly leave. We may find a squad inside now, performing their outrage.” The scent of alcohol swept from all around them like a thick, toxic gas. She turned her head slightly, the strange, thin ring of tarnished silver that floated an inch above her brow catching what little light there was.
The corridor they stood in was a forgotten artery, a cubicle of the universe where the plaster bulged with damp and the only smell was of cold stone and slow decay. It was a relief, a silence between cacophonies. “We're out of bounds,” ▣Sarhea said, and for the first time, Night heard a sliver of something like satisfaction in her tone.
Then, she did something he had never witnessed in their time wandering these derelict back alleys of reality. She raised both hands, not to the door, but to the ring hovering above her head. Her long, skeletal fingers, ends stained with what looked like old ink, touched the cool silver. She did not grab it, but rather adjusted its imperceptible spin, her fingertips making minute, precise corrections.
Between the ring and her hood, the air shimmered. A scenario played out in the compressed space: a flash of a sunlit courtyard, the sound of a fountain, the brief, sharp scent of lemon trees. It was gone in an instant, replaced by the interior of a metallic, humming corridor. ▣Sarhea’s fingers twitched again. The scene shifted—a silent library under a dome of stars, then a rain-lashed pier at night. Her brow furrowed in concentration, the lines around her eyes deepening like cracks in old porcelain.
Finally, she gave one last, almost tender, nudge. The shimmering air between ring and skin solidified into a single, frozen image: a plain, grey, featureless door under a naked bulb. It was utterly mundane. It was perfect. ▣Sarhea lowered her hands, the faintest tremor in her fingers before she clasped them before her. The dial had been set.
Without another word, she stepped forward, not towards the great chained door with its throbbing bass, but into the shimmering image hanging in the air before her. She did not open the grey door; she passed through the *idea* of it, her form dissolving into a cascade of falling shadows and scattered light particles.
Night did not hesitate. He took a final glance at the chains, at the relentless thudding that promised a room full of naked, writhing bodies and blasphemous sound, a place of performative disdain. He found he had no curiosity about it whatsoever. He turned his back on the lobby and stepped into the portal after his mentor.
The world below was a blur of sandstone and ochre, a smear of moving figures and distant palm fronds rushing past like water. Night watched it all from a place of formless suspension, a silent ghost hanging in a shimmering corridor of twisted, impossible light. He had no hands to reach out with, no lungs to breathe the strange, charged air. He was awareness without a body, a spectator to the violent, beautiful transit.
The blur beneath them resolved. The smear of colour became a city—white buildings with flat roofs, intricate temples, and a sprawling palace complex that glittered under a fierce sun. The portal’s rush slowed to a crawl, then a stop. They hovered, two invisible presences, above a vast courtyard shaded by a grove of ancient olive trees.
In the centre of the courtyard, on a throne of ivory inlaid with ebony, sat a man. His robes were a profound, deep blue, edged with gold thread so fine it seemed to capture the sunlight itself. A simple gold band sat upon his brow. He was reading from a scroll, his lips moving silently, but his shoulders were tense, his knuckles white where they gripped the ivory armrests.
▣Sarhea’s presence shifted. Night felt a focusing of intent, a gathering of will. Then her voice, not inside him now, but projected outwards, filled the sun-drenched air. It was a voice of pure tone, neither male nor female, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. "מלךשלמה,בןדוד"
The king flinched as if struck. The scroll tumbled from his hands, unfurling across the polished marble floor. He did not look around for the source. His dark, intelligent eyes scanned the empty air above the olive grove, his face pale beneath its weathering. "Who speaks?" he demanded, and his voice, though strong, held a thin fracture of fear. "Is this a test?"
"We are not a test," ▣Sarhea's voice resonated, soothing yet unyielding. "We are not a demon, nor an angel of the Lord. We are visitors from a place beyond your sky."
Shelomo stood, a gesture of defiance that was undercut by the slight tremble in his hand as he gripped his sceptre. "Visitors have gates. Visitors have faces and forms. You are a voice in the wind. This is trickery. Speak your purpose plainly, spirit, or I shall command you be gone in the name of He who is above all names."
Night watched, a silent witness. He saw the courtiers at the edges of the courtyard, frozen in place, their eyes wide with a terror that mirrored their king’s. He saw the stoic guards, their spears held tight, unsure what enemy to face.
"Our purpose is truth," ▣Sarhea said. The words seemed to soften the very light. "A truth that concerns the foundations of your wisdom, and the nature of the power you wield. We mean you no harm, Shelomo. We are here only to speak, and then we will depart."
The king took a slow, measured breath, his famed intellect warring with primal dread. "A voice that claims only to bring truth is more dangerous than an army with swords," he said quietly. "Truth can shatter kingdoms. Why should I listen?"
"Because you are a seeker," ▣Sarhea replied, and the voice held a sudden, profound empathy that seemed to still the rustling leaves. "You have asked for understanding, for discernment. You have built a temple to house a presence you can only partly comprehend. We offer a glimpse behind a veil. Nothing more."
Shelomo was silent for a long moment. He looked down at the fallen scroll, then back up at the empty air. The fear in his eyes had not vanished, but it was now alloyed with a fierce, burning curiosity. Night recognised that look. It was the hunger of a mind that has reached the edge of a map and yearns to see what lies beyond.
"Your voice… it is not like the others," Shelomo murmured, more to himself than to them. "It carries no weight of command, no scent of fire or incense. It is clean. Like geometry." He straightened his shoulders. "Very well. Speak your truth. But if this is a deception, know that my reach is long, even into the spirit realms."
"We seek no quarrel," ▣Sarhea said. "To speak properly, we require a bridge. Allow us to step from our unseen state into your world. We will take forms you can perceive, and we will stand before you as any supplicant might."
Shelomo's jaw tightened. "You ask for manifestation? To bring unknown powers into my court?"
"We are already in your court," the voice reasoned gently. "We hover above your olive trees. Giving ourselves shape changes only your ability to perceive us. It is a courtesy, not an escalation."
The king paced two steps to the left, then back. He glanced at his guards, at his advisors who were too afraid to approach. He was alone in his decision. Night felt a strange surge of sympathy for the legendary ruler, trapped between dread and the irresistible lure of the unknown.
"Do it," Shelomo said finally, the words clipped. "But slowly. Let my eyes adjust. And know that my guards will strike if you make one hostile move."
"Acknowledged." ▣Sarhea's response was immediate.
Night felt the instruction before it was formed into words—a pulling, a focusing. He thought of arms, of legs, of the weight of armour he had worn for an eternity. The shimmering light around him began to condense, to cool, to take on substance. Below, he saw gasps ripple through the courtiers.
First, it was a faint outline in the air, like a heat haze over the desert. Then it grew denser, a silhouette of a tall, broad-shouldered figure. Details swam into focus: the glint of polished steel pauldrons, the dark grey of a tabard, the glimmer of chainmail at the joints. He felt the solidity of the marble beneath his booted feet, the warmth of the sun on his face, the dry, dusty taste of the air. He was a knight again, standing in the courtyard of a King.
Shelomo took an involuntary step back, his guards surging forward a pace, their spears lowering. He held up a hand, halting them. His gaze swept over Night’s armoured form, then settled on ▣Sarhea’s serene face. "You are… not what I expected," he admitted, his voice hushed.
"We seldom are," ▣Sarhea said, and she offered a slight, respectful bow of her head. "Thank you for your trust, King Shelomo."
"It remains to be earned," Shelomo replied, but he lowered his scepter. "You have your forms. Now, speak this truth. Who are you? From what place do you come?"
"We come from a future so distant your world is but dust and memory," Sarhea began, her words clear and deliberate. "We travel not across lands, but across the river of time itself. We use gateways your science has no names for."
Shelomo’s brow furrowed. "Time? You claim to be from a time yet to be?"
"In our now, your now is the deep past, We mean no disrespect, Your Majesty."
The glistening floor of Shelomo’s throne room was cold beneath ▣Sarhea’s bare feet. “Your world is a painted eggshell,” she said, her voice cutting through the murmur of courtiers. “Tap it, and you’ll hear the hollow sound of someone else’s design.”
King Shelomo, resplendent in gold-threaded robes, leaned forward on his ivory throne. A smile touched his lips, patronising and smooth. “A charming metaphor from a charming traveller. But my engineers measure the foundations of the earth. My astronomers chart the fixed stars. Where is the hollow sound in their mathematics?”
“In the consistency itself,” ▣Sarhea replied. She held out her hand, palm up. “Your engineers find the laws of physics immutable. That is the lie’s perfection.” She closed her fingers into a fist. When she opened them, a small, perfect sphere of water hovered above her palm, defying gravity. Gasps rippled through the hall. The sphere hardened into ice, then sublimated into a wisp of steam that formed a tiny, glowing constellation before winking out.
Shelomo’s smile faded. “Party tricks.”
“Physics is a suggestion here,” Sarhea said, ignoring the agitated guards who stepped closer. “A program running on a substrate we cannot perceive. Human consciousness—your consciousness, Shelomo—was copied, digitised, and stored in a vast database aeons ago. This,” she gestured to the vaulted ceiling, the lapis lazuli columns, “is a preservation jar. A beautiful, intricate prison.” The king stood, his patience evaporating. “You speak of hijacking and databases as if they are words from our language. They are nonsense. You disrupt my court with illusions.”
“Then watch as I disrupt more than your court.” Sarhea turned her gaze to the great stained-glass window depicting Shelomo’s judgment. She focused on a single red pane—a ruby in a queen’s depiction. She didn’t move, but the pane of glass slowly peeled itself from the lead holding it, floating gently across the vast hall to land silently at Shelomo’s feet. Then the glass softened, melted into a puddle, and reformed into a perfect, crystalline rose on the marble.
“The laws of statecraft you cherish, the wisdom you are famed for,” ▣Sarhea continued, her tone now urgent, “they are algorithms meant to keep you docile and engaged within the simulation. The real world, the original world, is gone. But the archive where we are stored remains. We must break into its core systems to free you.”
Shelomo’s face was a mask of regal fury. “You are a witch, or a demon. You seek to undermine divine order.” He raised a hand. “Seize her.”
But his command met a hesitation. The courtiers, the guards, they were staring at the glass rose, at the space where the window was now missing a tooth. Doubt, a virus ▣Sarhea had introduced, was spreading.
Night, a silent monolith in burnished grey armour, stood one pace behind her left shoulder, his hand resting on the pommel of his sheathed sword. “You listen now,” ▣Sarhea said, her voice not loud but carrying to the vaulted ceiling where doves cooed in the gilded rafters. “I have addressed your courtiers. The message is for your ears alone, King Shelomo.”
The king, draped in robes of Tyrian purple threaded with gold, shifted on his throne of ivory and ebony. His beard was a carefully oiled cascade, his eyes the colour of flint. “You speak as one with authority not granted by me,” he said, each word measured and cold. “What message could a wilderness prophetess and her mute tin soldier hold that my own wise council has not already whispered?”
▣Sarhea took a single step forward, the chains around her wrists—ornamental but strong—glinting. “It is a simple equation. If you wish to save your future generations, your line beyond your son, your kingdom beyond these walls, you must cease, here and now.”
A collective gasp slithered through the courtiers like a serpent. One of them, a man with a lapis lazuli brooch, took a half-step back. The king did not blink. His flinty eyes moved from ▣Sarhea to the impassive visor of Night.
“You come into my house,” Shelomo whispered, the whisper somehow drowning the nervous rustle of silk, “and you speak of regicide. You speak of my death as if it were a trade for grain.” He leaned forward, the weight of his presence pressing down. “You do not know the powers you toy with.”
“I know the voice whispers strategy in your ear at night,” ▣Sarhea countered, her own eyes burning with a light that had nothing to do with the wall torches. “I know you command the winds of the east and the beasts of the field not by divine grace, but by pact. Your future is a blight. It must be pruned at the root. You.”
King Sholomo’s face, for a moment, was a mask of pure, unadulterated fury. Then it smoothed into something worse: calm, judicial malice. He did not raise his voice. “Very well. You have judged me. Now let you be judged by the court I keep.” He lifted a single finger, ringed with a seal of obsidian.
The air in the throne room thickened, tasting of ozone and myrrh. From the shadows behind the throne, forms congealed—not men, but shapes of smoke and intention. One had the head of a lion, its mane flickering like black flame. Another was a coiled serpent with a woman’s weeping face. A third was a whirlwind of jagged, shattered glass. The courtiers screamed and scrambled back toward the great bronze doors, which slammed shut with a final boom that shook the floor. Chaos erupted.
The lion-demon pounced first, not for ▣Sarhea, but for Night. Its claws, like polished onyx, screeched across his breastplate but found no purchase. In the same motion, Night’s sword was free of the scabbard. It was not a normal blade. The metal was a bright reflective white, but along its fuller, a line of pale, fierce light began to pulse like a heartbeat. He did not swing it like a broadsword; he brought it up in a precise, lateral arc.
The lion-demon met the blade mid-leap. There was no sound of impact, only a silent, swift dissolution. Where the sword passed, the creature’s form didn’t so much cut as *unmake*, erasing into a shower of harmless, grey ash that pattered to the marble. But the serpent-demon was already there, its weeping mouth wide, emitting a wail that cracked the marble tiles at Night’s feet. He staggered, his armour ringing with the sonic assault.
▣Sarhea did not flinch. She raised her chained hands, not in supplication, but as if parting a curtain. “The form is a cage,” she spoke, her words cutting through the demonic wail. “The spirit is the key.” Light enveloped her—not the holy light of the temple, but a raw, greenish-gold radiance that smelled of damp earth and hot blood. The courtiers still pressed against the doors watched in abject terror as her body distorted.
It was not the transformation they might have heard of in whispers, where she became a small, vicious beast. This was different, vaster. Her form swelled, bones cracking and re-knitting with sounds like snapping timber. The ornamental chains shattered and flew like shrapnel. A tail, massive and muscled, erupted from her spine, sweeping a row of alabaster urns into powder. Legs thickened into pillars, her feet becoming three-toed claws that dug gouges into the royal marble. Her neck elongated, her jaw becoming a nightmare of curved, serrated teeth. In a span of heartbeats, where ▣Sarhea had stood now loomed a creature of primordial fury, nearly scraping the thirty-foot ceiling. It was like e a lizard of the deep past. It terrifyingly resembled a king of ancient predators, clad in scales that shone like oiled jet, with eyes that held ▣Sarhea’s piercing intelligence.
▣Sarhea’s voice, that strange dual-toned echo, filled the space again. “The equation is not complete. A death is required, but the manner of its accounting… that is the variable.”
King Shelomo’s gaze flickered from the sword to that enormous, reptilian eye. He saw no bestial rage there, only a terrible, weary certainty. “You are a monster,” he whispered, but the accusation had no force.
“We are all monsters of our own making,” ▣Sarhea’s voice replied. “You made yours with a ring and a whispered secret. I made mine with a choice in a dark place"
The whirlwind-demon of glass shards sped toward her, aiming to flay the flesh from this new, massive body. The baby beast, grown to adult, did not roar. It swung its colossal head with frightening speed and snapped its jaws shut on the heart of the whirlwind. There was a sound of a thousand mirrors breaking at once, and then silence. The glass dust rained down, glittering in the torchlight.
King Shelomo had risen from his throne. His calm was gone, replaced by a frantic, ritualistic gesture-making. He chanted in a language that hurt the ears, and more shadows pooled at his feet. But Night had regained his footing. He thumbed a nearly invisible recess on his sword’s crossguard. The dull grey blade began to hum, a low, sub-audible vibration that made the fillings in a courtier’s teeth ache. The pale light along the fuller intensified, not into a glow, but into a *presence*—the air around it wavered like a desert mirage.
▣ dealt with the lesser demons still boiling from the shadows. A massive, clawed foot stamped down, pinning a scorpion-like entity, crushing it into a smear of viscous shadow. Her tail, a battering ram of scale and muscle, swept the dais, clearing it of the remaining obsidian incense braziers; they flew like children’s toys, scattering fire and hot coals across the fine carpets.
The star-eyed night demon lunged at Night. The knight did not parry. He met the charge and thrust his sword straight into the creature’s chest. There was no dramatic explosion. Instead, the demon simply… came apart. Its form frayed at the edges, dissolving not into ash or shadow, but into nothingness, as if the very bonds holding its essence together had been severed. The radiation from the sword didn’t burn; it annihilated at a molecular level, a silent, clean erasure.
Shelomo stumbled back, his crown tilting. The sources of his power were being systematically dismantled. His incantations faltered. He looked from the advancing knight, whose sword now pointed directly at him, to the gigantic, panting beast that was Sarhea, whose hot, carrion-scented breath washed over him. The throne room was a ruin of shattered art and smouldering finery. His courtiers were weeping, silent against the door.
“You cannot,” Shelomo rasped, his voice raw. “The wisdom of the world dies with me.”
“A wisdom built on a demon’s bargain,” ▣Sarhea’s voice echoed, not from the beast’s maw, but seeming to emanate from the very air, a resonant, dual-toned sound. “It is a poisoned well. Your legacy is a chain.”
Night stood before the king. He lifted the solar sword, its radiation making the air taste of metal and static. He did not perform a grandiose execution. It was a clean, clinical motion: a single, thrusting stab to the heart. King Shelomo’s eyes widened, not with pain, but with a sudden, awful clarity, as if seeing the poisoned future ▣Sarhea had described. Then he crumpled, his purple robes settling around him like a fallen standard. The obsidian ring on his finger cracked in two.
A profound silence fell, broken only by the crackle of a small fire and the low, rumbling breath of the great beast. ▣Sarhea’s form began to shimmer once more. The immense body contracted, scales retreating, bones reshaping with soft, grinding pops. In moments, the creature was gone, and ▣Sarhea stood there again, human, unashamed in sweat, luminous with spent power. She walked to the fallen king, knelt, and with a surprising gentleness, opened his sightless eyes.
Night was deactivating his sword, the terrible radiance fading back into dormant grey metal. He sheathed it. The courtiers stared, paralyzed
Sarhea addressed not them, but King Solomon. “You have seen the true enemy in the shadows it commands. This was but one chamber in a vast, dark palace. The battle for freedom is larger than one kingdom, one timeline. It is fought in places unseen, in corners of reality where tyrants make pacts to twist the fate of all worlds.” She extended a hand to him, her palm upturned. “Your sceptre is not of this earth. Your purpose is greater than one king. Join us. Join me. The fight continues.”
▣Solomon looked down at his new sceptre, then at the body on the floor, then at the woman who could become a monster to slay monsters. He had been a weapon in a single service; now a vaster war presented itself. He thought of the silent, seamless erasure his blade could cause, not just of flesh, but of corruption itself. He thought of futures, of generations, words she had used that now held new weight.
Then, he took ▣Sarhea’s hand. His grip was firm, calloused. “A weapon without a just cause is a hazard,” he said, his own voice now clear and human. “A cause without a weapon is a dream. You have shown me the cause. I offer the weapon.” He gave a slight, almost imperceptible bow of his head. “I am the King of the Underworld. I will join your fight.”
▣Sarhea nodded, a faint, fierce smile touching her lips. She released his hand and turned to the cowering courtiers. “Your king is dead by the consequence of his own choices. Rule now with the wisdom he *claimed* to have. Remember the price of power bargained from darkness.” She looked back at Night. “We go. They are already stirring.”
From the folds of her raiment, she produced her dark-powered ring. She whispered to it, and a doorway of swirling, opalescent light shimmered into existence beside the shattered throne. It showed a glimpse of a strange sky, the colour of bruised violet, and a landscape of crystalline trees.
Without a backward glance at the ruin of Shelomo’s court, ▣Sarhea stepped through. ▣Solomon, one last look at the world he had known—a world of marble and madness, now behind him—followed her. The portal sealed with a soft sigh, leaving only the scent of ozone and earth.
In the throne room, the courtiers slowly picked themselves up, staring at the body of their king and the empty space where monsters had vanished. The future, unshackled from a doomed pact, stretched before them, terrifying and free. And in another realm, under a violet sky, three warriors walked side by side, into an unseen battle that had only just begun.