The altar of Starshore was littered with shards of glass and pools of blood.

  “This is the end, isn’t it?” Dalazir’s voice shook, barely above a whisper, heavy with despair. “You were meant to become a god.”

  Smoke poured from the broken glyph-circles, rising like the final gasp of a dying god. Above, the sky contorted—a dark slate, torn and seared with fire—where the constellations once held the universe's memory. Now, they blinked with doubt, as if unsure of their own identities. “And what is left of me now?” Zaahir’s voice resonated, empty and echoing the shadows of who he used to be.

  In the center of the ruin stood Zaahir.

  His cloak had been engulfed by fire. Beneath his skin, his ribs shone like molten metal. “What is flesh to a memory? What is life to a wraith?” he spoke bitterly, surveying the corpses around him. His eyes reflected the dead—Gamma soldiers, Britannian spies, clerks, dragons, disciples—each reduced to ashes by the ritual he had unleashed upon Stardrake’s corpse.

  “You caused this destruction,” Dalazir charged, though fear crept into his words like dust on an old book. “You played with their lives as if they were mere tools.”

  He seemed less alive than remembered, as if the world stubbornly refused to let him die. “Can you really blame me? A god should command ashes and echoes, not be tied down by the suffering of the living.”

  At the edge of the ruin stood Dalazir, sword clenched in hand, breath caught in his throat, heavy with grief and dread. His armor was marked by past battles, cracked and worn, while dried blood formed a grim line around his wrists. “I followed you into the depths of hell, only to find nothing but despair at the journey's end. What was it for?”

  “For the truth—or what little of it remains,” Zaahir replied, his voice weighed down with resignation, sounding like a funeral dirge in the still air. “Even now, the truth surrounds us, taunting us with its absence.”

  He had marched alongside Zaahir through holy wars and betrayals, following the long, dangerous path that led them to this moment.

  But now, before him—there was no king left.

  “You are lost,” Dalazir whispered, his heart breaking under the weight of this truth. “This isn’t who you are.”

  He recognized a wound.

  A gaping void in reality, shaped like a man.

  “I am what I have become, Dalazir,” Zaahir said, urgency lacing his voice, as if he stood on the edge of an endless drop. “Too far gone for redemption. Only the abyss awaits me.”

  Dalazir said quietly, “You… are still here.”

  Zaahir turned slightly, sorrow flickering on his face. “Here? No. I am simply… existing.” His voice was heavy, like a final tolling bell.

  “Existing among the faces of the lost—those who held onto hope,” Dalazir insisted, anger bubbling beneath his sorrow. “Hope that you have snuffed out.”

  Before Dalazir could answer, the air open with a sound like old parchment tearing under sharp claws.

  In the thick silence that followed, dark figures appeared, cloaked in ominous shadows. Dalazir felt a chill in his gut. “The Auditors…?”

  “They come to reclaim what is theirs, my friend,” Zaahir answered, a disturbing calm wrapping around him. “They have come for the debt of existence.”

  A light—cold and pale—split the sky overhead.

  Dalazir felt a shiver run through him as the temperature dropped, his breath turning to mist, each exhale a memory of lost warmth. “What do they want? Souls? Blood? Or just the grim satisfaction of settling scores?”

  Nine figures descended from the starry void, sharply defined against the darkened fabric of night.

  Black robes pulled from the depths of shadows.

  Masks of worn parchment stared forward with empty eyes.

  Symbols flickered across their faces like unsettling insects, their presence a disturbing dance of fate.

  The Nine Auditors.

  The Tribunal of Erasure.

  The counterbalance to the gods above. “They control the stories of our lives,” Zaahir said, his tone thick with irony. “Should we see ourselves as the main characters, or just pawns in their books?”

  Dalazir’s jaw tightened, a violent mix of fear and defiance swirling inside him. “So the stories were not just lies.” His stare sharpened, ignited with focus. “We are to be judged.”

  Zaahir offered a grin through bloodied teeth, his eyes flickering with malicious amusement. “At long last. The auditors of existence come to reconcile their records. Let them pronounce their judgment; I await their sentence with bated breath.”

  A voice emerged from nowhere, echoing through the depths of his bones, each word ringing like the mournful toll of a funeral bell. “You walk on sacred ground…” it intoned menacingly.

  “Zaahir. Recorded action. Infraction logged.” The voice carried a weight of its own, as if the air around him quivered in obedience to its command.

  Zaahir spat blood, the bright red droplets stark against his grinning visage. “Then read it aloud! Let my deeds be carved into the tombstone of despair.”

  Another voice—colder, like the blade of an executioner—responded, slicing through the silence with chilling certainty:

  “You have violated the Starshade Seal. You have consumed the flame of the Stardrake. Your existence is now in deficit.”

  Dalazir whispered, “This... is not a battle. This is a judgment.” His eyes glimmered, a mix of fear and fascination, as if he reverenced the very act of sentencing.

  Zaahir raised both hands mockingly, blood dripping down his arms. “Then value my worth,” he shouted, his voice hoarse with defiance. “Let the weight of your judgment come crashing down upon you.”

  The altar blazed with the glyph of erasure, creating a prison of darkness around it. Memories began to fade from his mind—his mother’s voice vanished; Kazhirah's laughter disappeared; the thrill of his first victory turned to dust. “You think I’m afraid?” He laughed bitterly, his eyes narrowing, daring the darkness to engulf him.

  Zaahir trembled as the world tried to forget him. “I am not an easy creature to erase,” he whispered to the shadows that coiled around him.

  Dalazir stepped forward, instinctively compelled by the weight of worry in his heart. “Zaahir—” he called, his voice shaking as it pierced the suffocating darkness, a desperate plea against the advancing void. “Do not let them drain your essence.”

  “Stay,” Zaahir rasped, fury fueling his conviction. “Watch.” His heart pounded in his chest as he clung to the fraying edges of his identity—even as they slipped through his fingers like cursed sand.

  A third Auditor proclaimed, its voice echoing with a chilling quality that sent shivers down the spine:

  “The remainder persists as mere figures. All figures remain under scrutiny.”

  Zaahir’s grin widened—still broader—through the crimson that stained his face, a grotesque smile of defiance in the darkness. “Erase me deeper,” he taunted, his spirit blazing fiercely against the cold void that sought to devour him.

  The glyphs flared—burning, embedding themselves into his very essence. “Tear my flesh from your memories, if you dare!” Zaahir shouted, laughter erupting from him, a twisted mix of insanity and delight as his past disintegrated piece by piece.

  And he laughed, the sound icy in its freedom.

  “I am nothingness,” he roared, his voice rising like a war cry, intent on cutting through the stifling darkness. “The more of me that vanishes, the less you can control!” His words hovered on the edge of despair, igniting the air around him with a flicker of defiance.

  The glyphs flickered uncertainly, and the Tribunal faltered, troubled by the violent shift in the atmosphere. A whisper spread among the Auditors, uncertainty seeping into their carefully constructed minds.

  Dalazir felt something boiling within him—time warped, history paused briefly—the echo of Fitran's invisible sabotage against the Fourth Ledger whispered through causality. “This is madness,” he breathed, looking at his companions, their resolve starting to wane.

  Something fundamental in the logic of the Ledger had been compromised long before this battle began; a flaw, a crack—reminding them that everything was fragile, even judgment itself.

  Zaahir stepped forward as the cage weakened, his spirit igniting like a relentless flame. “Come, then! Does your will still linger?” he challenged the darkness, reveling in the chaos he had unleashed.

  THE FOURTH AUDITOR

  Flat chains emerged—contracts of divine law.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “Bind the deficit.” A voice echoed through the vast emptiness, each syllable heavy with the weight of destiny. Zaahir let the cold chains wrap around his throat—

  then, with fierce determination, he bit down hard. “There is no escaping what is owed,” he murmured, a grim resolve tightening around his heart like a noose.

  The enamel shattered.

  Blood surged in his mouth.

  Yet, he swallowed the burdensome contract. An unsettling stillness enveloped the air, as if the world itself paused, holding its breath in anticipation of the reckoning to come.

  The law penetrated deep into his bones. “I will not be chained by the guilt that ensnares me!” he proclaimed, his voice rising with fervor, each word striking like thunder in the stifling silence.

  “I am surplus,” he stated, the bitter reality spilling from his lips; it felt both freeing and stifling, like fresh air mixed with the stench of decay.

  Mirrors showed the many sins he carried—each image a record of his wrongdoings.

  The tortured flames of betrayed followers flickered in his mind.

  Cities fell to a dark fire, disappearing into nothingness.

  The tragic downfall of Starshore remained like a painful memory.

  “Reflection enforced.” The Fifth Auditor’s voice, cold as death, resonated with a twisted form of power, each word like a sharp blade.

  Zaahir stepped boldly into the mirrored surface—

  and with fierce determination, he broke through. “If I must face my demons, then let them come!” he shouted, the shards of glass bursting around him like a storm.

  He turned his guilt to dust.

  He inhaled the suffocating essence of his sins. “You are not my judge!” he yelled, the bitter taste of reckoning heavy on his tongue.

  The Fifth Auditor fell apart, dissolving into a swirling mass of smoke. “You think you can consume everything?” a mocking whisper wound around him, threading through the heavy mist.

  Dalazir pulled back, his heart racing. “You’re devouring them—how can you carry such a weight?”

  Zaahir’s voice turned primal, a deep growl escaping. “I consume contradiction! The fire of the Stardrake transforms paradox! I rise, reborn from the chaos that defines my existence!”

  He tore through the tablets of law, dust swirling around him like ancient echoing voices. Each piece marked his skin, a blend of pain and purpose. “What is law if not a chain forged from fear?” he questioned, defiance kindling within him as he accepted the pain that shaped his fate. His blood turned to ink, a declaration of rebellion born from deep suffering.

  THE SEVENTH AUDITOR

  An abyss of howling names burst from its robe, a chilling chorus filling the emptiness.

  “Archive enforcement.” The voice boomed, a mix of accusing tones blending with despair, almost tangible in the air.

  Zaahir plunged into the chaos, his heart pounded like a war drum, each thump echoing an ancient rhythm.

  “Can you hear them?” he yelled, his voice raw with urgency, as the names assaulted him—a whirlwind of accusations, condemnations, and desperate cries. “They speak through me! I carry their weight!”

  He declared, his tone unwavering:

  “I am the sum of all who refuse the chains of forgetfulness!”

  “Then remember this!” a voice quivered from the depths, filled with cold rage. “You cannot silence the past!”

  The abyss shattered, a darkness that invaded his chest; the sharp pain sparked a raging fire beneath his skin.

  Dalazir felt a sound echoing within him—like the world exhaling its last breath.

  “What have you done, Zaahir?” he whispered, fear tightening around his heart. “What have you unleashed upon the realms?”

  He could not remember the name of Gamma’s first Archivist.

  A sign that the past had already begun to crumble. “It’s all slipping away...” he murmured, the gravity of his words steeped in despair.

  THE EIGHTH AUDITOR

  Scales of eternity fell carelessly from its hands, a reminder of the fragile balance at risk.

  “Weight determines truth.” The Auditor fixed him with an intense stare, overpowering and heavy, like the end of a collapsing star.

  Zaahir placed his pounding heart on the scales, his voice steady. “And what happens to truth when it has no weight?”

  In that instant, they were irrevocably broken.

  “Truth is merely an illusion, a specter formed from flesh,” the Auditor hissed, a cruel grin forming as he gestured to the scales of eternity. “You will find only despair in its absence.”

  He inhaled the remnants of eternity, the bitter taste of mortality lingering on his tongue.

  THE NINTH AUDITOR

  Ink flowed from its mask like a foreboding sign.

  “Even hatred demands a ledger.” The words slipped through the air, a toxic whisper that curled around them.

  Zaahir leaned closer, his voice sharp and edged, filled with determination.

  “I am that very hatred. I require no record of my existence. I embody everything rotten in the deepest corners of darkness.”

  “Yet,” the Auditor interrupted, its face twisted with disdain, “even shadows shrink from the light. You cannot escape the haunting echoes of your sins.”

  The mask fell apart, transforming into his own blood, and he felt countless memories surging through him, each one a painful stab lodged deep in his heart.

  The Tribunal faltered.

  Dalazir felt the world tilt, nearly surrendering to the darkness as reality trembled—

  Gamma’s records spilled ink,

  Britannian war logs flickered wildly,

  and soldiers from both sides drifted, moments of their lives erased, swallowed by the void.

  “What is happening?” he gasped, his hands gripping his head as memories bled into one another like an ink-stained cloth coming apart before his eyes.

  The sabotaged Fourth Ledger—concealed from view, corrupted by Fitran—trembled beneath the weight of existence. “The fabric of reality is fraying, Dalazir,” Zaahir's voice came forth, smooth yet laced with menace. “You cannot carry the weight of the past.”

  With urgency, the system struggled to grasp Zaahir’s essence.

  Each Auditor consumed by darkness made the Ledger quiver more.

  Dalazir felt his memories twist and writhe like phantoms in the shadows.

  His first battle had faded into nothingness.

  “I…I can still hear the screams,” he whispered, a shadow crossing his face like a fleeting cloud blocking the sun.

  A hollow ache lingered in the emptiness of his heart.

  “You need not endure the suffering of remembrance,” Zaahir said, his voice a tempting hiss filled with heat. “Accept the void instead.”

  He rasped, “Zaahir… stop… you will tear the world apart.”

  “Tear? No,” Zaahir replied, his eyes like consuming stars, a smirk playing on his lips. “I will reshape it.”

  “That is the plan.”

  THE FIRST AUDITOR SPOKE

  “Conclusion: the anomaly cannot be undone.”

  “Final clause invoked: Integration.”

  Zaahir froze, then laughter erupted from him, a sound echoing like thunder in the deep darkness. “They have always feared integration, clinging to their shattered realities.”

  “You are a fool to underestimate the wonders we can become!” one Auditor shouted, his voice cracking like the air around them.

  From the robes, a white script unfolded like a whisper of forgotten knowledge, curling in the air. One by one, the other Auditors disappeared from sight, their anguished screams fading into echoes of despair. Their essence surged into him, a dark tide filled with both power and sorrow.

  Masks changed into bone, shining with the remains of what once was. Robes transformed into veins, coiling and pulsing with each heartbeat felt in the void. Voices merged, turning into his own, a symphony of tormented souls echoing through the dark.

  Zaahir rose—

  a god with thin skin,

  his eyes shining with the light of distant stars devoid of warmth,

  wings flowing with molten glyph-fire, dripping like wax from an old candle. “Do you not see?” he roared, his voice shaking the very darkness, “This is transcendence—an awakening of the lost!”

  When he spoke, it was as if nine voices blended into a chilling chorus that sent shivers down the spine. “We are both the end and the beginning, born of the abyss, summoned from the depths of nothingness.”

  “I am Zaahir, the Unrecorded Crown.”

  “Ledger of ledgers, law that consumes all that has come before!”

  The heavens trembled at his command. “Feel the force of my voice, clerks of the past!” Zaahir roared, his words echoing through the void.

  The clerks fled in terror, their faces ashen. “What remains when the ledger of existence rewrites itself?” one shouted, his voice quaking under the weight of his fear.

  Tablets fractured with a loud crack. “We are mere echoes—shadows of a fading memory!” another cried, desperation evident in her tone.

  Dalazir collapsed to his knees, his head bowed, the ground beneath him drinking in his despair. “My king… what horrors await us in this suffocating silence?”

  Zaahir’s gaze cut through the darkness, his eyes burning with abyssal fire. “You stand on the edge of knowledge, yet dread clings to you like a persistent shadow.”

  For a fleeting moment, Dalazir saw the figure of the man he once respected, a brief spark of hope flickering in the overwhelming darkness.

  Then, as if called forth by some ancient force, symbols flickered across Zaahir’s face, stripping away his humanity to reveal the being that transcended human understanding. “What you see is the peak of your loyalty, my devoted follower. A crown created in the depths of nothingness.”

  “You are truly faithful,” the voice of nine echoes said, sounding like chains clinking in the dark. “But loyalty is just a record. And a record turns to ash. In the end, do your ties serve me, or do they only bind you further in your own chains?”

  “Do not serve me,” Zaahir pleaded, his voice heavy with eternal sorrow, each word weighted with grief. “Serve the silence I have created, for in that silence, death and life are forever intertwined.”

  Dalazir's heart broke with anguish, a void opening wide within him. He whispered, his voice shaking like the first light of dawn, “Zaahir… I ask you, I cannot bear this harsh reality…”

  Zaahir pressed his forehead against Dalazir's, a gesture that carried both warmth and an unsettling cold. “A mark of nothingness has burned itself into Dalazir’s flesh. You will keep only the fragments of what survives me.”

  Dalazir's cries erupted uncontrollably, a painful realization sweeping over him. “I have already lost the memory of Zaahir’s childhood laughter. Have I truly abandoned all meaning in this crushing emptiness?”

  “Ah, the laughter of youth—such bitter irony it holds,” Zaahir said, his voice heavy with lost wisdom. “In joy, we uncover sorrow; yet in sorrow, we find truth.”

  As Dalazir's sobs filled the air, they became a mournful song for the joys that had long disappeared, as he grappled with the emptiness left by his companion's absence.

  The Starshore crater burned like a dark sun.

  “Witness the chaos that signals my reign!” Zaahir roared, his voice crashing through the skies like a warning of despair.

  With a sweeping motion of his wings, Zaahir blocked out the sky. “Your world will know my name, or it will fade into nothingness,” he said, each word soaked in darkness.

  “The world will not forget me,” he asserted fiercely.

  “I exist in the space between memory and silence.”

  His power surged—a violent wave of contradiction—and ripped the air above Gamma’s capital apart, twisting the battlefield. “Every scream, every whisper, will be bound to my name,” he added, laughter tinged with madness threading through his voice.

  Britannian soldiers screamed, their shadows filled with unclaimed memories. “What is this madness?” one soldier shouted, pressing his hands to his head as if trying to rid himself of the noise of lives lost in darkness.

  Gamma’s battlemages faltered, their magic slipping from their control. “We… we have lost our way,” whispered a mage, his voice trembling like a frightened bird, as his spell faded into nothing like smoke.

  Time stretched out, like the endless pages of a forgotten book.

  Reality shook, a delicate weave caught in a storm.

  Dalazir felt the grains of sand trickle through his fingers—

  sand that spoke of fleeting moments, not unyielding stone.

  “Not a single thread will remain unscathed,” Zaahir murmured, his intense gaze fixed on the horizon. "For in my wake, only despair exists," he proclaimed, his voice deep and resonant, carrying a dark promise.

  Zaahir turned his focus to the horizon, to the chaos of battle, to the crumbling timeline that thrashed like a wounded creature. “Look upon this destruction, Dalazir! This is the result of your defiance!” he spat, his words dripping with bitter contempt.

  “Let the nations burn,” he whispered, his voice a thin wisp of smoke in the dark.

  “I am the crown that no ledger can hold,” he added, the heavy pride evident in his tone.

  In an instant, he disappeared—devoured by empty darkness. “And when the ashes settle, who will remember your name among the ruins?” he mocked, his voice fading like a mournful tune.

  Dalazir stood alone in the devastation—his sword shaking in his hand, his thoughts fragmented, and his heart empty. “Zaahir’s shadow will haunt these lands, a sad reminder of what was brutally snuffed out,” he said quietly, pain forming in his chest.

  He spoke into the dark wind, his voice shaking:

  “Zaahir is gone. And what is left… is the end of everything.”