The world did not end.
It corrected.
What had been a collapsing throne room—fractured pillars, dissolving stone, and the endless pull of an unformed void—did not vanish into nothing. Instead, it began to fold inward, not violently, not chaotically, but with an eerie precision that made it clear this place had not lost control.
It had simply changed its mind.
The void that had spread beneath their feet drew back like a receding tide, sealing itself layer by layer. Cracks along the ground halted mid-spread, their jagged paths freezing before smoothing over as if they had never existed. The broken remains of the chamber did not rebuild in the same shape; they reassembled into something else entirely—simpler, quieter, stripped of the oppressive perfection that had once defined it.
The throne did not return.
And that absence felt louder than anything that had come before.
