The Throne of the First Age sat atop a jagged peak of silent obsidian. It was a simple, massive chair of black stone, its surface etched with runes that didn't glow—they seemed to pull the light into themselves, leaving the air around the seat cold and starved.
Kiron stepped onto the black rock. His basalt boots hit the obsidian with a dull thud that carried no echo. The silence here was heavy, pressing against his eardrums like the weight of the deep sea.
"You cannot sit," the Ferryman croaked from the boat. He stepped out onto the jagged shore, his salt-crusted rags trailing behind him like a funeral shroud. "The seat is cold, Grave-Son. If you sit now, you will simply become part of the rock. You are not yet empty enough to hold what it offers."
Kiron turned, his stone eye narrowing. "You speak as if you've watched a hundred men fail."
"I have watched empires try," the old man said. He pulled back his hood, revealing a face that looked like eroded parchment stretched over a skull of dull gold. "I have watched the 'Order' of your world rise and fall like breath on a mirror. I was here before your Spire was a single brick of rust."
Asha, standing beside Kiron, suddenly gasped. Her blind, silver-filmed eyes widened, and she began to tremble so violently that her violet-veined wings flared instinctively, shielding Kiron from the Ferryman.
"Kiron... get back," she whispered, her voice cracking with a terror he had never heard. "I felt it... the density of his soul. He isn't a ferryman. He is a Sin."
"Asha? What are you talking about?" Kiron asked, his hand gripping the hilt of Lament.
"The ancient records," Asha said, her words coming in a frantic rush. "Before the Great Stilling was perfected, there were beings whose origins even the Zen-Zun could not trace. Their creator is unknown, lost to the void. They are the Seven Deadly Sins—primordial entities that exist outside the formatting of the Luminous. Some of them... Kiron, some of them are equal to the Zen-Zun or the high Pilgrims. They aren't just powerful; they are fundamental."
The old man chuckled, a sound like dry bone grinding against sand.
Asha continued, her voice rising as she listed the names that were whispered in the dark corners of the world:
Pride: The First Distortion, who built a tower of glass and was shattered into a thousand shards.
Envy: The Face-Stealer, who wanders the deep looking for a form to call its own.
Wrath: The Living Ember, whose rage can boil the Sunless Sea.
Lust: The Silk-Weaver, who binds souls in webs of false hope.
Gluttony: The Endless Maw, who seeks to consume the very code of reality.
Sloth: The Great Stagnation, whose presence slows time to a crawl.
"And him," Asha pointed a shaking finger at the Ferryman. "Greed. The Collector of the Depths. The Heavens could never delete him, so they let him rot here in the dark, thinking he was content with his salt and his bone."
Greed smiled, revealing teeth made of tarnished gold. "The girl knows her history. I have collected everything, Grave-Son. I have the tears of the lilies, the silence of the sea, and the echoes of fallen kings. But I have a hole in my heart that never fills."
He raised his oar, but the wood began to peel away, revealing a staff of solid, pulsating gold. The air around him began to warp, pulling toward him as if he were a vacuum.
"I have not yet collected the soul of a King of Dis," Greed hissed. "And I think... it would look very handsome on my shelf."
Without warning, the space between them vanished. Greed didn't move fast; he simply "claimed" the distance. He appeared directly in front of Kiron, his hand turning into a curved, golden claw aimed directly at Kiron's basalt heart.
"What's yours... is mine," the Primordial growled.