The air in the throne chamber thickened. The lights dimmed. Magic crackled between the walls, reacting to the tension like an unseen storm waiting to break.
Haruto stood firm, the Nullblade resting at his side. It no longer hummed with uncertainty—it thrummed with resolve.
The Warden extended his arm, summoning a blade of obsidian flame. It pulsed like a heartbeat—sharp, rhythmic, alive. "Before you take the throne, you must prove you are whole."
"I'm not whole," Haruto said, lifting his sword. "Not yet. But I'm no longer broken."
With that, they clashed.
The impact sent shockwaves through the floating chamber, shattering loose shards of memory suspended in the air. Blades met with bursts of light and sound, one forged from stolen power, the other reforged by reclaimed identity.
"You carry the sins of a tyrant!" the Warden growled, slashing downward.
"And you carry the fear of a forgotten world!" Haruto roared, parrying and spinning behind him.
Lucien and Serenya stood back, encircled in a protective glyph cast by the spire itself. They couldn't intervene—even if they wanted to. This was more than a duel.
It was a reckoning.
The Warden lunged, blade arcing toward Haruto's chest—but Haruto caught it with his bare hand, the Nullblade shifting to absorb the strike. For a moment, they locked eyes.
"You're not just guarding a memory," Haruto said quietly. "You're guarding your own fear of what I'll become."
The Warden hesitated—just long enough.
Haruto drove the Nullblade upward, piercing through the Warden's chest. A ripple of violet energy exploded outward, dissolving the obsidian armor into mist. The blade fell with a hollow clatter.
The Warden staggered, the helm dissolving.
Underneath… was a man. Old. Tired. Eyes filled not with hatred—but sorrow.
"I kept your throne cold," he said, falling to his knees. "Because the world feared what warmth would bring."
Haruto caught him before he fell. "Then let them fear. I'll forge something stronger from it."
As the Warden vanished into light, the throne reassembled—whole for the first time in centuries.
Haruto turned to face it.
And then, slowly, he sat.
The throne did not reject him.
It remembered him.
And so did the world.