The Insane Regressor: Throne of Pride

Far away, in a nameless place where neither light nor darkness existed...

A single golden thread moved through the nothingness, weaving something gray—the color of the Void itself—into a strange, shifting form. Slowly and patiently, it wrapped nothing around nothing until it became something, like bandages wound around an injury that had yet to be created.

There was no body.

There was only one thing...

Something that refused—quite simply, and quite insanely—to end.

...

On the fourth night after the catastrophe, deep within the imperial palace, in a place no visitor’s map had ever marked...

There was a windowless hall adorned with an emblem of three stars—strange, yet somehow familiar.

Its walls were made of black stone that swallowed sound whole, and its ceiling hung low overhead. There were no other emblems upon the walls, no banners, and nothing to suggest that this place belonged to the Viera Empire...

Except that the decisions born within it had changed the face of the Empire more than once.

Five high-backed seats, seemingly carved from marble, formed a broad arc. Their armrests were raised slightly, but the arrangement was completed only by the sixth and principal chair—the largest among them—which faced the other five directly.

The High Chancellor occupied the first seat, an old man whose voice resembled the rustling of ancient paper.

In the second sat the Commander of the City Guard, a massive man dressed in unadorned armor. His fist had scarcely left the hilt of his sword in four nights, even though he knew full well that no sword could be raised in this place.

In the third sat the Minister of Intelligence—also the Empire’s Prime Minister and known to some as the Grand Strategist. Her blue hair was pulled back tightly, and her eyes remained calm despite everything the Empire was enduring.

The Marshal of the Armies occupied the fourth seat. Contrary to all expectations, he appeared to be the youngest person in the room—a man seemingly in his late twenties, his jaw set and his fingers tapping an unceasing rhythm against the armrest. Despite those restless motions, he somehow projected more ease than anyone else present.

As for the fifth seat, which lay submerged in the deepest shadows, it belonged to the commander of the Gray Guards...

The Gray General.

He had spoken only once since the catastrophe. But the information he had delivered struck harder than the catastrophe itself.

The Minister of Intelligence began in a neutral voice:

”The Ninth District... has been erased. No buildings, no rubble, and no remains. The zone of erasure swallowed the entire district and the edges of those surrounding it. The number of confirmed dead in the neighboring districts had already exceeded several hundred by dawn this morning, and the count continues to rise. As for those missing inside the zone of erasure...”

She paused for a moment.

”Their lists have consumed more paper than the Ministry ordinarily uses in an entire day.”

”We’ve heard the numbers in every report,” the High Chancellor said. ”Tell us about the signatures. We want confirmation.”

The woman placed a crystal upon the table, its center stained gray.

The Marshal recoiled in his seat without realizing it.

”An Essence Crystal, as you all know,” said the blue-haired woman.

”When an Ambassador of one of the Taboos uses their power, they leave an imprint behind... like a seal pressed into wax. It is clear and bounded—it cools, then fades.”

She raised her weary eyes and looked at them one by one.

”What we found at the crater was not a seal pressed into wax, gentlemen. What we found was the ocean in which all wax melts.”

Silence descended upon the hall.

”At the crater’s edge, our men are incapable of lying. They do not choose honesty... it is torn out of them. One confessed to an offense that ended his career. Another admitted to every crime he had ever committed. This is not the power of a soul that destroyed itself, no matter how high its rank may have been.”

Her fingers tightened around the crystal.

”This is the residue of a presence every one of us knows well.”

”A Descent,” the Marshal said before she could, his voice so rough it sounded as though it had climbed from the bottom of a well.

”A Descent,” the woman confirmed. ”A genuine Descent of the Taboo of Truth—not merely an Ambassador invoking borrowed power—manifested inside the capital of the Viera Empire.”

The Commander of the City Guard struck the table with his fist.

”Impossible! Descents are stories from centuries ago—stories of islands sinking and kingdoms being reduced to rubble. History has never recorded a Descent in the heart of a thriving capital without a war involving the Taboos—”

”And that is precisely why you should be afraid,” she interrupted, with a calm worse than any shout.

”And Investigator Robert?” The High Chancellor leaned forward.

The Prime Minister and Grand Strategist lowered her eyes toward the papers before her, regret faintly visible on her face.

”He was inside that district that night. He never came out.”

After a measured hesitation, she continued:

”Some of you know that his title was not honorary. Within the narrowest circles, Robert was known as an Ambassador of Truth—a Seventh-Rank Riftmaker, the eye of Truth within our walls and an eye of the Empire itself. How did he die? Why? What was he doing there that night?”

She slowly shook her head.

”We do not know. All of his subordinates were erased alongside him. All we know is that an Ambassador of Truth stood at the center... and that whatever happened there was far beyond the power of any Ambassador.”

Then the shadow occupying the sixth and largest seat spoke for the first time.

It was a quiet, gentle voice that made everyone in the hall lean toward it.

”And the second signature?” asked the figure seated in the sixth chair.

”A soul.”

For the first time, the woman swallowed with some difficulty.

”A single soul... detonated its own core. This was not simply a death, gentlemen. It was a choice. The knowledge required to accomplish such a thing is not supposed to exist at all. And worse still...”

She spread a map of the erased district across the table, with a red circle marked over its heart.

”The zone of erasure corresponds to the core’s detonation, not the presence of the Descent. Whether that soul confronted the Descent or simply chose to detonate in its presence, we do not know.”

She looked around the hall.

”And we do not know who it belonged to.”

”You don’t know who?” the Marshal snarled. ”A single soul erases an entire district of my capital, and you tell me you don’t know whose it was?”

”There is one thread,” she answered without raising her voice, paying little attention to his outburst—for she understood its cause. ”A border tracking team had spent days following the trail of an unknown infiltrator who escaped from a fortress near the City of Light. The infiltrator was suspected of carrying a Relic—one of the remnants connected to the Taboos. The team’s commander gave her testimony two days ago.”

She lifted her eyes.

”The trail ends inside the erased district.”

A heavy silence followed.

An unknown individual who might have stood at the very center of the catastrophe...

Or who might have had nothing to do with it at all.

The Marshal finally erupted, rising so abruptly that his seat rocked behind him.

”An entire district of our capital! Thousands of the Empire’s subjects reduced to nothing! If we remain silent, the world will read our silence letter by letter: Viera can no longer protect its own beating heart. Our allies will begin counting, and our enemies will begin sharpening—”

”And if we raise our voices,” the Gray General interrupted in a weary rasp, ”against whom, exactly, Marshal?”

He coughed out a laugh devoid of joy.

”Against a Taboo? The kingdoms that pointed accusing fingers at the Fourteen Taboos no longer possess fingers... or kingdoms. They have become footnotes in history books, memorized by schoolchildren as cautionary tales.”

”Then what?” The Marshal’s voice suddenly sank into something resembling despair. ”Do we bow... and sweep up the ashes of our dead?”

At that, the sixth seat spoke for the second and final time.

”We will not accuse,” said the quiet voice, and the silence of the entire hall bent toward it. ”We will ask.”

No one dared interrupt.

”Within the borders of the Viera Empire live people who serve Truth without wearing its sash. They are not Ambassadors, but lower-ranking intermediaries who operate quietly and remain close to the shadows. The old records call them the Agents of Truth. The palace knows a few of their names—fewer than you would wish, yet more than they suspect.”

”You want us to knock upon Truth’s door... through one of its Agents.” The Commander of the City Guard slowly raised his head, having understood before it was said aloud.

”We want an answer,” said the shadow. ”The request will be phrased as a request, not an accusation. A cold greeting... followed by a question: What did Truth do in our capital, and why?”

The High Chancellor rose and looked toward the Grand Strategist.

”Choose your words as you would choose your steps across thin ice. We are not writing to one organization among many... we are writing to the shadow of something that sits above the very concept of honesty.”

His clouded eyes moved across everyone present.

”We want an answer. And we do not want a war with something that cannot be warred against.”

After a brief pause, he added:

”And I propose that we contact Fate as well.”

...

The black wax—not the red—was brought out after midnight.

The letter was drafted three times and torn apart twice. When it was finally complete, it was neither an accusation nor a plea.

It was something in between...

Deft and cold, like a blade hidden beneath a glove of silk.

A name was written upon its back.

A name only four men in that hall had ever seen—the Marshal not among them—and one woman, who closed her eyes the instant she read it, like someone attempting to forget a history that refused to die.

...

Before dawn, the highest signal tower in the capital flashed with pulses of encrypted light.

The next tower upon the hills received them, then the one beyond it, followed by the next and the next...

That was how black-priority messages crossed the body of the Empire in a single day and night, traveling from tower to tower until they reached even its most distant border fortresses.

During that same hour, a black carriage bearing no insignia slipped through the Empire’s eastern gate, drawn by unmarked imperial horses that seemed to know no fatigue.

Inside sat a lone man carrying a letter beneath a black seal...

And he had only one destination:

The border fortress of the City of Light.