The throne room had become a chamber of horrors for one. Silas watched his monitors die one by one as the power surge cascaded through the facility. The feeds from his Echoes winked out, the biometric data flatlined, and the lights in his opulent command center flickered and died, plunging him into the emergency red of backup power.
His throne, once a symbol of absolute control, now felt like an electric chair.
"No… no, no, no," he muttered, his hands trembling as he tried to reboot the system. But the console was dead. The Oracle's connection was severed. He was blind, deaf, and utterly alone.
He had built a fortress to keep the world out, but in doing so, he had trapped himself inside with the monster he'd invited in. The silence of the room was no longer a sign of his authority; it was the sound of his own tomb.
A heavy, metallic thump echoed from the reinforced blast door that led to his throne room. Then another. And another. It wasn't the sound of something trying to break the door down. It was the sound of something being repeatedly and casually thrown against it.
Silas scrambled back from his console, drawing a heavy, ornate plasma pistol from a hidden compartment in his throne. It was a weapon of last resort, a gift from Archon Liora herself, capable of melting a hole through a bunker wall. He aimed it at the door, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
The thumping stopped.
A moment later, the center of the meter-thick titanium alloy door began to glow cherry-red. It wasn't melting. It was being… unwritten. The metal lost its integrity, its very molecular structure seeming to fray at the edges. With a soft, sighing sound, a perfect, man-sized hole simply fell out of the door, crumbling into gray dust before it even hit the floor.
Ravi Kuro stepped through the impossible opening, his expression as placid as ever. Behind him, in the corridor, Silas could see the broken forms of Juggernaut and Nyx, tossed aside like discarded dolls.
"You…" Silas breathed, his voice a ragged whisper. "What in the hell are you?"
Ravi didn't answer. His gaze swept across the throne room, taking in the dead consoles, the opulent furniture, and the man holding the plasma pistol. He looked at the throne itself.
"A seat of power, built on a foundation of fear," Ravi observed, his voice calm. "It's a flawed design. The foundation is too weak."
"Don't take another step!" Silas screamed, his fear finally boiling over into a desperate rage. He fired the plasma pistol.
A glob of sun-hot energy, bright enough to scorch the eyes, shot across the room. It was a weapon designed to end gods and devils.
Ravi didn't even raise a hand. The bolt of plasma flew towards him, and just as it was about to make contact, it split neatly in two, flowing around his body like water around a stone. The twin streams of energy slammed into the wall behind him, vaporizing huge chunks of reinforced concrete. The room shook from the impact.
Silas stared, his last hope turning to ash. The weapon wasn't missing. The target was simply refusing to be hit.
"My turn," Ravi said.
He started walking forward, his footsteps measured and unnervingly calm.
Silas fired again. And again. And again. He emptied the weapon's entire power cell in a frantic, screaming barrage. Each shot parted around Ravi, leaving him utterly untouched while destroying the room behind him. The throne room, Silas's sanctuary of power, was systematically torn apart by his own weapon.
When the pistol finally clicked empty, Ravi was standing directly in front of him.
He gently took the superheated weapon from Silas's nerveless fingers and placed it on the floor. He looked at the terrified, sweating man, the so-called Finger of the Pale Hand, now reduced to a trembling wreck.
"You were the first name on the list," Ravi said. It was not a boast. It was a statement of completion. "Now, you will give me the others."
"Go to hell," Silas spat, a final, pathetic act of defiance.
Ravi's expression didn't change. "I don't need you to speak," he said softly. He raised his hand and placed two fingers on Silas's forehead, just as he had with the guard in the lobby.
But this time, it wasn't a gentle tap.
Silas's world dissolved into a firestorm of pure information. He didn't just see Ravi; he felt him. He felt a consciousness so vast, so ancient, it was like a single drop of water trying to comprehend an ocean. His own mind, his secrets, his memories—they weren't being taken; they were being effortlessly absorbed. He saw everything. The names and locations of the other four Fingers. The protocols to access the Oracle's outer sanctum. The hidden hierarchies of the Pale Hand.
And he saw something else, deep within the core of Ravi's being. A glimpse of his true nature. He saw dying stars and silent, black galaxies. He saw a cosmic law given form, a principle of balance that had existed long before humanity had even learned to fear the dark. He saw a god. Not a god of creation or destruction, but a god of equilibrium. A god who had sealed himself away, only to be awakened by the world's desperate screaming.
The psychic contact lasted for less than a second. For Silas, it was an eternity.
When Ravi removed his fingers, Silas collapsed to the floor, not dead, but utterly broken. His mind was wiped clean, his consciousness scoured away by a force it could never hope to contain. All that was left was a drooling, empty shell, his eyes staring blankly at a world he no longer recognized.
Ravi stood over the empty man, having acquired all the information he needed. The next steps on his path were now clear. He turned and walked towards the hole in the door, his task here complete.
As he was about to step through, a small, cracked voice spoke from the floor.
It was Silas. A single, fractured piece of his ego had survived, clinging to a final, burning question.
"Why…?" he rasped, his voice barely a whisper. "Even if you win… even if you burn it all down… this city… this world… it will never thank you. They'll fear you more than they ever feared us. You won't be a hero. You won't be forgiven."
Ravi paused in the doorway, his back to the broken man.
He didn't turn around. He didn't need to. His words filled the ruined throne room with a chilling, absolute finality.
"I didn't come here to be forgiven."
With that, he stepped out, leaving the empty shell of Finger Silas to his fate in the silent, darkened tomb he had built for himself.
Up on the surface, Ayla watched from a stolen van parked two blocks away as the first emergency vehicles began to arrive at Kasai Tower. Her comms had been silent for ten minutes, and it had been the most terrifying ten minutes of her life.
Then, her laptop screen, which had been dark, flickered to life. A single text file appeared on the desktop. It was titled: THE LIST.
She opened it. Inside were four names, four locations, and detailed dossiers on the remaining Fingers of the Pale Hand. Below that was a single, chilling message.
[ First one down. Next is Archon Valerius, the Banker. He controls their money. Without funds, an organization withers. Prepare. ]
Ayla let out a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding, a strange mix of terror and exhilarating triumph flowing through her. She looked from the list on her screen to the imposing, dark tower where a god had just walked out of the basement.
The Slaughtered Ladder was just the beginning. The whispers of the Black Crown were about to become a storm that would shake the world. And she was standing in the eye of it.