Chapter 357: A good laugh

Chapter 357: Chapter 357: A good laugh

Liam’s breath stopped.

The body had been arranged in exactly the same pose as the portrait.

One arm rested along the throne, the hand hanging with relaxed authority near the carved edge, while the other lay across his lap. Heavy black robes fell in carefully constructed folds around his legs, draped with muted gold fabric over the arms of the seat, and the high collar was covered in intricate golden embroidery that spread across the chest in elaborate curling designs.

Even the jewelry was familiar.

The same formal severity.

The same imperial presentation.

But the man wearing it was no longer the beautiful emperor preserved in Felix’s painting.

Goliath had died old.

His body showed every year of it.

The face was unmistakable beneath the damage of age, sharing too much with Arik for Liam to mistake him even without the memories. The structure of the jaw remained strong, the nose sharp and proud, but the flesh had thinned over prominent cheekbones, and deep lines crossed his forehead and mouth. His once-golden blonde hair had turned almost entirely silver, longer than in the portrait and carefully arranged away from a face marked by exhaustion.

His hands looked worse.

The fingers resting against the throne were thin beneath preserved skin, the knuckles pronounced, as though power had consumed him from the inside before death ever reached him.

Liam understood.

Goliath had spent everything.

His ether. His body. Whatever years remained to him.

He had used all of it to force the Gates closed, bury Nuria beyond memory, and leave enough of his soul intact to find another life.

Arik stood beside Liam without moving.

The resemblance was horrifying precisely because it was incomplete.

Arik was the younger version of what sat behind the glass, black-haired, enormous, and alive, his golden eyes burning with a sovereign power Goliath’s corpse had long ago exhausted.

Liam reached for his hand.

"Arik."

His fingers closed around Liam’s immediately.

Then movement appeared behind the throne.

A man stepped into view.

White hair fell neatly around a face that had escaped the age displayed so brutally in the corpse beside him, pale clothing almost luminous against the black stone.

Felix

Standing beside Goliath as though seventy-seven years had been nothing more than an inconvenient wait.

He approached the throne from behind and laid one hand across Goliath’s shoulder with an intimacy that made Liam’s stomach turn.

Arik’s grip became painfully tight.

Felix looked through the glass directly at him.

Then he smiled.

"Welcome home."

Felix’s voice carried through the chamber far too easily.

Liam could not tell whether the glass was equipped with a sound system or whether Felix had simply threaded his voice through the old ether network, and at that moment he did not particularly care.

His attention remained on the corpse.

Goliath.

The man on the throne looked ancient in a way Arik never had, his body reduced by whatever impossible amount of power he had spent sealing Nuria behind the Gates. Silver had consumed hair that had once been golden blond, and the severe face from Felix’s portrait had collapsed into the exhausted features of someone who had forced himself far past anything a living body was designed to endure.

Felix stroked the dead man’s shoulder.

"You see now?" he asked softly. "What he did to himself?"

Arik said nothing.

Felix smiled.

"He chose this rather than remain with me."

Liam’s stomach tightened.

"He burned through nearly everything he possessed to close those Gates," Felix continued, moving around the throne with the familiarity of someone who had performed the same circuit thousands of times. "Years of his life. His body. His ether. Look at him, Liam."

Liam wished he would not use his name.

Felix noticed.

"You understand, don’t you?" His pale eyes settled directly on Liam. "You know what it is to love someone who believes destroying himself is preferable to accepting what you offer."

Liam’s fingers tightened around Arik’s hand.

That hit closer than he wanted.

Not because Felix was right.

Because Liam remembered being inside Felix’s influence and remembered the sensation of something foreign pushing into him, offering certainty while quietly trying to dismantle everything that made him himself.

Felix smiled at the reaction.

"You nearly became something magnificent."

Arik finally moved his head.

He looked at Liam.

"You all right?"

Liam exhaled slowly.

"Yes."

Felix laughed softly behind the glass.

"You still ask permission from him with your eyes, Goliath. Even now."

Arik looked back.

Felix spread one hand toward the corpse.

"I preserved everything for you. You should thank me," Felix said.

Arik stared at him.

Then laughed.

Quietly at first.

Liam turned toward him.

Arik’s head lowered slightly, black hair falling across his forehead as another laugh escaped him, warmer this time and utterly inappropriate for the solemn chamber.

Felix’s expression changed.

"You find this amusing?"

Arik looked up.

His golden eyes were glowing.

Bright enough that the old circuitry beneath the floor began answering, thin lines of gold spreading outward from his boots through stone that had waited decades to recognize its sovereign again.

"I was wondering where it went."

Felix stopped moving.

Arik looked past him toward the throne.

"My body."

The words sounded almost absurd.

Liam supposed reincarnation allowed for sentences normal marriages did not adequately prepare a person to hear.

Arik raised his free hand.

Felix’s eyes widened.

"No."

Arik snapped his fingers.

Red light erupted beneath Goliath’s preserved skin.

For one impossible instant, the old corpse remained perfectly still on the throne while crimson ether illuminated every channel beneath it, spreading through arms, chest, throat, and face like fire beneath parchment.

Then the body dissolved.

Silver hair lifted first, breaking into countless flecks of red light, followed by the lined face, embroidered robes, thin hands, and finally the entire frame that Felix had spent seventy-seven years preserving.

The empty clothing barely had time to collapse.

A torrent of crimson ether burst through it instead.

Felix screamed.

"NO!"

The glass did nothing to stop the ether.

It swept through the chamber wall as though material barriers were irrelevant, crossed the distance between throne and reincarnation, and struck Arik directly.

Liam flinched.

Arik did not.

Red ether poured into his mouth and nose, streamed through his skin, and vanished beneath black clothing in brilliant currents until Liam could briefly see crimson light tracing the shape of channels beneath his neck.