[Silthara Palace—The Next Dawn—Emperor’s Chamber]
The first light of morning seeped through the lattice windows of the Consort’s Wing—soft, muted, almost shy. It painted pale gold across the silken sheets where Levin still lay curled beneath the blankets.
He hadn’t slept deeply; his body rested, but his heart did not.
Levin opened his eyes slowly. The space beside him remained empty—cool, untouched—and though he expected it, the sight still tightened sothing small and painful inside his chest.
No tall serpent emperor curled protectively around him, no strong arm draped over his waist, and there was no warmth.
Just the faint lingering scent of lotus and sand. Levin sat up slowly, rubbing his eyes. He whispered into the quiet chamber:
"...I must not dwell on this." His voice was steady, but the ache beneath it was not.
He dressed himself without servants for the first ti since entering the palace. The process felt strange—silent, unfamiliar—without Zerat’s warm hands smoothing fabric or his deep voice murmuring, "Lift your arm, consort."
He tied the last ribbon alone, and sothing about that felt lonelier than the empty room.
Asha yawned from the foot of the bed, rolling onto his back. Lyserph lifted his head sleepily, flicking his tail in question.
Levin smiled faintly. "We should go," he whispered.
The palace was quiet as he walked—too quiet. Iru and the other attendants bowed, and knights stepped aside, but their gazes were uncertain... almost cautious.
Word had already spread.
The Malika would train for ten nights, and the Malik had slept elsewhere, but none dared speak of it aloud.
Only the eternal wind whispered between the pillars.
—fhhh—fhhh—
Almost like a sigh.
***
[Hall of Ancestral Study—Continuation]
The hall was warr than the night corridors—golden light filtering through tall sandstone arches carved with forgotten queens and ancient Malikas.
Long tables were arranged with scrolls, ink pots, carved tablets, and ancient serpent rings.
Naburash bowed deeply, "Malika... welco. This... is where all Malikas before you began their training."
Levin stepped inside quietly, his expression unreadable beneath the veil.
He looked at the scrolls—the responsibilities, the rituals, the judicial records, the spiritual decrees—and sothing inside him tightened again.
"I am ready," Levin said.
Naburash swallowed. "Malika, forgive , but... I must ask... did you rest properly last night?"
Levin paused, gaze drifting, and a small silence settled between them.
"...Yes," he lied softly.
Because his husband did not rest beside him, and his heart had not rested either, because at the ti Levin started to accept everything, his husband stepped two steps back, making him feel the bride of peace.
Naburash bowed his head; he did not question further. "Then let us begin the first of the ten nights."
He opened the first scroll, saying, "As you say, Malika."
"The Malika holds five pillars of responsibility:
Healing the empire, maintaining the ritual balance, judging disputes, managing infrastructure, and binding diplomatic peace."
Levin listened quietly, and his harsh ten nights had begun.
***
[anwhile — Deep Zahryssar Desert — Sa Ti]
The desert winds howled like starved spirits.
Hot, sharp, and relentless, they dragged grains of sand across the barren expanse—hissing against cracked stones and jagged dunes. No oasis lived in this place. No serpent or nomad wandered here by choice.
It was the dead stretch of Zahryssar.
A land forbidden, a land swallowed by ancient curses and in that death-still silence...a lone black serpent slithered across the burning sand.
Its scales swallowed the sunlight—inky, matte, unnatural, a thin parchnt was tied carefully at the end of its tail.
The wind grew colder as it crawled deeper.
Deeper.
Deeper.
Until the horizon broke—and the serpent halted before a massive, withered tree rising from the sand like a fossilized bone. Its trunk was hollow, bark ashen, branches jagged like claws tearing at the sky.
It was like a corpse of a tree.
Yet it waited.
The serpent froze, lifted its head... then its form rippled—bones twisting, scales dissolving—until a human stood in its place. An unremarkable man. Ordinary. Forgettable.
Exactly what the dead land required.
He bowed his head and whispered an incantation under his breath—words not spoken in Zahryssar for a thousand years.
"Khal’zeru... harath... open the path that bleeds shadow."
A long, ancient groan shuddered through the wood.
The tree split, folded and opened like a monstrous mouth—and behind it was not hollow wood, but a doorway carved from pure darkness.
A world of rot and ash breathed out as the man stepped inside.
***
[The Eclipse Hollow — Domain of the Dark Serpent Lord]
The world beyond the tree was swallowed by dim grey light—neither night nor day.Ash drifted like snow. Sand lay dead and black, and massive pillars of bone rose from the ground, carved with runes of old serpentine curses.
The air itself felt cursed—heavy, suffocating, ancient.
A presence lived here and it watched.
The man walked forward until he reached the center of a cracked plateau—its surface jagged like a serpent’s fangs.
There—Sitting upon a broken slab of obsidian—Was a Serpent man.
Long, black hair spilled around him like a pool of shadow. His skin was pale as dead moonlight, marred by ancient scars that pulsed with faint violet light. His eyes—half-lidded—glowed with a molten crimson hue, like suns drowned in blood.
And from his back, faint outlines of serpentine wings—tattered, ghostly—flickered with cursed smoke.
He sat utterly still.
Unmoving, as if carved from the void itself.
The ssenger dropped to both knees, forehead nearly touching the blackened sand.
"I greet... the Dark Serpent Lord Azhrakhaal," he whispered, voice trembling. "He who was exiled beyond the living sands."
The land reacted to that na.
The air grew colder.The ash swirled.The ground groaned as if in pain.
Azhrakhaal did not move... but the world did.
A crack split beneath him, adark pulse traveled through the sand. Even the bone pillars shivered.
The ssenger remained bowed.
Then—Azhrakhaal lifted one finger.
Just one, a ripple of black energy rolled through the hollow.
"Speak," the dark serpent lord murmured—his voice deep, rich, and layered with ancient venom.
The ssenger lifted the parchnt with trembling hands—the brittle scroll tied carefully at his front. Azhrakhaal extended one long, pale hand. The parchnt flew into his grasp as if pulled by invisible claws.
He unrolled it lazily, crimson eyes sliding over every line. Then—a smile, slow, twisted, born from old hatred and deeper hunger.
"So..." Azhrakhaal murmured, voice slithering like black smoke. "That silver serpent has punished his own consort... forcing him to claim the authority in ten nights."
The parchnt slipped from his fingers—Softly, floating.
Touching the cursed sand—FHHHHH—and igniting instantly into black fla. Its ashes curled upward like dying souls and disappeared.
Azhrakhaal leaned back against the jagged stone, eyes gleaming like molten garnets beneath shadowed lashes.
"Perfect." His voice rolled like a dark hymn sung beneath a blood-red moon. "While the silver serpent broods... sulks... and chokes on jealousy—"
His smile sharpened into a blade.
"—we strike."
He stepped forward, shadows trailing behind him like chained beasts.
"We shall kill this Malika..." his voice lowering, growing hungry, poisonous, delighted, "...just as we killed all the last one’s."
The ssenger flinched—fear coiling tight in his belly. Azhrakhaal circled him slowly, the cursed ground cracking under each step of his bare feet.
"And this ti..." he whispered near the ssenger’s ear, "...there shall be no mistake. No failure."
He turned away, smirking.
"Send the ssage," he commanded, flicking his fingers toward the dark horizon. "And whisper it to the ears of our shadows."
His voice dropped even lower:
"Failure... is no longer tolerated."
The ssenger bowed low, forehead sinking into the charred sand, "Yes, my lord."
Azhrakhaal was not finished.
"Kill the Malika," he said, the words soft but dripping with venom, "in a way that scars the Silver Emperor eternally."
His crimson eyes glowed—mad, ancient, vengeful.
"Kill him so thoroughly... so exquisitely... that the silver serpent never marries again. Let him wither. Let his bloodline end. Let him die without heir or hope."
The ssenger trembled, nodded, and stepped back—"Yes, Malik of Shadows."
Azhrakhaal’s head tilted, amused at the title, but the ssenger dared not look back as he fled into the darkness. When silence swallowed the hollow once more—Azhrakhaal stepped down from the obsidian rock, bare feet sinking into cursed sand that recoiled and cracked beneath him.
Darkness swirled around his feet, rising like talons of shadow. He lifted his face toward the invisible sky, and with a voice that echoed like a curse resurrected from the bones of the earth, he proclaid:
"The ti has co...Azhrakhaal the Forsaken..." His wings unfurled in a blaze of shadow. "...shall walk beneath the living sun once again."
A violent ripple of shadow burst outward—bone-pillars rattled, the dead sands groaned, and the hollow shuddered as though the world itself feared his rising.
Far away beneath the golden dos of Silthara Palace—bathed in morning light—Levin froze.
A shiver raced down his spine, cold and sharp.
A shiver with no source.
No wind.
No reason.
Only a whisper inside his bones—a whisper that sothing ancient and rciless...had begun moving toward him.
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