An Eldritch Legacy: Sin & Sacrilege

At long last, she stood before the throne forged of agony and hollow madness. Its form curved like the grand designs of fate, its surface etched with the serenity found only at death's crossroads.

It sang—a beautiful hymn that veiled its madness in a deceptive elegance, a beauty it should never have possessed.

It had no end, yet it seemed to fit her perfectly. At first, she had thought it was built for giants that dwarfed the skies, but now it felt no different from the star she had seen upon arriving, looming yet no greater than a singular dot, a paradox of existence that made her mind reeling in all things delirious. Speaking of the star—it was gone. Its looming presence had vanished, leaving behind a canvas of crimson darkness.

The land barren and cracked with bone ashes as the first layer of earth. She looked at the stretch of land before her and she seemed to her naïve self, stand where she had at the beginning, looking out at the field of bones and memories.

Reaching this place had been agony.

Every step had cost her something, but she knew—this was just the beginning.

This time, she had lived the madness of gods—and entities so bizarre, existence itself had rejected them.

She had battled manifestations of what they had once been, beings whose very existence, from birth to destruction, had accumulated into singular, fractured forms. Fuelled by the power in her blood, she had withstood it all.

She had broken—but in breaking, she found something new. Madness. Insanity.

And madness was power.

The deeper she descended into it, the more limitless she became.

There was a flexibility to her mind, an unshackled nature that freed her from constraints others would have drowned in.

She had two facets within her:

One that followed everything to perfection—to a level that would drive any being to madness.

The other, a chaotic defiance, an unwillingness to be bound by reason or law.

Anything was valid.

Madness was freedom.

And of the two paths, she chose.

She chose madness that was chaotic, a defiance and unwillingness to be bound by reason or law, for her blood called to it.

She knew, instinctively, that had she chosen the other… she would never leave this place. She would forever walk an edge that was never meant to be.

------

The Battlefield Had Changed.

What had once been a graveyard of bones and blood had shifted, merging with the realm she had arrived in before.

The beautiful silence held the leash that bought the penetrative chaos, of insanity pulling it, nurturing it, coaxing it in ways she found beautiful, it felt like a dance between long lost lovers, beautiful and serene.

A love caked in despair and insanity.

Now, tombstones stretched beyond sight, standing as solemn sentinels.

And for every tombstone, a figure in armour stood guard.

She could not yet see what they represented, they were vague at most hidden within a realm of mystery she found intriguing at best. But she knew—with time, they would reveal themselves.

But among them, twenty stood apart.

Unlike the towering gods of stone and steel, these figures were small—so inconsequential that a mere breeze from the others could shatter them.

And yet, they felt infinitely more significant.

All the armoured beings standing guard next to the tombstones wore bone armour of obsidian, silver, and jade, covered in ancient scripts that whispered of forgotten madness and insanity born of despair and the weight of eons.

Their eyes were stars, radiating a deep silver light—dark, ominous, yet majestic.

They were not identical, though their armour made them appear so. She had seen them before.

Fought them before.

Lived their lives before.

And she felt the weight of their broken minds resting upon her crown. Her very hair sang their names.

But still, they knelt. Silent. Unmoving.

She knew them, yet she did not.

Familiar, yet alien.

She felt a subconscious pull—a need to sit.

And before she even realized it, she had taken her rightful place upon the throne.

The World Trembled.

The realm itself shook at its very foundations.

A multitude of voices—ancient, powerful, unwavering—spoke in unison.

"QUEEN OF SILENT DEATH."

"DAUGHTER OF HOLLOW MADNESS… QUEEN CLETUS EREBANE."

"WE, THE DEATH GUARD, ARE AT YOUR SERVICE."

She looked up.

The countless armor-clad figures had knelt, their heads bowed.

The name they spoke was unfamiliar.

Her mind should have held onto it.

But somehow, it did not.

And yet, when she opened her mouth, the words came without thought—

"Rise… and retake what was once mine."

-----

To have gods kneel before you, to hear divine voices sing your name—

No sane mind could withstand it.

The sheer majesty of their presence, even in death, was something no mortal, nor even god, could truly comprehend.

And when one considered the madness they endured before they were culled…

It was a horror beyond horror.

She felt a malevolent pride slither through their ranks—a dark, ominous legacy awakening within them, it latched onto the pride they once held in their lives before pulling it out like tender shoots to be nurtured, and though the process seemed slow, she felt that the next time she saw, them they would have the presence of the beings she had battled a one too many times before.

Now, seated on the throne, she could feel the corruption creeping through her inheritance, at first she only had vague feelings at best, hidden within her mind that something else was happening, but now she could feel it, with a clarity, that came with completion of the trial.

Did she understand it?

Perhaps.

But she did not show it.

She gazed upon the army of gods, clad in armour that bore the weight of her reign.

And she wondered—what would she do with this power?

Existence itself felt too small.

Astrea was ruled by a single god, but here she sat, wielding an army of them, that would obey her every whim.

Emptiness and hollow empathy could go fuck itself….when there was so much carnage to be spread, who had time, to sit there and mop about looking at the world listlessly like a broken doll.

She would never forget her life prior but she was a new person now, just like these gods, or whatever most of them were, the memories of their past would haunt them, but they would become new people.

But something was missing.

She had access to only twenty—the ones before her.

Why?

Then, realization struck.

The mercenaries….

She had taken their lives—brutally, mercilessly—and in doing so, had forged a connection.

For her army to rise, there must be sacrifice.

The mercenaries had been the sacrifice she needed for these twenty to gain a semblance of their former, glory, and soon with her reign they would write new stories, and they past would only work as a frame upon which they would build far more power in the future to come.

And yet, something was still incomplete.

They were no longer of Creation's domain.

For the dead and the forgotten to walk beneath creation's light again—

They had to be born.

She knew the answers, but how to do it, was something her young mind could not consider.

For goodness sake, the girl was only eight at the moment, she was nowhere knew able to make decisions of that level, she may have lived eons through the lives of gods, but seeing was something different compared to using that knowledge, some of it being locked away in the deepest recesses of her mind.

After all this she simply wanted to be a child.

The weight of it all pressed down upon her.

The exhaustion of her trial, the sheer magnitude of what lay ahead.

There were more trials to come—

Trial of Water. Trial of Wind. Trial of Stone.

And if this was the first…

Then what nightmares awaited her in the rest?

Her body sank into the throne, the darkness of her mind swallowing her whole.

Her legacy was awakened, her power sublimated, and many other things she could not quite feel properly as she lacked proper information, but she would have to ask her new father, for it he would not refuse his daughter….right ?

That brought a smile to her face as she wondered what new ways to tick him off she would come up with.

But as she drifted into unconsciousness…

She realized—

She did not know its name.

Her legacy, she did not know its name!...

---------

… A Whisper Echoed.

A sigh.

"My daughter, my sweet little girl. Mother is coming to get you soon. Be a good little queen for your father…"

"I have missed you so much."

A soundless sob rang through the legacy world.

And for a moment, the realm wept and cracked at its foundations….

Then a ripple manifested from nowhere filtering through the realm with impunity

And when the ripple faded—nothing seemed to have changed.

Except…

The air itself felt different.

Brighter.

More vibrant.

And yet, the power radiating within it—

Was infinitely more dangerous.