I Own the Multiverse's General Store!

The throne did not feel like a seat, nor did it feel like a crown —

it felt like an altar upon which every version of Lucius, from every fragment of reality and lifetime, was laid bare and burning.

The cosmos did not applaud.

It knelt.

The moment he sat upon the jagged ivory structure — formed of splintered timelines and ossified paradoxes — the sky above the Memory Spire fractured like stained glass under a god's scream.

Shards of starlight scattered across the horizon.

Space quivered. Time choked. The Realms slowed their breath in unison.

A whisper rippled through the air, not of joy, not of welcome — but of wary acknowledgment.

Lucius had not just inherited the crown.

He had conquered destiny to earn it.

And Walter, old and proud and silent beside him, lowered his head — for the first time in millennia — not as a servant, but as a warrior saluting the one soul who had managed what none before him could.

The throne pulsed once beneath Lucius's body, as though tasting the signature of his soul.

He saw visions.

Ten thousand worlds unraveling.

A hundred thousand queens kneeling.

Countless civilizations crying out in war and in worship — some that had not yet come into being.

And within them all, echoes of the traitor-queen who had once usurped this same seat with cunning, cruelty, and a kiss meant for a blade.

Lucius's knuckles whitened.

The name rose to the surface of his mind not through memory — but through the will of the throne itself: Virelya.

The Betrayer.

A name blackened with fire in Walter's mouth every time it was spoken.

A name whispered by the multiversal winds as if afraid to say it too loudly.

She who cast down the King of Old — not in battle, but in bed, bleeding him dry as she wept false tears.

Lucius stood slowly from the throne, the mantle now wrapped fully around him — a living thing made of cosmic threads and stormfire.

And then he turned, descending from the altar.

The others waited below — each of his women, his warriors, his soul-bound heroines who had fought beside him and bled for his right to rule.

Alexia was the first to move.

The progenitor of all vampires looked at him not as a predator, not as a rival, but as something far more sacred: the axis around which her immortal hunger had found meaning. Her lips parted as if to speak, but no words came — just a sigh, deep and aching, and she knelt before him, placing her heart bare in her chest.

Lilith was next —

the jealous, vicious, glorious demoness who once vowed she would never bow, now kneeling second with a wry smile that could still curdle stars.

Her eyes shimmered, not with tears, but with bloodlust — eager to make his enemies suffer for every moment he had suffered.

Luna came third —

radiant, mysterious, her silver hair whispering through the wind like moonlight made flesh. She said nothing, only pressed her forehead to his hand and closed her eyes, as if she could hear the future through his pulse.

Then Morgana —

once wild and feral and unbroken — came forth with a proud lift of her chin, her pride folding softly into submission only for him, only for now.

She did not kneel.

Instead, she took his hand and pressed her lips to it, not as a servant — but as a queen who chose to stand beside her king of her own will.

And Romie Elowen —

fresh from the fires of nobility and betrayal — bowed last, her presence not diminished, but made stronger by her humility.

There was love in her gaze. But also calculation.

Lucius saw it. Welcomed it.

He would need that sharpness in the days to come.

"Your reign begins," Walter said quietly, stepping forward with an ancient scroll in hand — older than any written language, scrawled in runes that pulsed with reality-bending heat.

"Do you accept the Pact of Rule?"

Lucius took the scroll.

It melted into his hand.

No oath was spoken — the throne had already accepted him.

Suddenly — without fanfare, without warning — the world shuddered.

A ripple coursed through the spire, and then through the very foundations of the Multiverse.

Walter's eyes narrowed.

"She knows."

The words needed no explanation.

Virelya had felt the shift.

The false queen had tasted the changing tide in her bones.

And somewhere, seated on her throne of lies — built upon the corpse of a god she once pretended to love — she was preparing for war.

Lucius turned slowly, his cloak of multiversal threads now dragging behind him like a stormcloud ready to devour reality.

His eyes — no longer just human, no longer bound to one existence — flickered with dominion.

He spoke not to the spire, not to Walter, not even to the women beside him.

He spoke to her.

Across galaxies. Across time.

"I'm coming."

And somewhere, far beyond the stars, a glass of wine slipped from Virelya's hand and shattered against a floor woven from angel bones.

The King had risen.

And the end was beginning.

***

The silence that followed Lucius's declaration wasn't truly silence at all.

It was a hush woven from the tremble of unseen worlds, the gasps of gods-in-hiding, and the ancient, brittle fear that only tyrants and traitors could taste in their marrow.

The Memory Spire groaned beneath the shifting weight of fates rearranged.

Above, the sky had not healed. It bled softly — stars dripping like liquid diamonds down the black throat of the void, each one a witness to this coronation. Somewhere beyond the veil of known existence, time itself hiccupped, paused, and cautiously resumed, as if unsure how to proceed now that a King had returned.

Lucius descended the final step from the altar-like throne, his boots echoing across the smooth obsidian platform with the weight of inevitability. The women beside him had risen, their faces transformed — not into mere expressions of loyalty or awe, but into reflections of destiny accepted.

Alexia remained closest. She had always known this day would come, though she had once thought she might be the one upon that throne. But now, seeing him — forged anew in godfire and shadow — she realized she had never been meant to rule. She had been meant to love, to protect, and to follow. A tear traced the corner of her eye, not of sorrow, but of relief. For the first time in her eternal life, she felt safe.

Lilith exhaled a laugh — low, reverent, and dangerous. "About time," she muttered, stalking behind him with a hand resting on the pommel of her whipblade. "Now let's go kill a queen."

"Not yet," Walter said, his voice calm but edged with iron. "First — you must gather the Sovereign Keys."

Lucius turned toward him. "I already hold the throne."

Walter shook his head slowly. "You sit upon it. But you do not yet command it. Virelya has held her reign through deception and theft. She never completed the Trial of Keys — which is why her rule is cursed and brittle. If you wish to surpass her in truth, not just symbol, you must bind the throne fully to your will. That means finding the Six Keys of Sovereignty."

Lucius frowned, the cosmic cloak around his shoulders rippling like ink in water. "Where are they?"

Walter didn't answer.

Instead, he turned to the wall of the Spire — and with a wave of his hand, peeled it back.

Not stone. Not metal. Reality itself.

The wall dissolved into a window — no, a wound — opening onto the vast sprawl of the Multiverse.

Lucius stepped forward, the others gathering behind him, and stared into the infinite.

He saw it all. Worlds stacked like spinning coins in a gambler's palm. Realms where gravity wept, where fire flowed upward, where empires lived for a second and died for a millennium. Some were peaceful. Most were not.

And six of them pulsed faintly in the distance, like hearts buried in the ribs of stars.

"The Six Keys were forged by the first Multiverse King," Walter said softly. "Each one hidden in a world bound to a different law of reality. Each one guarded by something... unforgiving."

Lucius didn't flinch.

"Then that's where we go."

Before Walter could reply, a sharp, crystalline tone rang through the Spire. The scroll that had melted into Lucius's palm reignited, curling golden embers into the air. A map began etching itself into space before him — six burning points of light threading through a lattice of dimensions.

"They've awakened," Walter murmured. "They know the throne has been claimed."

Lilith grinned. "Let them come. We'll paint their gods in blood."

"No," Lucius said firmly. "We go to them."

And so began the Gathering.

First Destination: The Molten Lattice

The first Key — the Key of Ruin — was located in a realm called Azer-Orr, a place where stars were born screaming and died in silence. The entire world was forged from molten latticework, endless webs of fire and slag that churned like a living forge.

The moment the group arrived, the heat hit them — not just on the skin, but beneath it, inside the bones, like their very blood remembered being metal once.

They moved through cathedrals of flame, towers that pulsed with liquid iron, and seas of burning crystal.

At the center of the world was the Crucible Heart, where the Key was said to be suspended above an ever-collapsing sun.

But it was not unguarded.

A Titan of Cinders rose to block their path — ten stories tall, its body carved from blackened furnaces, its eyes two endless gouts of white-hot fire. It did not speak. It simply attacked.

Lucius met its charge head-on.

Steel clashed with sovereignty. The Titan struck with the weight of collapsing civilizations — and Lucius, newly forged in thronefire, met each blow with growing fury.

Beside him, Alexia unleashed storms of blood, vaporizing molten beasts that surged from the lattice.

Lilith flanked, using the terrain as a weapon — spikes of slag, walls of ash, daggers of heat.

Luna shielded them, chanting ancient moon-prayers that turned searing air into cold mist.

Morgana wove illusions into reality, splitting their forms so the Titan swung at phantoms.

And Romie… Romie was the one who saw the chain of heat nodes beneath the Titan's feet — a weakness invisible to all but those with the eyes of a tactician. Her voice cut through the battle: "Strike the core!"

Lucius obeyed.

One final leap — one final roar — and he drove his blade of condensed paradox into the furnace beneath the Titan's chest.

It shattered.

The Key of Ruin dropped into his palm, searing a symbol into the flesh — a spiral of burning chains.

One down.

Five to go.

But the next would not be so merciful.