Solborn: The Eternal Kaiser

The world bled again, color draining like ink poured into water, until all that remained was a canvas painted in dread.

Above them, impossibly high, the heavens themselves were torn by two titanic presences. One orb shone with such ferocity that it was less a sun than the very concept of light made manifest, a sphere of Sol so large it mocked the true star overhead. Its brilliance rolled outward in waves, a tide of radiance so immense Bosch's very bones vibrated with its pulse. Across the horizon, far to the east, its rival hung suspended in the firmament: a sphere of grey-dark blue, its surface streaked with shadows that swam like serpents. Around it stretched a void so absolute it smothered even the idea of light, and when it throbbed, the shadows rippled across the sky as if they wished to devour the world whole.

The two colossi strained against each other, their collision carving the world into two domains—half drowned in burning daylight, half steeped in unbreachable night. The border where they met was a scar across existence, a clash so total it made heaven itself seem brittle.

At the foot of this cosmic battlefield, Bosch stood before the hilltop mansion, the great number "625" on its door now bleeding, shifting, until it hardened into new digits: 846.

He stared at it, and his lips parted with disbelief. Madness, he thought. All of this is madness.

Rosaline stood beside him, her gown moving in the Sol-storm winds, her hair catching fragments of light and dark as though the heavens fought for her silhouette. At her leg clung a small boy, no more than four years old, his hair dark like Bosch's, his golden eyes wide with a terror too large for his frame.

"Mommy," he whispered, voice quivering as he buried himself deeper into Rosaline's side, "Is everything… going to be alright?"

Rosaline knelt smoothly, cradling the child's cheek with her palm. Her smile was soft, luminous despite the chaos raging above. "Of course," she said, her voice calm enough to soothe the fracture of heaven. "Your father and I are very strong. There's nothing here that can harm you."

The boy's trembling slowed, though his eyes still darted upward at the clash of Sol above. He hugged her tighter.

Bosch watched them both, his wife and his son, so impossibly small against the war of gods, and for the first time in centuries, fear stabbed deeper than any blade could.

His mind clawed back through the years, piecing together the absurdity that had brought them here. An assassination attempt. On her.

He closed his eyes, recalling whispers carried through the city like plague—how a faction of desperate gods had struck at the most terrible being in existence. They had failed. Of course they had failed. To harm her, the one whose word overruled even the kings, whose presence made thrones look like footstools was folly beyond reckoning.

But folly had birthed fire.

In retaliation, she had commanded the whole of humanity, not asked, not bargained, but commanded. Her will surged across every court, every guild, every bastion of men and saints. Humanity rose as one, not for survival, but for conquest. A war of butcher's work.

And in less than a year, it was done. Bosch had lived through countless campaigns, had painted halls of triumph that outlasted empires, but he had never seen such scale. Ninety percent of the gods were slain. Entire pantheons erased in weeks, their temples left as gutted carcasses while her hand alone culled them like sheep. Those who hid in their domains, who had asked for no followers, who sought only to keep their fragment of reality intact... None escaped. She slew them in bulk, like a farmer threshing wheat.

And still, Bosch thought, the slaughter did not slow.

At last, the impossible had come. The surviving gods, stripped of arrogance and thrones alike, had bent knee to one lord alone: Death. The God of Death. And under his black standard, the remnants of divinity gathered, forming the last pantheon.

Their desperation had spread like a contagion.

The Grounded, the eternal race, scions of titans and primal seas had declared humanity barbaric beyond forgiveness. From the southern waters came their supreme goddess, Titanica, and with her, an oath: that the grounded would no longer endure humanity's butchery in silence. For them, this was no holy war but a last defense of existence itself.

Bosch could still recall the way the proclamations were spoken in every city. For men, it was framed as triumph. Dominion. We are the apex, the Solborn, the masters of this sphere.

But for the other races, the elves, the dwarves, the dragons, even the forgotten tribes that dwelt between cracks, it was survival or extinction.

The war of gods and men had entered stalemate. And the reason…

Bosch's heart tightened.

From the side of the gods, seven beings had emerged from the carnage. Seven monsters who had not merely endured her purge, but had risen from its ashes as though fire itself had chosen them. Where pantheons crumbled and heavens burned, they stood tall.

They had ascended beyond godhood, transcending even the thrones their forebears had once worshiped. No longer bound by temples, no longer defined by offerings or prayers, they were the evolution of divinity itself, the raw essence of what remained when gods were stripped of weakness and clothed only in power.

They were called the Supreme Beings.

Seven stood on the side of the divine. Seven pillars of defiance, each greater than a pantheon, each a storm that could unmake worlds whole.

From the side of the Grounded rose their champions, beings so old and terrible that even the surviving Gods whispered their names in fear.

The first was a great dragon 'god', vast and incomprehensible, his scales said to bear the weight of entire continents. When he moved, the world beneath him groaned as though tectonic plates themselves bowed in awe. He was less a beast and more the embodiment of nature.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

The second and the third were more terrible: the Twins of the Abyss. Or perhaps not twins at all, but one consciousness sundered into two vessels, reflections of each other in endless recursion. To look upon them was to see the edges of reality fray. Their presence bent sky and stone alike, turning straight lines into spirals, making time quiver like a candle flame. They were the Great Old Ones, beings from beyond the veil, entities that had not been born of this world but had simply chosen to step into it, warping its fabric by existing.

And last came the three Vampiric Supremes. When they walked, shadows deepened and refused to lift, as though the ground itself knew it had been claimed. Each of the three was a sovereign unto themselves: one clad in thrones of bone, one in cloaks of endless night, and one crowned by a halo of bleeding stars.

These six were the barricade the cosmos had thrown up against annihilation. Not heroes, not saviors, but calamities that stood between greater calamities. Each of them was stronger than pantheons, each one worth a hundred gods. And yet, even they knew the truth: that survival against her was not likely...

But, together, they alone had managed what no one believed possible. They had endured her wrath. They had not won, but they had survived.

And survival, in this war, was triumph.

Bosch exhaled, the taste of ash lingering in his mouth. He had retired long ago, his brush traded for peace, his heart finally stilled by Rosaline's presence. He wanted no part in this apocalypse. No thrones. No wars. Only the quiet home.

But still, in secret, he pitied the gods. He supported them in the silence of his heart. Too many had been slaughtered who deserved no blade. Too many had died as caretakers of small domains—keepers of rivers, guardians of wind, shepherds of beasts. Their only crime had been divinity.

And now, his wife.

He turned to her, to the woman whose hand had steadied him for six centuries. She stood calm, but Bosch knew her too well. Beneath that serenity lay power, deep and ancient. For she carried something no king nor god dared touch: an artifact.

An artifact that could summon her creator.

Rosaline was a Grounded, born of the southern sea. And her master, her true beginning, was one of the Great Old Ones who slumbered beyond this world. For centuries, she had guarded that knowledge in silence. Now, with the world fractured and survival in question, she had agreed to bring it forth.

The Vampiric Supremes themselves had come seeking her. Two of them, had chosen this house as their destination. Not to fight, not to claim blood, but to speak. To plead, perhaps, for the presence of the Old One who had crafted Rosaline's soul.

Bosch's hand brushed the hilt of the ceremonial blade at his side. It was not a warrior's weapon but an heirloom. His days of painting walls for kings were done. His years of fighting wars not his own were over. Yet here he stood, Sol clashing with night above, waiting for the footsteps of beings whose very names terrified kingdoms whole.

And still, he thought, as his son clutched Rosaline's gown...

The air did not shift. The ground did not tremble. No heralding horns split the silence, no crack of thunder marked their arrival.

And yet, suddenly, they were there.

Two figures stood before Bosch and Rosaline, as though reality had merely forgotten to render them until that very instant.

The first, Lilian Eztil, wore elegance like a blade. His form was tall and aristocratic, white hair spilling like silk to frame a face too sharp, too perfect, almost mocking in its beauty. His coat of white and gold shimmered faintly, but not as fabric should, it was as if the very light around him bent to flatter his form. His lips curled into a smile that was equal parts invitation and insult, the smile of a man who never asked permission because he never needed to.

His eyes, swept across Rosaline with indulgence. He tilted his head, letting a single finger trail lazily down the air, as though caressing her without daring to touch. "My, my…" His voice rolled smooth as wine left to ferment for centuries. "So this is the one. The famed Rosaline… beautiful doesn't begin to do you justice." His tongue lingered on the word beautiful in a way that made it weird.

The boy clung tighter to his mother's leg. Bosch stepped instinctively in front of them both, his golden eyes narrowing.

Lilian only laughed, brushing imaginary dust from his golden gauntlet. "Oh? Protective already? How charming. But tell me, does she truly belong to you? Or do you simply imagine so, little painter?"

Before Bosch could summon a retort, the second one moved.

Bargul Malis was everything his counterpart was not—where Lilian dripped decadence, Bargul radiated severity. His hair, long and blood-red, fell in a river down his back, each strand gleaming as though woven from liquid crimson. His eyes were deeper still, bottomless pools of undiluted scarlet, no pupils, no whites, only the raw, endless hunger of blood itself.

If Lilian was temptation, Bargul was judgment.

When his brother leaned closer, fingers daring to brush the air before Rosaline's cheek, Bargul's hand flashed. Faster than thought, sharper than any blade forged by mortals, he slashed his own arm across Lilian's reaching hand.

The sound was wet and clean.

Lilian hissed, drawing his hand back with exaggerated flair, crimson welling from a cut that should have been shallow, yet bled as if from the heart. His laugh, however, did not falter—it deepened, curling into something delighted. "Always so cruel, Bargul. You wound me, in every way possible."

Bargul's voice followed. "You forget yourself." His gaze, burning, turned toward Bosch and Rosaline. "We did not come here to play."

Lilian licked the blood from his palm, his smile widening unnaturally. "Speak for yourself."

Rosaline's expression did not falter. The air around her seemed to steady at her will, as though even the rustle of leaves dared not intrude. She drew her son closer with a subtle motion, then rested her free hand upon Bosch's sleeve.

Her voice, when it came, was unshaken. Low, firm, with the cadence of one who had stood too often in gilded courts to ever kneel in darker ones.

"You would not have come unless the matter demanded it. So let us be rid of games. Speak."

"There is no need for pretense. You know why we stand before you. None but you can summon the one who made you."

Bosch's chest tightened, though his face betrayed nothing. He had prayed the whispers would wither in the shadows, that her bloodline would pass unseen by predators such as these. Yet now, inevitability stood upon his doorstep, clad in white and crimson.

Lilian Eztil broke the silence with a laugh. He raised his blood-streaked hand, gazing at the crimson as though it were the finest jewel ever cut, before dragging his tongue languidly across his palm. He tasted his own wound as though savoring a lover's kiss, then spread his arms wide.

"Do forgive my brother. He has always been married to solemnity. I, however—" his smile curved, "am married to beauty. And I must say, Rosaline, in all my centuries I have never seen it embodied so wholly as in you. Tell me, does Bosch's brush do you justice, or would you like to taste the sword of a more experienced man?"

Bosch stiffened, but before his breath could sharpen into words, Bargul moved—just the tilt of his head, the faintest narrowing of eyes.

"Enough, Lilian."

The elder brother's gaze slid toward Bosch and Rosaline at last. His eyes regarded them with a gravity that seemed to press the world thinner.

"We are not here to barter. Nor to plead. The war rises higher each day. The gods gather, Titanica sharpens her will, and humanity's fury burns too hot to be quenched. The scales falter." His voice was neither plea nor threat, but truth. Immutable. "The time has come. You will call your master."

The boy whimpered against Rosaline's dress. Bosch's hand fell to his son's shoulder, steady but tight, while Rosaline's calm never broke, though her fingers against Bosch's sleeve pressed with the weight of iron.

Lilian leaned closer again, his smile maddening in its softness, as though none of the world's weight mattered. "Do you hear that, my dear? Even the war itself bends to you. How delicious. The fate of gods and men alike, dangling from your lips, from your hands…" He inhaled slowly, as though the air around her was itself intoxicating. "From the blood that birthed you."

Bargul's reply was swift. "Enough."

The two stood there, one smiling, one still. Both terrible.