Solborn: The Eternal Kaiser

Bosch sat with his elbows against the carved arms of the chair, chin resting against steepled fingers. Beyond the window, the sea stretched in a brilliance that almost mocked him. It was too calm, too endlessly blue, its rolling shimmer a lie over what lay beneath. He knew better. He knew what slept there, what had always slept there, what Rosaline's very soul had been born from.

And now, Supremes walked its depths, their hunger trailing behind them like oil spilling through the waves. He hated it. The thought of them near that place, the cradle of her Origin, made his stomach turn. It was as though they had dragged their filth across the sanctity of her very being.

The hinges groaned softly. The door opened.

She entered as if the air parted for her, carrying no sound but the soft sweep of her steps. Rosaline came to stand beside him, her reflection joining his in the glass. For a while, she looked at the sea too, her expression unreadable, carved of calm marble.

"Do not worry, Nymus," she said at last, her voice smooth and steady.

He exhaled sharply, turning his head toward her. "How could I not? Those creatures parade through your birthplace as if it were their hall to walk. They are indecent. Monsters in finery. There is not a shred of respect in them." His voice tightened, the bitterness slipping through. "And they act as if your hand were owed to them by right."

Her lips curved in the faintest smile, though her eyes remained on the sea. She sighed, tilting her head down toward him, blue hair spilling forward like a curtain. "The resistance must stand, Nymus. Even the kings' words have grown hollow. Everyone knows where power lies and who commands the tide of humanity."

She turned her gaze down, softening as it fell upon him. "You know this. That is why I agreed. Why I must stand with them."

Bosch's laugh slipped out, quiet yet carrying not a trace of joy. He leaned back in his chair, eyes half-shadowed, the sea's reflection dancing across his glasses. "In that, I must admit you are correct. My old friend… he may hold the crown, but ever since her birth, he has not commanded his race."

Rosaline tilted her head, a brow arched, amusement glimmering like light through deep water. "He might as well be her second biggest supporter of that monster, and yet you called him your friend."

Bosch let out a quiet breath, his smirk thinning into something closer to sorrow. "I did. And perhaps friendship is all that endures in the end—just fragments of who we were, before power twisted everything else." His voice lowered, heavy with reflection. "He was kinder then… and if that part of him still lives, I hold no shame in calling him my friend."

Rosaline's hand slipped over his, her fingers brushing against his knuckles with deliberate gentleness. "And you, Nymus," she murmured, her smile softening into something untouched by courts or Supremes, meant only for him. "Let the world bend to her, but my will bends only to you."

Bosch froze, his composure cracking beneath the weight of her words. His throat tightened, his eyes shining in a way no throne or crown could have done to him. He lifted their joined hands, pressing her knuckles to his lips in a reverence deeper than prayer.

"And I," he whispered against her skin, "Will carry that until the Infinite Sea itself dries out."

Rosaline bent toward him, brushing her forehead against his temple, her hair spilling against his cheek. The sea glimmered before them, hiding the abyss below, but Bosch felt none of its vastness in that moment. There was only her warmth, her voice, and the quiet miracle of her calling him by the name only she could.

"Nymus," she breathed, so softly it sounded like she was whispering a secret to him.

The sea stretched endless before them, but Bosch's eyes narrowed at something small: two dark specks etched against the pale horizon. At first he thought they were birds, no more than shadows cast in the sky. Yet as he leaned forward, his brows drew tight. No. Not birds.

Rosaline noticed his stillness. She followed his gaze, her lips parting slightly when she found what he had fixed upon. "What is it, Nymus?"

He shook his head slowly, confusion shadowing his sharp features. "They should not be there." His voice was uneasy.

Her eyes flicked from the sea back to him, faint lines of worry threading her brow. "Not be there?" she repeated, as if she could not reconcile his meaning. Rosaline knew better than anyone what it meant for him to question what he saw. Bosch did not mistake shapes on horizons. He did not doubt his own eye.

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She turned back, following his line of sight. The specks resolved, faintly, into figures—two beings suspended high above the ocean. Their silhouettes were unmistakable even at such distance. Lilian Eztil and Bargul Malis. The Supremes.

Rosaline's lips pressed into a pale line. "They should be speaking with my maker by now. Not lingering." Her tone was cool, but beneath it lay the tightness of disquiet. "Why would they…"

Bosch did not answer. The words caught in his throat, because even from so far, the tableau felt wrong. The air seemed heavy, thick with the weight of something that had not yet happened but already pressed against the world.

Then it happened.

High above the sea, Lilian lifted an arm. His body language carried no aggression, only a theatrical ease, as though the moment itself belonged to him. Bargul turned slightly, perhaps to speak, perhaps to look upon the ocean below.

Rosaline's breath caught. Bosch's nails dug into the chair's armrest.

The movement was swift, decisive, obscene in its simplicity. Lilian's arm drove forward, piercing through Bargul's back, bursting out through his chest. From this distance the detail was faint, but the act was unmistakable—an arm buried straight into the heart of a Supreme.

The world seemed to still. Even the sea forgot its rhythm.

Bargul froze, blood-red eyes wide in disbelief. His hands clawed instinctively at his brother's arm, but Lilian only leaned in closer, lips brushing his ear as if whispering a secret for no other soul to ever hear. Bosch thought he could almost see Bargul's body tremble.

And then Lilian closed his fist.

The heart burst in his hand like glass shattering, its light extinguished in a grotesque spray. Bargul's body convulsed before detonating into an explosion of green blood, so violent it tore the air apart in a hurricane. The sky was drenched in viridian, and the sea below hissed as the gore fell upon it, staining the waves like a plague of emerald fire.

Bosch's breath left him in a whisper. "Madness…" His hand trembled at the edge of the window, though his voice stayed low. "Even among monsters… This is utter madness..."

Rosaline's face had gone pale, her composure carved into ice, but her hand found his shoulder, steady despite the tremor he felt beneath her skin. Her gaze did not waver from the sky. "Supremes devouring Supremes… this was never part of the balance." Her voice dipped into something colder. "He dared to tear his own blood apart."

The explosion's echo rolled across the ocean, reaching them like the roar of an ancient beast. Bosch shut his eyes for a heartbeat, and in the darkness behind them he saw it too clearly, the arrogance in Lilian's stance, the way betrayal had looked almost like affection.

The roar followed after. Low, endless, like the groan of the world itself. Then the sea rose.

Not in waves, not in tides... No. The whole of it rose, lifted as though the horizon itself had been commanded to stand. A shape began to take form. Shoulders rose where waves once lay flat, vast ridges of water rolling into the shape of flesh. Arms uncoiled from the sea like storms given form, every movement dragging tides with them. Its head was no face at all, but a shifting crown of abyss and foam, features forever dissolving, forever reforming. The ocean had remembered it was not an ocean, but a body, an ancient body, older than perhaps the entire world, and now it stirred with the wrath of something that had only been sleeping.

The Great Old One. Her beginning. Her blood. And now, it was poisoned. Bargul's ruin ran through it like venom, staining blue into green, writhing light into sickness. Its scream split the sky, a sound like mountains drowning.

And Rosaline screamed with it.

She fell to her knees, her body wracked with spasms, green welts bursting across her skin like firebrands. Bosch was already there, catching her before she struck the floor. "Rosaline!" His voice cracked, hands frantic at her face. "Stay with me, stay with me—"

Her nails raked his sleeves, her mouth open in agony, yet he could do nothing but hold her. He pressed her tight against his chest, whispering her name like he was praying to her. "Rosaline, Rosaline—"

Outside, Lilian hovered untouched by the chaos. His gaze never left the sky, even as the god-shape towered over him, preparing to hurl its wrath upon the world. A tear slid free, gleaming strange on his face.

"What I do for love…"

His claws bit into his palm, blood falling like rubies into the sea. From it, steel was born: first a shimmer, then a hilt, then a sword that breathed as though bound to him since birth.

"Lingchi," he called out. the name of his Sol-Weapon

The Great Old One swelled, no longer an ocean but a god of tides. Sol bled from its frame like burning suns, enough to sink continents, enough to strip kingdoms from their foundations with a single exhale. The horizon buckled beneath its weight.

But all Lilian needed to do, was swing his sword once.

The heavens split. The sky was carved into threads of light, a storm of slashes too fast to number and too absolute to resist. The titan staggered, then split apart like cloth torn with scissors, its vast body unraveling into ribbons of green water. For a moment it screamed, before silence took it, its corpse falling back into the sea that had once been its skin.

Inside the house, Rosaline's voice faltered too. Her body went slack in Bosch's arms, her skin blooming first green, then bleeding redder and redder with each drop of blood that fell from Lilians hand, until it seemed her very veins were turning against her.

For a breathless moment, Bosch did not move. Did not think. The universe itself seemed to wait, holding its breath alongside him. Then the sound broke loose.

A scream, raw, jagged and inhuman tore through the room. It ripped from his chest like steel grinding against stone, shattering the calm he had built his life upon.

"ROSALINE!"

The sea outside lay calm once more, waves settling as though nothing had risen, as though no god had died. But Bosch's world had ended. And in that silence, only a single heart stopped beating, but two souls died.