All Chapters of Throne of the Nameless. : Chapter 151
- Chapter 160
198 chapters
Chapter 151. The Ink Judge.
The prison smelled like wet limestone and regret, a really sharp contrast to how the city looked and felt. The kind that soaked into your skin and stayed there. Rhok sat on the cold stone floor with his back against a wall slick from dripping moss. He could still taste the crust of that stolen bread. Dry, hard, but warm, worth the arrest, barely.Footsteps echoed down the corridor. Two guards with twisted metal spears walked with a robed figure gliding down the hallway like she didn’t touch the ground. Her robes were ink black, soaked in moving script that crawled across the fabric like living calligraphy. A mask covered her face, porcelain white, inked with a single black dot on the forehead and lines trailing down the cheeks like tears, her mask bore no eyes and no mouth.She didn’t speak or rather, she didn’t have to.The guards pulled Rhok to his feet and shoved him forward.They led him through a narrow passage carved into the stone, glowing faintly with blue moss. The hallway op
Chapter 152. The Three That Rule.
Rhok woke with a stretch so exaggerated you'd think he was trying to dislocate every joint in his body on purpose. He cracked his neck, rolled his shoulders, and sat up with a groggy sigh that sounded like someone who’d just woken up in a spring fountain and not, in fact, on the hard, stone slab of a prison cell in a foreign, magic-drenched city.He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and looked around.Still in the same cell.Still no chains.Still no interrogations.And most importantly, he had somehow not ended up dead.“Wow,” he muttered, reclining back with his hands behind his head. “Five stars. Would get arrested here again.”He had slept surprisingly well. The floor was somehow heated. The air was oddly crisp. And he wasn’t sure if it was the lingering divine residue in his veins or just the city’s weird architecture, but even the silence felt... comforting.Some guards passed by at one point, peeked in through the small barred slit in the door and then, weirdly, just walked away
Chapter 153. A Boy with No Name.
Rhok was already regretting eavesdropping on the guards.Sure, at first it had been interesting, hearing about the Triarchy and their flashy titles. Zoryel, Master of Frost. Emek, the Embercaller. Tuwan, Lord of Storms. Big scary names, lots of elemental chest thumping. But then, like all men with too much time on their hands, the guards’ conversation had taken a hard left into the most boring topic possible, how bad their wives were in bed.By the third complaint, Rhok had decided the only thing more dangerous than the Triarchy was marriage in Seroth.He sat there in his cell, back against the cold wall, staring at the shadows dancing along the floor. He had been left alone since morning with no food, no questions, no beatings. The guards didn’t even seem to care he was here. It felt less like imprisonment and more like someone had told them, "Don’t touch him, he'll bite you."Boredom hit him like a slow poison. He started letting his mind wander, not into thoughts, but into the fain
Chapter 154. The Crawl Beneath.
The prison had gone quiet. That deep, heavy kind of quiet where even the air felt like it was holding its breath. The guards had done their last patrol for the hour, their boots fading into the distance until only the faint crackle of torches was left.Rhok leaned against the wall of his cell, his eyes half shut, letting the silence stretch. He could still feel the faint presence of Sayo, the boy with the too thin frame and eyes that looked older than his face should allow was sitting a few cells down to his right."You still there?" Rhok asked, his voice low.A moment passed. Then the boy replied, "Yeah."That still caught Rhok off guard. For someone who hadn’t spoken in years, Sayo didn’t stumble over his words or sound unsure. He spoke like the words had been waiting all that time, lined up neatly in his mind, ready to go."So," Rhok started, "tell me what else you know about this place. You’ve been here a while, right?"Sayo shifted, the sound of metal scraping stone as he moved.
Chapter 155. The Severed Shrine.
The tunnels narrowed as Rhok followed behind Sayo. The stale air clung to his throat, tasting faintly of rust and something older, something that had been rotting long before either of them had been born. The Crawl Beneath was no ordinary prison passage, it was a graveyard that had been hidden long from the world.Their steps echoed in strange ways. Sometimes a sound would travel far ahead of them, bending around corners and coming back distorted, like someone whispering their own words back in mockery. Other times the air swallowed noise completely, leaving only the scrape of their boots and the faint drip of unseen water.Sayo walked with his head down, not because he feared getting lost, but because looking around too much down here could mess with your mind. You might see something you shouldn’t, things that weren’t fully human anymore.They passed one such figure. A man crouched, hidden in the shadows, skin stretched tight over bone, a pale arm fused with what looked like a jagge
Chapter 156. The Phantom God.
The Crawl Beneath didn’t just get darker the deeper you went, it got… quieter. The kind of quiet that didn’t mean safety. It was the quiet of something listening.Rhok felt it in the shadows before he saw it, an odd warping ahead, like his own magic was bending toward a fixed point. He didn’t tell Sayo what he sensed, the boy had enough on his mind. He just kept walking, boots brushing the damp stone, weaving through narrowing tunnels until they widened again into a vast chamber.That’s when he noticed it.The light in the cavern didn’t behave like light should. It didn’t fade into darkness, it fractured, multiplying in strange ways. Every glint was sharper than it had a right to be, bouncing from one place to another.And then Rhok saw why.The cavern’s walls, the ceiling, even the floor, every inch was covered in mirrors. Not smooth, polished mirrors like a noble’s dressing room. These were warped, mismatched, and cracked in places. Some were perfect sheets of reflection, others lit
Chapter 157. Execution Eve.
After his encounter with the goddess, he thought it was a good idea to leave the crawl beneath and not keep searching around anymore, he held Sayo and melted into the shadows with him, teleporting themselves back to their prison cells.The shadows spat Rhok back into his cell like they were tired of carrying him. One moment he was in the mirror walled domain of Velmira, her voice still echoing in his skull, and the next he was standing in the familiar stink of stone, iron, and damp air.Sayo wasn’t far, Rhok could feel his presence the way a wolf can feel the heartbeat of prey through the snow. He had dropped the boy into his own cell before returning. A small courtesy. No need to drag him into what came next.Rhok sat down on the bench, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor. Velmira’s words swirled like smoke in his head."Amongst the gods, there are those who cheer for you." But cheering is not saving, he had to remember that.He almost smirked. Gods cheering for him, that was r
Chapter 158. Chains and Thunder.
Morning came to Zenyra Prison with the kind of stillness that felt wrong. Too still, too quiet, like the world had agreed to hold its breath just to watch someone die.That someone was Rhok.He sat in the middle of his cell, hands chained above his head with thick iron bands etched in runes meant to sever his connection to the shadows. The Black Tongue didn’t take chances. They had dragged him here the night before, beaten him just enough to make him look weak without actually breaking him, and told him the execution would be at dawn.He didn’t resist. He hadn’t even tried.In truth, he wanted to see how far they thought they could push this little performance. Maybe they believed killing him in public would send some sort of message. To who? The other prisoners? The gods? Whoever was listening?When the guards came for him, they were fully armored, masks covering their faces, spears tipped with silver blades that hummed faintly from the enchantments carved into them. A precaution, no
Chapter 159. A Burned Garden.
The rain didn’t follow them past the edge of Zenyra. The shadows carried them far enough that even the storm’s growl was little more than a whisper in the distance. By the time Rhok and Sayo surfaced from the black shadows of the earth, the air was dry, sharp with the scent of dust and something faintly charred.Rhok straightened, rolling his shoulders as the last traces of magical suppression faded from his limbs. “So... where are we going?”Sayo glanced over his shoulder, his hood drawn low, his feet were quick over the uneven ground. “Somewhere no one thinks to search. Somewhere the where gods watch… but only in like... small pieces.”“Vague,” Rhok said with a smile. “I like it.”They moved through a dead stretch of hills, the grass brittle underfoot, the wind carrying the ghostly hiss of something burning far away. The land here felt wrong, not corrupted, exactly, but as if it had chosen to reject life.Finally, the boy stopped at the crest of a ridge. Below them stretched a walle
Chapter 160. The Embercaller’s Eyes.
Rhok woke to the scent of smoke. Not the faint ghost of it that had clung to the garden all night, but fresh, alive and hungry. He sat up slowly, the world still in that blue gray hush before sunrise. Sayo was curled up a few feet away, half covered by his ragged cloak, breathing evenly.The plants were trembling. Their brittle stems swayed without wind, petals curled tight as fists. Beneath his palm, the soil was warm, thrumming like a war drum.Dawn.The first thread of sunlight broke over the ridge, and the garden erupted.Flames blossomed where flowers should have been, bursting from the stems in waves of crimson and gold. Heat rolled over him in a sudden tide, the air singing with the sound of burning. The ash dry petals unfurled into pure fire, their shapes flickering and shifting as if trying to remember they were once alive.Rhok’s shadow sense was flooded instantly. The flames didn’t have ordinary shadows, they twisted and writhed as if alive, their darkness bending at imposs