All Chapters of THE THRONE OF THE NINE HEAVENS : Chapter 71
- Chapter 80
199 chapters
CHAPTERS 71: THR MAW OF THE WORLD
The sky wasn't falling; it was being inhaled.The "Final Gate" didn’t just open—it unspooled. The golden geometry of the rift shattered, replaced by a panoramic vista of raw, pulsing throat. Continent-sized lips pressed against the edge of the atmosphere, and the "Gate" hummed with the sound of a trillion starving voices. It wasn't a doorway. It was a mouth, and New Earth was the first course."Elias! The gravity is reversing! The transport is being pulled into the rift!" Mira’s scream was nearly lost in the atmospheric roar. She was clinging to a jagged piece of marble, her legs dangling over a three-mile-deep fissure."I see it!" I roared. I didn't reach for her with my hands; I reached with the Nil. I slammed Aethelgard into the shattered bedrock, anchoring us with a tether of absolute darkness. "Merchant! Tell the fleet to ignite their cores! If they don't fight the pull, they’re just appetizers!""Sire, the Imperial ships are venting atmosphere! They’re leaderless!" the Merchant’
CHAPTER 72: THE SOVEREIGN UNION
The atmosphere was a soup of black bile and burning oxygen. I hit the ground in the ruins of the National Mall, my Nil-shield shattering upon impact. I didn't have time to check for broken bones. The sky was still a panoramic nightmare of Abyssal throat, and the Imperial Fleet was spinning out of control above us like a hive of headless wasps."Elias!" Lydia was there, pulling me from the crater. Her face was smeared with soot, but her eyes were sharp. "The flagship’s explosion stalled it, but the entity is reaching for the Moon now. If it cracks the Anchor, we lose the gravity stabilizers.""I know," I wheezed, coughing up a mouthful of gold-flecked blood. "Merchant! Are you still alive in that tin can?""Barely, Sire!" the Merchant’s voice crackled through a salvaged comms-relay. "But we have a bigger problem. The Imperial generals are prep-ping for a 'Scorched Earth' retreat. They’re going to nuke the atmosphere to mask their jump to hyperspace. They’re leaving the civilians behind
CHAPTER 73: THE FIRST BITE
The sky didn't just rain; it bled shadows.The vibration of the Sovereign Union’s repulsion field was holding the "Mouth" at bay, but the entity had found a loophole. Thousands of obsidian streaks—distorted, elongated shapes that mimicked the Thorne silhouette—tore through the atmosphere. They didn't fall like meteors; they dived like raptors, their shrieks bypass-ing the ears and vibrating directly into the subconscious."The shield is holding against the Abyss, but these things are small enough to slip through the frequency gaps!" the Merchant’s voice crackled, frantic. "Elias, they’re targeting the Qi-nodes! If they take out the ground-uplinks, the whole field collapses!""I see them," I wheezed, my knees buckling under the weight of the planetary link. "Lydia! Vane! The temple perimeter! Don't let a single shadow touch the spire!""We're on it!" Lydia’s voice was a sharp blade in the chaos.Outside the temple, the National Mall had become a slaughterhouse. I watched through the pa
CHAPTER 74: THE TRAITOR'S PRICE
The silence was the worst part. After the tectonic roar of the Abyss, the sudden, airless quiet of the National Mall felt like a burial shroud. I stood at the center of the New Temple, my hands fused to the golden filaments of the altar, watching the Moon. It didn't look like a satellite anymore; it looked like a great, weeping eye of violet rot."Merchant! Report!" I screamed, my voice cracking through the telepathic link. "Why is the Anchor rotating? I thought Julian was locked in the core-cell!""He is, Sire, but the Abyss didn't break the cage—it used the bars!" the Merchant’s voice was hysterical. "The black bile from the entity’s finger... it didn't just hit the surface. It’s a sentient carrier-wave. It’s hijacked the Anchor’s targeting sub-routines. The Moon isn't our battery anymore, Elias. It’s a gun pointed at our heads!""General Vane! Move the fleet!" I roared. "Intercept that beam!""With what, Thorne?" Vane’s holographic face was washed in a sickly purple light. "The *Ve
CHAPTER 75: THE HUNGER GROWS
The Moon was a shattered eye, weeping violet dust into the vacuum, and the "Mouth" was recoiling in a fit of cosmic indigestion. But the silence that followed Julian’s sacrifice lasted exactly four seconds. It was broken not by the Abyss, but by the clinical, high-frequency hum of ten thousand warp-drives tearing into our reality."Merchant! I thought the Imperial backup was six days out!" I roared, my hands still fused to the New Temple’s altar. The feedback from the Moon-Anchor’s destruction was cooking my nerves, but I couldn't let go. If I dropped the ground-link, the Union’s repulsion field would dissolve, and the "Mouth" would finish its meal."This isn't the backup, Elias!" the Merchant’s voice was a frantic screech over the comms. "It’s the Council of Deletion! The High Arbiters! They aren't here to fight the Abyss—they’re here to 'Sanitize' the sector! They’ve marked Earth as a Level-5 Contamination Zone!""Sanitize?" Lydia stepped into my line of sight, her face pale as she
CHAPTER 76: THE DEAD RISE
The white-hole event had stabilized, but the silence that followed wasn't peace. It was the heavy, suffocating pressure of a world whose soul had been bruised. I stood in the epicenter of the National Mall, my silver-grey skin humming with the residual radiation of the Council’s strike. The "Mouth" was gone, but the sky remained a bruised, oily purple, like a hematoma on the face of the universe."Elias! Look at the Temple!" Mira’s voice was a jagged shard of panic.I turned. The New Temple—the anchor of the Sovereign Union—wasn't just smoking. The golden filaments that had connected me to the 1st Legion were turning black, vibrating with a high-pitched, harmonic whine. Beneath our feet, the ground began to ripple. It wasn't an earthquake; it was a rhythmic, pulsing heave, like a chest trying to draw breath."The repulsion field is drawing from the mass graves," the Merchant’s voice crackled, his signal fading in and out. "But the Abyss left a gift before it recoiled. A parasitic code
CHAPTER 77: THE EMPRESSES GHOST
The balcony of the Thorne Imperial Palace smelled of night-blooming jasmine and the ozone of a dying world. I stood there, clutching a glass of vintage nectar, my hands shaking. This wasn't a memory; the textures were too sharp. The weight of the silk on my skin was too real."The audit is a circle," I whispered, the glass shattering in my grip."Elias? You’re bleeding. Again."I turned. Empress Selene stood in the doorway of the ballroom. She wasn't the ragged echo I’d seen in the ruins of the *Lunar Sovereign*. She was in her prime—a goddess of silver and light, her eyes reflecting a future she had already sold."Mother," I said, the word tasting like poison. "Faceslap of the century: You look a lot better when you aren't trying to turn me into a battery."Selene tilted her head, a frown marring her perfect features. "What a strange thing to say. You’ve had too much nectar. The coronation is in an hour. The Council is waiting to see the New Sovereign.""The Council is a pack of need
CHAPTERS 78: TOTAL ECLIPSE
The sky didn’t just go dark; it vanished.The sun didn’t set; it was snuffed out like a candle in a gale. Above the ruins of Washington D.C., the bruised purple of the Abyssal aftermath was replaced by a void so absolute it felt physical. This wasn't the "Void" I commanded—the clean, cold deletion of the Nil. This was a suffocating, oily blackness that smelled of wet earth and ancient metal."Merchant! The sun! Did the entity swallow the sun?" I roared into the comms, my voice echoing off the hollowed-out ribs of the New Temple."Negative, Sire! The sun is still there, but the light isn't reaching the crust! There’s a spatial membrane wrapping the entire planet!" The Merchant’s voice was a frantic staccato. "It’s an eclipse, Elias, but not from a moon. Something is *draping* itself over the world!""The obsidian barge," Lydia whispered, her hand trembling as she pointed toward the horizon.I saw it. Emerging from the total dark was the ship I had seen in my vision—a massive, jagged sl
CHAPTER 79: THE VOID EMPEROR'S DECREE
The transition through the Final Gate wasn’t a journey; it was an anatomical dismantling.I was no longer a man of flesh or even a Sovereign of Nil. I was a stream of raw data being pulled through a needle’s eye. Around me, the timeline of the Thorne Empire lay exposed like a flayed nerve. I saw the fall of the High Priest, the shattering of the Moon-Anchor, and the first time I held Aethelgard—all of it flickering in the violet static of the Abyss.**[Warning: Chronological Anchor Lost.]****[Status: Void Emperor Protocol merging with Temporal Core.]**"Merchant! Lydia!" I tried to scream, but I had no lungs. My voice was a ripple in the fabric of the Null."They can't hear you, Elias," a voice vibrated through my essence.The Shadow-Thorne—the manifestation of my family's collective debt—was swimming alongside me in the stream. He was a jagged streak of obsidian light, his four wings now spanning across decades of history. Every time his wing touched a moment in my past, that moment
CHAPTER 80: THE BALCONY
The humid air of the Thorne Imperial City felt like a physical weight against my skin. It was the scent of night-blooming jasmine and expensive cigars—the smell of a world that didn't know it was about to burn. I stood on the marble balcony of the High Palace, my fingers gripping the cool stone.I looked at my hands. They were smooth, unscarred, and tan. The black veins of the Void were gone. The silver-grey pallor of the Emperor was gone. I was twenty-two years old, the Golden Prince of a dynasty that owned half the stars in the sky."Elias? You’ve been out here for twenty minutes. The High Inquisitors are starting to think you’ve got cold feet."I turned. Sarah stood in the archway, her gown of liquid gold shimmering under the chandeliers. She looked radiant. She looked human. She looked like the woman who would, in five minutes, whisper the secret of the "Eye" into my ear and trigger a century of planetary slaughter."Faceslap of the century," I whispered, the words feeling foreign