III.
DANTE
The Throne of the Forsaken rose from the dais like a monument to death itself.
Massive ribs arched overhead like cathedral vaults, curving inward to form a canopy of bone that seemed to breathe in the flickering light.
A towering spine formed the back, each vertebra the size of a man's head, while armrests were hewn from femurs so large they could only have belonged to giants or things that had never been human at all.
The entire structure gleamed in the twilight, fifteen feet of polished bone that commanded the hall.
But it was the base that drew the eye. Thousands of smaller bones woven together in patterns suggesting supplication. Hands stretching upward, frozen mid-grasp, as if the dead had clawed their way toward the throne and been trapped reaching.
The throne room stretched beyond the reach of torchlight, bone beams arching overhead and disappearing into shadows that moved with their own purpose.
The walls were lined with skulls—hundreds of them, perhaps thousands, arranged in neat rows from floor to ceiling.
Cold blue flames burned in their eye sockets, casting the hall in ghostly light that made the shadows dance.
Some of the skulls had too many eye sockets.
Some had jaws that hung slightly open, as if frozen mid-scream.
Columns of black marble rose between the skull-lined walls, carved with names of the forsaken dead in scripts that predated human memory.
The floor was a mosaic of teeth. Yellowed ivory and bone-white fitted together in spiraling patterns that pulled the eye toward the distant throne.
They crunched softly underfoot, no matter how lightly one walked.
Dante sat within this monument to death, black-gloved hands resting on bone armrests while his shadows pooled around the throne's base. Dark extensions of his will that seemed to merge with the reaching hands carved below.
No one approached closer than twelve feet. His courtiers, bound souls in court dress that had long since ceased to follow mortal fashions, formed their usual semicircle. Translucent but solid, they served without hesitation and never, ever tried to get closer to their lord.
They'd learned. Eventually, they all learned.
"The soul of Isabel Graves seeks judgment," his chamberlain announced from the great doors.
A young woman stepped forward, her dress once fine but now stained with soot and blood.
She knelt exactly at the boundary, but her shoulders didn't shake like most. When she lifted her head, her eyes held the hollow darkness he recognized: the look of someone who had stared into the abyss until it stared back.
"Speak."
Silence fell across the hall. Every soul present held whatever breath they still possessed, and frost began forming on the nearest torches.
"My lord, I thought I was clever." Her voice didn’t shake. "My family owed debts we couldn't pay. The moneylender said he'd forgive everything if I spent one night in the old Moore manor. Just one night. Prove it wasn't haunted."
The shadows around Dante's throne writhed.
"I lasted six hours." Her voice cracked. "The things that lived there... they didn't kill me quickly. They fed on me first. Made me watch them take pieces of my soul while I screamed for help that never came. I died begging for it to end."
Terror. Despair. Cursed death. She belonged here.
Dante had seen it a thousand times. The cruelty that turned ordinary deaths into forsaken ones. Someone always profited from manufacturing despair.
"The moneylender knew," she whispered. "He'd sent eight others before me. The manor needed feeding, and desperate people cost nothing."
Dante leaned forward. Every soul in the hall pressed backward.
"You want revenge."
"I want him to know what I felt. I want him to die the way I died—"
"No."
The word echoed across the hall. Isabel's face crumpled.
Dante waited until she looked up at him again. Until those desperate eyes met his.
"Your wants are irrelevant." His voice was flat, empty of anything that might be mistaken for compassion.
"You died screaming and forsaken. That terror is the only thing about you with value, and I will use it.
The moneylender will live out his natural life and die peacefully in his bed, wealthy and content.
Your suffering will power the ward-barriers that protect the realms. That is your purpose. That is all you are worth."
His hand tightened on the armrest. Bone creaking under his grip. Mercy only prolonged suffering. He'd watched it happen too many times to count. Better to break them quickly than let hope fester.
He let that sink in. Watched hope die in her eyes all over again.
His fingers relaxed on the armrest. The mask he'd perfected centuries ago remained firmly in place.
"You will serve in the Tower of Screaming Winds for one thousand years, where every soul who enters will experience your final moments on an eternal loop. Be grateful your death serves a function. Most don't."
The Tower was the cruelest assignment in his domain.
A place where the dying moments of the terrorized played endlessly, maintaining the ward-barriers through concentrated fear.
Those sent there didn't fade, didn't find peace, didn't even have the mercy of forgetting.
They relived their worst moments forever, their agony powering the realm.
It was necessary. The barriers required a specific frequency of terror to maintain stability. Without souls like Isabel feeding power to the system, the boundaries between life and death would collapse. Thousands would die.
One soul's eternal torment weighed against the extinction of the realms.
The balance was simple. His feelings about it were irrelevant.
Isabel's mouth opened in silent horror. No sound came out. The weight of eternity had crushed whatever protests she might have offered.
"Remove her," he said. "Before her despair becomes tedious."
Two shadow-guards materialized and lifted Isabel from the floor. She didn't resist. Couldn't. The certainty of her fate had broken her all over again.
The court watched in silence as she was led away. No one offered comfort. In the Court of the Forsaken, hope was a lie, and everyone learned that eventually.
Dante settled back into his throne, shadows coiling tighter around the base. Another soul broken. Another thousand years of screaming. Another piece of his realm's terrible function fulfilled.
He'd stopped counting how many he'd sent to the Tower long ago.
"Next."
The chamberlain consulted his scrolls. "A territorial dispute between the houses of Grimwald and Thorne. Both claim salvage rights to the battlefield at Raven's Cross."
Ridiculous. They were always fighting over salvage rights, boundary lines, and perceived slights that had festered for ages, as if any of it mattered. As if death made their petty squabbles anything but pathetic.
"Grimwald claims the field by right of higher death count among their house soldiers," one representative began. "We lost—"
"Both houses will share the field," Dante interrupted.
"Alternating salvage rights by lunar month.
Disputes will be settled by single combat to the death.
" He paused, letting his shadows pulse outward.
"If you waste my time with this again, I'll assign the territory to neither house and let it rot. "
The representatives bowed quickly and withdrew, their relief at escaping his presence written across their faces.
Good. Fear was efficient. It saved time.
"Next."
A minor noble approached, stopped at the invisible line, and bowed low. "My lord, I seek permission to—"
"Denied."
The noble's head snapped up. "But my lord, you haven't heard—"
"I don't need to." Dante's shadows coiled tighter. Whatever the request, the answer would be the same. It always was. "Whatever you want, the answer is no. Dismissed."
"My lord, please, if I could just explain—"
The temperature in the hall dropped ten degrees. Frost spread across the floor toward the pleading noble, who stumbled backward with a strangled sound.
"You're still here," Dante observed. "I was certain I'd dismissed you."
The noble fled.
Dante watched him go, his expression unchanged.
His shadows flickered with irritation. The fool had been making petitions for seventy years, always wanting something, always believing persistence would be rewarded.
It wouldn't. But he would return next month with some new plea, and the answer would be no then too.
Persistence wasn't a virtue. It was just another form of stupidity.
Three more petitions followed. Resources.
Mercy for some old punishment. Expansion into the outer territories.
He dismissed each with a gesture, no longer bothering to listen to the details.
Nothing they wanted mattered. Nothing they offered changed the fundamental truth: they were dead, he was their lord, and the hierarchy would remain intact until the end of existence.
By the time Dante dismissed the court for the day, his courtiers couldn't get away fast enough. They bowed, scraped, and backed away with movements refined by countless years of service.
None of them ever turned their backs on him. That would require trust, and the Forsaken court had no use for trust.
As the great doors closed behind the last retreating soul, Nathaniel approached and stopped at the boundary. Dante's advisor had served the court longer than most could remember.
"My lord," Nathaniel said, his translucent form more solid than most bound souls, "urgent word from the mortal realm."
"Proceed."
"The tribute selection has been completed. The ceremony is scheduled for one month from now. Your presence is requested along with the other Death Lords."
The tribute ceremony. Another decade, another mortal sacrifice, another inevitable corpse.
"All five courts are expected to attend?"
"Yes, my lord. The formal summons arrived this morning."