The scaffold creaks in Tarmonia’s thin dusk, and the crowd thins to a fearful tide. Above, Halven Veyl hangs still. Beneath the boards, the void-gate pulse answers the tower far away like a second heartbeat.
Tharlen stands at the edge of the square, diamond blade lowered, his approving grin fading into something wary. He watches Delfarius as if waiting to see whether a man walks away from this or becomes a legend no one survives.
Tharlen
You have done the city’s work, and the city has already begun to forget it. If you mean to vanish, now is the cleanest hour.
The void answers from far beneath the world, not with words but with hunger. Delfarius feels the Obsidian Tower through the pulse in his bones, through the old wound of power that never truly healed.
Delfarius
The tower is calling.
Tharlen’s smile sharpens, then stills. The last of the crowd shuffles away, leaving only scaffold, rope, and the cold path back to the ashlands. The moment narrows to a choice with no witness but stone and shadow.
Delfarius stands at the edge of the deciding step, the tower’s hunger pressing against his name. What he does next is his alone.
“I laugh low and walk under the hangman's noose and the hanged man. A bad omen. I turn back once looking at the mortal Tharlen and smirk. "Until we meet again, Tharlen." I walk into the void pulse back to my tower.”
SUCCESS (Superb Agility, rolled -2)
The scaffold creaked in the cold air above Tarmonia. Lord Halven Veyl swung silent in the dusk while the city below already blurred into rumor and forgetting.
Tharlen
It is done. Even now, they look away from the truth.
Delfarius
Let them. I hear something greater than their fear.
Tharlen
Wary, almost reverent, he watched the dark settle over Delfarius like a coronation.
Delfarius
The Tower called, and I answered.
Far beyond Tarmonia, the Obsidian Tower rose as it always had, but now it had a keeper. Delfarius became its hunger made still, its will given shape, and those who came near found only ruin and silence. The city forgot Lord Halven Veyl, and the world learned the name of the Unmaker in the hush before it died.