Darkness.

Darkness that knew no end.

A lone soul drifted in the midst of it, reaching out, grasping nothing. Confusion clouded its mind before clarity slowly surfaced.

He remembered who he was. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

The last thing he recalled was lying in a hospital bed, surrounded by family members... and his seven childhood friends.

"Oh. I died." Lucien muttered under his breath.

"So, this is hell." He paused, glancing around the void. "It’s a bit different from what I imagined."

His gaze drifted to his half-formed body and saw something that shook him.

Seven red strings tied around his right wrist.

Just looking at them triggered a surge of memory.

These seven strings signified a promise, and it was...

\\\

A playground.

Eight children ran about, laughing, filling the air with a harmony that felt distant now.

One boy and seven girls.

The boy, though small and frail, was strikingly handsome, with eyes that seemed too deep for a child.

The seven girls — their faces were faint, blurred, as if the memory itself refused to show them clearly.

"Lucien, from today, you are my husband."

Each of them brought out a string, taking hold of his right hand.

The little Lucien nodded, ignorant of the meaning of their words, accepting it as play.

They all tied a string to his fingers, and the scene shattered.

\\\

Lucien clutched his head as the fragments scattered. A cold realization settled in — aside from the fact that the seven girls had been with him on his deathbed, every other memory of them was void.

His mind whirled in confusion. He tried to remember their faces but could only grasp faint traces.

He didn’t want to believe it. He forced himself to dig deeper, even though it caused him severe pain.

"Sigh. Young man, do you want to destroy your soul?"

The voice came from everywhere at once. Lucien tensed, glancing around, but the darkness swallowed all sight.

He stepped back cautiously. "Who’s there?"

Even if this was hell, it was unfamiliar — and the unfamiliar demanded caution.

He kept retreating until he bumped into something solid.

His soul shivered.

Slowly, he turned to look at what stood behind him.

It rose from the darkness like something that had been waiting since before waiting had meaning.

A throne.

He had expected a being but it was a throne.

But no mortal hands had carved it.

It was built of faces — thousands upon thousands, fused and layered into a towering seat that stretched upward until the darkness swallowed its peak.

The faces were not stone. They were alive, or something close to it. Each one frozen mid-expression, lips parted as if speaking, eyes open and glistening with tears that never fell.

Some wept. Some stared. Some seemed to be mouthing words that no longer had sound.

And all of them, every last one, wore the same expression: desperate, aching love.

Lucien’s gaze climbed the throne.

Five cracks split its surface, running from its base to somewhere high above, each one glowing with a faint and fading light.

The first burned a low crimson, pulsing like a heartbeat.

The second shimmered violet, cold and watchful.

The third glowed gold, steady and reverent.

The fourth hummed silver, sharp and unbreaking.

The fifth was the weakest — a sickly grey, flickering like a candle in a storm.

Within each fissure lay emptiness, hollow spaces where something had once been anchored. Something was missing from them. Something that should have been there.

From the cracks, voices leaked.

"...member..."

"...promised..."

"...find..."

"...beloved..."

"...always..."

The words barely reached him, half-formed, dying on the air. But he felt them, somehow. Each whisper tugged at the red strings around his wrist.

At the pinnacle of the throne sat two deeper hollows, darker than the rest. They did not glow. They absorbed.

One radiated a cold that had nothing to do with temperature — the cold of judgment, of correction, of something that wanted to make things perfect.

The other hummed with stillness — not peace, but the refusal to let anything end. Both were silent. Neither whispered. They simply waited.

The faces surrounding the empty seat at the throne’s center were tilted inward, as if they had been watching that spot for eons, waiting for someone to fill it.

Now they were watching Lucien.

And the same voice came again, this time from every mouth at once — a layered chorus of young and old, soft and broken, a thousand tones speaking as one:

"You’ve been standing long enough, young man."

The faces wept.

"Come. Sit."

The cracks flickered.

Its words made him shudder, he felt something burning his right hand.

He glanced and saw the red strings glowing as If they had felt something.

His gaze returned to the throne, "Who are you?"

He didn’t believe this was hell...

"Me? I go by different names but you can call me, the Hollow Throne." It replied.

"Hollow Throne?" Lucien unconsciously muttered. The red strings tightened, digging into his wrist.

He kept his eyes on the throne, still vigilant. "Then why am I here? After death, it’s heaven or hell. This place looks like neither."

As he said this, he felt the gaze of the thousands faces on him.

After this came a long sigh from the throne.

"You were drawn here by the seven strings on your wrist." Its voice echoed through the darkness.

Lucien froze, looking at the seven strings on his right wrist.

"This?" He said in shock.

The Hollow Throne’s words resounded like thunder.

"Humans with your frail body are meant to die at fifteen. You lived to twenty-five."

A pause. The weeping faces watched.

"Do you think that was luck?"

Lucien said nothing. The strings around his wrist felt heavier than chains.

Before he could think of anything, the seven strings snapped and moved towards the seven cracks on the hollow throne.

As they entered, he felt a change in the hollow throne. If before, it was like someone on the edge coma, now it was like a healthy person.

Questions engulfed his mind, all the questions he asked brought more questions from the unfinished answers.

"Come sit, let me tell you a story."

Lucien still kept his straight face, not completely believing the hollow throne and also looking at the thousands of faces, there was no way he would sit on it.

Hmph!

With a snort, an unknown force dragged him towards the throne.

He struggled. His half-formed soul thrashed against the pull. But the force was absolute — not cruel, not angry, just inevitable.

Like gravity.

Like fate.

The throne accepted him.

Helplessly, he could only watch as he was dragged to sit on the throne.

And as he sat, the seven cracks erupted. Light — crimson, violet, gold, silver, grey — pierced through him, through the throne, through the darkness. It swallowed him whole.

And the last thing he heard before everything disappeared was the thousand-faced chorus, weeping in joy.