Season One Finale

Curtain Call

The stage was empty.

Burnt wood. Bloodstains. A single torn banner swayed from the rafters like a throat left open. The applause had faded, but the echo lingered — not in the tent, but in her.

Livia stood alone beneath the spotlight, its flicker catching the dust in the air like ash.

“What a wicked world this is,” she said to no one. “Where monsters must dress as clowns just to be seen.”

She looked out at the vacant rows. Not a soul remained. And still, she bowed her head slightly, as if addressing an unseen audience.

“They cheer when you bleed. Laugh when you break. They want fear in glitter and agony in rhythm.”

Her smile was slight. Measured. Dangerous.

“So be it. I’ll give them a circus they’ll never forget.”

In her silence, the world outside Laughteria twisted — nobles spreading tales of the Queen of Horror, beggars whispering of miracles and madness, broken cities sensing a pulse beneath their stones.

This was no longer a show.

It was a storm.

And she — not yet crowned, not yet named — had already begun to rewrite the myth of power.

“Let the world rot,” Livia whispered.
“I will make it scream one last encore.”

She stepped off the stage.
And the curtain fell.

The Hollow Kingdom

Far from the velvet lights and ghost-laced laughter, the Asylum breathed again.

It no longer wailed. No longer begged.
It waited.

Stone walls had been scrubbed of gore and shame. Candles flickered with unnatural calm. And in the Hall of the Shattered, knights once thought lost to madness now stood like statues.

Sir Gawain. Sir Tristan. The last blades of a forgotten code.

And at their head walked Ezra.

He did not speak until they reached the throne room — where the Warden had once whispered his dominion into minds too fragile to resist. The blood had dried. But the memory remained.

Ezra knelt.

One knee down. One hand on the cold floor. His voice barely rose above a breath.

“You will not be ruled by pity. Nor by fear.
You will not kneel to kings who preach light and give none.
You are broken.
And because of that—you are mine.”

He rose slowly, and turned to face the gathering of fractured knights, disciples, and hollow-eyed believers.

“We serve no empire.
We serve no prophecy.
We serve her.”

And as the torches flared blue across the walls, Ezra stepped down from the throne and into the ranks — not as a monarch.

But as a guardian.

The Hollow King.

Builder of something not yet seen.

A Kingdom meant to last after the curtains burned.

And So the Curtain Rises

The first throne is never carved in marble.
It is carved in screams.

Livia did not become Queen by right, nor by blood.
She became Queen because no one else could survive the madness required.

She saw horror — and laughed.
She saw chaos — and clapped.
She stared into the mouth of the storm and said:

“More.”

The circus no longer travels. It summons.
Nobles come to her. Spies listen in the dark. Apostles awaken one by one, their sins glittering like gemstones sharpened to cut.

Somewhere, deep in the south, a city prepares a masquerade.
Somewhere, deeper still, the Butcher sharpens his knives.
And in the sky above it all — the stars blink open like watchful, ancient eyes.

The game has changed.
And when the world comes knocking…

Her voice will be ready.

“Confess.”
“Repent.”
“Reign.”

End of Season One — The Rise of the Throne