The throne was made of bones.
Not the bones of beasts, nor the bones of demons, nor even the bones of foolish heroes who thought themselves worthy. No—the throne upon which Emola, the Demon God, the Heaven-Defying Mad Cultivator, the Unbeaten Sovereign of the Nine Realms, now sat was constructed from the spines of dragons he had wrestled from the sky, the skulls of immortal elders he had outsmarted, and the femurs of celestial bureaucrats who had once tried to tax his mountain.
It was, objectively speaking, the most badass piece of furniture in the history of ever.
And Emola was absolutely, positively, soul-crushingly bored of it.
He shifted his weight. A dragon vertebra creaked beneath him. Outside the grand hall of his floating palace, the sun crawled across the sky like a lazy snail with nowhere better to be. Emola watched it through the open archway, his chin propped on his fist, his golden eyes dull with the particular emptiness that comes from having conquered literally everything.
"How long until sunset?" he asked.
No one answered.
He hadn't expected anyone to. There was no one left to answer. His hall, once filled with thousands of prostrate disciples, was now empty save for dust motes dancing in the afternoon light. His kitchens, once staffed by three hundred fire-breathing lizard-chefs, sat silent and cold. His training grounds, where a generation of young cultivators had once screamed themselves hoarse trying to master his techniques, were overgrown with spiritual weeds.
Emola had won.
He had won so hard that everyone left.
"Three hours," he estimated, squinting at the sun. "Maybe four. Depends on whether that cloud decides to be dramatic."
This was his life now. Calculating sunset times. Counting the cracks in the ceiling. Occasionally flicking a bit of immortal energy at a passing comet just to watch it explode.
The thing about being unbeatable was that people stopped trying to beat you. The thing about being feared was that people stopped coming near you. The thing about being respected was that people stopped being comfortable around you. Emola had achieved the trifecta: absolutely no one wanted anything to do with him.
He remembered the old days. The glorious days. When he was just a mad cultivator clawing his way up from nothing, dissecting demons in bloody back alleys, stealing heavenly grace from gods who thought themselves untouchable. Every day had been a battle. Every night had been a near-death experience. It had been terrific.
Now?
Now he couldn't even keep a pet.
The incident with the Phoenix-Serpent still haunted him. Beautiful creature. Loyal. Had followed him around for three centuries. Then one day Emola had laughed—just a normal laugh, the kind anyone might make when they remembered something mildly amusing—and the sound had shattered reality in a twelve-foot radius around his person.
The Phoenix-Serpent had been in that radius.
It had not been a Phoenix-Serpent afterward. It had been a fine red mist that took three weeks to settle.
After that, Emola stopped laughing. Stopped smiling. Stopped making any sudden movements or loud noises. He moved through his palace like a man walking on eggshells, except the eggshells were the fabric of reality and the man could accidentally sneeze a continent into oblivion.
"Maybe I should take up knitting," he muttered.
He had tried knitting. He had unraveled the concept of wool.
He had tried painting. He had accidentally painted a new galaxy.
He had tried meditation. He had meditated so hard he achieved enlightenment, got bored of enlightenment, and un-enlightened himself out of sheer spite.
Nothing worked. Nothing lasted. Nothing challenged him.
Even his reflection had stopped making eye contact.
A shadow fell across the hall. Emola looked up, hope flickering in his ancient heart. An assassin? A challenger? Some young upstart who hadn't learned the lesson that everyone else had learned?
But no. It was just a cloud. A very dramatic cloud, as predicted, but still just a cloud.
Emola slumped back into his throne. The dragon bones groaned sympathetically.
"I should have lost sometimes," he said to the empty hall. "Just to keep things interesting."
The hall, as halls are wont to do, did not respond.
"I should have made friends. Not followers—friends. People who would stay because they wanted to, not because they were afraid not to."
Still no response. The hall was really dropping the ball on this conversation.
"I should have—"
CRASH.
Something hit the back of Emola's head.
His body reacted before his mind could catch up. Three million years of cultivation, ten thousand battles, and an autonomic nervous system calibrated to respond to threats at the speed of thought. His hand snapped up, palm open, and unleashed a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of one percent of his power.
The stone boulder—a perfectly ordinary rock that had somehow fallen from the perfectly ordinary sky and through the perfectly ordinary roof of his floating palace—disintegrated into subatomic particles.
Emola's hand, continuing its automatic threat-neutralization protocol, continued its arc.
His palm slammed into the side of his own neck.
There was a sound like the universe cracking in half.
There was a feeling like every meridian in his body short-circuiting at once.
There was a moment of profound, cosmic confusion as Emola, the Demon God, the Heaven-Defying Mad Cultivator, the Unbeaten Sovereign of the Nine Realms, realized that his own automatic defense mechanism had just delivered a killing blow to its own user.
His body toppled from the bone throne.
He hit the floor—a floor made of compressed starlight and the tears of vanquished enemies—and lay there, staring up at the hole in his ceiling where the boulder had come through.
"What," he whispered, "just happened?"
His body was already dissolving. When a cultivator of his level died, the universe didn't waste any time reclaiming the materials. Spiritual energy leaked from him like steam from a cracked pot. His vision began to fade at the edges.
And in those final moments, with death finally, finally visiting him after all these millennia, Emola found himself thinking not about his victories, or his power, or his legendary status.
He thought about the loneliness.
He thought about the empty hall. The dead pet. The followers who had worshipped him from a distance but never sat beside him. The women and men who had desired him but never dared to touch him. The friends he could have made, if he hadn't been so busy being unbeatable.
"I followed only power," he murmured to the dissolving ceiling. "I climbed the mountain and found nothing at the top but myself. And myself... was not enough."
His eyes, those ancient golden eyes that had seen empires rise and fall, that had witnessed the birth of stars and the death of gods, began to close.
"If I had a second chance..."
The words came from somewhere deep inside him. From the part of him that had existed before the power, before the cultivation, before the madness. From the boy he had been, once, a long time ago.
"I would want balance. Not just strength. Not just victory. Everything in balance. Power and peace. Solitude and company. The mountain and the valley."
His consciousness flickered.
"Someone to sit beside me on the throne."
Darkness took him.