Throne of Darkness

A robed Mysterious Figure gathers Vaden, Xeven, Ziri, Pax, Sekt and Scarletta around a table to discuss the enemy they share: you. Each wants revenge for a defeat or humiliation, but their ambitions quickly turn the council into an argument. To learn how to overcome you, the host asks them to recount what happened. Their stories return to earlier encounters, while the listeners interrupt, challenge one another's claims and change as the consequences catch up with them.

Vaden and the Castle of Bone

Vaden begins with your entry into his Castle of Bone, presenting himself as a homeowner whose guards, possessions and dinner you destroy without cause. Xeven challenges the missing motive, but he insists on telling the story his way. The castle's Fallen DeathKnights keep rising after defeat until you take their Necrogems and place them in the crowns along the walls. These were its previous rulers. Vaden admits that he entered as an adventurer himself, defeated the reigning lord and inherited the curse that made him the castle's master.

Beyond the hall, you break through a dining room of undead guests and food, defeat the Butcher in his kitchen and advance through Vaden's trophies. Enchanted portraits reveal him alive, undead and finally a DeathKnight. His gauntlet came from a Grimskull dungeon, and its power reaches beyond the enemies he strikes: even food becomes undead beneath his fork. The Castle of Bone is trying to become a dungeon of its own, drawing those who die there into its growing structure or its servants. Vaden's complaints about the damage keep exposing the prison behind his rule.

Pieces of a code carried by his soldiers let you reach his private rooms. Vaden flees into the bathroom, leaving his helm for you to take, and escapes through a tunnel beneath the toilet. Following him through the sewers brings you past reptilian warriors and into a bright room of hearts and rainbows. The castle has not assimilated this place yet. When Vaden demands an explanation, you tell him that you came to save him. He refuses to believe you and hands you to Snuggles, a large blue bear whose distraction by a butterfly gives you a chance to break free.

You defeat Snuggles and continue through the library guards, Vaden's dracolich Rot Tin Tin and the treasury. Vaden mourns his pet before admitting that he can raise it again. His last defenders wait in an Arm-ory that stores spare arms, and beyond it he finally meets you in the throne room. At the council, Scarletta explains the trap: if you kill Vaden, you become the new DeathKnight Lord. If he kills you, the gauntlet binds you to the castle forever. You escape both outcomes by taking off his gauntlet-bearing arm and telling him he is free to leave.

Scarletta now understands that the gauntlet was the castle itself, using its wearer to construct an ever-expanding dungeon from defeated heroes. Vaden could not leave because he was wearing the thing that imprisoned him. He still wants revenge for your intervention and warns that the gauntlet will restore the former DeathKnight Lords, leaving the growing castle a danger to everyone. Your success has freed its latest wearer without ending the curse. At the table, his missing arm makes the tale's consequences visible, and Ziri wishes an oversized green replacement onto him. The host remains interested in the question Vaden never answers: why did you choose to save him?

Xeven and the End of Time

Xeven rejects the council's assumption that she is another villain. She calls herself a resistance fighter from the future, where she has seen the Future Legion wipe out everything. Her journeys have also shown her war between the Underworld and Light, and the end of time. Something she saw you do frightens her more than any of them. She will not name it, but has stolen the Tachyon Blades from a ChronoLord to prevent it. Their ability to cut through time and space alarms Sekt, who recognizes a danger the others dismiss beneath their jokes about her age and diary.

Kairos, the High ChronoLord, sends you after her through the portals, warning that breaks in time have drawn scavenging Time Wraiths. When you ask about the ChronoLords, Kairos calls you their boss, then checks which time he is in and corrects himself because you have no scales and are not a dragon. He leaves the remark unexplained as you follow the damage Xeven leaves behind. On Delta V, she frees BioBeasts and steals weapons from Jeff Plinkins's laboratory. In the distant past, she robs Professor Broun and fits those weapons to dinosaurs. You help the people caught in her path while clearing the creatures that threaten the timestream. The pursuit reaches Aria and Twilly, whose disappearance accompanies a Butterfly Effect that leaves Aria speaking backward. Twilly eventually admits that Xeven forced him to reveal a secret before releasing him.

After helping Grick and his companions survive a world of zombies, you arrive at a private meeting between Lynaria and Valen. She asks him to kiss her despite his oath to Alteon, and your interruption sends Valen calling for the guards. Lynaria asks you to keep their secret and spare the knights sent against you. You continue through Xeven's portal. Xeven reaches the final page of her diary and enters a graveyard. There, she gives the completed book to her younger self, tells her to remember your face and read page ninety-seven, and gives her the name Xeight. When you arrive, the younger girl refuses to betray the future self who has just warned her against you.

The ChronoLords capture Xeven and condemn her for stealing the blades, changing timelines and unleashing Vorefax, the approaching end of time. Her paradox has already multiplied its power seven times and threatens an eighth. You interrupt her death sentence and ask her to help stop it instead. When the council refuses, you defeat the ChronoLords blocking your escape and flee with Xeven. Xeven opens many portals at your request, turning the paradox against itself, and you overcome Vorefax. One opening remains, and Mors Temporis, the Death of Time, emerges through it.

Xeven throws herself into the danger to save you and is mortally wounded. She calls it repayment for rescuing her, but still insists that she knows what you did. Before you can get her out, she warns that her younger self will come after you. You defeat Mors Temporis, bringing safety for the moment, while the diary gives the younger assassin the same conviction that drove her predecessor. Around the villains' table, Xeight now occupies Xeven's place. Sekt says he has watched this conversation happen eight times, able to recognize the repetition through his fourth-dimensional pyramid. Xeight refuses to reveal the diary's secret for fear of making the future worse, and insists on following it exactly. Even after your victory, the loop continues.

Ziri and the Amulet of Wishes

Ziri claims to have succeeded where the others failed: he made you dead. When the assembled villains doubt a Sneevil could command such power, he wishes Vaden a tiny Frogzard arm, silences his shouting and turns their meeting into a beach party. His tale begins at Yulgar's Inn, where his attempt to meet you turns into fires, a brawl and a flooded bathroom. You keep dealing with the disasters instead of giving him the confrontation he wants, while he invents more distractions to hide what he has done.

He says he brings you to the Flying Bacon Cat Cloud Palace as the chosen defender of the Bacon Cat Force. Its grand prophecy quickly becomes a succession of chores and games. You fight clowns, clean the beach and become the player character in Ziri's favorite adventures, rescuing a princess, chasing ghosts and overcoming the bosses he puts in your path. Even his giant corn monsters fail to stop you. A wishing well offers another way onward, and you jump into it with a coin rather than make the wish he expects.

The Amulet of Wishes around his neck attracts Scarletta's attention, but Ziri keeps interrupting her attempt to explain it. Beneath his boasts, he admits that other Sneevils mocked his love of vampires, dragons and robots instead of boxes. He wants to be big and admired. His trials make you small enough to understand his frustration, then demand more service from you. When you refuse to play the star in his film, he wishes you dead and imagines you as an undead skeleton. He insists that making you dead is different from killing you, leaving even the villains confused by his supposed victory.

Neither the film's chainsaw-wielding actors nor its paladins defeat you. Ziri finally sends Kitty Boo Boo, Overlord of the Catverse, into battle, only to watch that creation fall too. His certainty collapses with it. Scarletta at last explains that the amulet does not grant wishes: it makes its wearer believe the wishes came true. The fantastic journeys and transformations he has described are shaped by that deception, rather than proof that he can remake Lore at will.

Ziri then admits that you picked up the amulet and wore it yourself. The promise of unlimited wishes draws you into its fantasy, where your final opponent is yourself. After you win, Ziri insists that next time he will be your worthy adversary. The robed host asks whether killing you was really why he went to the inn. Ziri refuses to give up his ambitions, but a signed photograph reveals the encouragement behind them: you thanked him for his fan letter and urged your biggest fan to follow his dreams.

Pax and the Death Pit Arena

Pax takes his turn at the table determined to prove that the others failed because they are inferior. He claims that Drakels descend directly from the great Dragons and deserve to rule everyone else. His Death Pit tournament turns that belief into entertainment: captive non-Drakels fight for their lives before the Drakels compete to become High Warlord. Pax has won that title repeatedly, but your arrival gives the contest an opponent he cannot dismiss so easily.

General Velm sends you through the arena's preliminary rounds, where the other captives include Omar, Hattori, a Trobble and Twilly. The Death Pit Crusher hangs over the proceedings, ready to dispose of those Pax considers expendable. When the tournament demands that you fight a defenseless Trobble, you can refuse and face additional opponents instead. Surviving the preliminary contest brings you into the Drakel tournament, whose rules contain an opening Pax scarcely wants to acknowledge: whoever wins becomes High Warlord, even if the victor is not a Drakel.

Your victories embarrass the generals, but excluding an undefeated fighter would undermine their own claims of strength. Pax sends General Gall against you, treating the albino Drakel as an outcast whose victory would demonstrate that even the least of his people surpasses a human. When Gall loses, Pax has the Crusher brought down on him. Twilly uses his last spell to restore the fallen general, leaving Gall bewildered that someone he meant to kill would show him mercy. Pax responds by ordering Chud, Velm and Hun'Gar to ensure that none of you leave alive.

You defeat the generals and finally Pax himself, whose own Crusher becomes part of his downfall. At the council, the scars on his arm reveal that he survived the same machine during the fight that made him High Warlord. Scarletta recognizes the badge on his chest as another cursed artifact, and Pax boasts that he is immortal. In the arena, you turn toward Twilly, believing you can go home, only for the Moglin to warn you too late. Pax strikes again and leaves you dead, with Twilly unable to bring you back. Gall rises against his ruler in return for the mercy he received, but falls as well.

Calling the little Moglin weak and contemptible, Pax turns on Twilly. This time, the spectators watch Twilly defeat him. The Drakels honor their tournament's rules and acclaim Warlord Twilly, though he cannot celebrate while his friends lie dead. He tells the crowd that true strength should help others rise rather than keep them beneath you. Even when nothing seems left, there must be strength enough to give more. Another surge of magic restores you and the generals, leaving Twilly exhausted but able to promise that the arena will change.

Under Twilly, the fighting no longer has to end in death. Gall proudly serves the ruler who showed him a better way, while other fighters choose whether to remain for honorable contests or leave. Pax becomes the Crusher's janitor, reduced to telling the council that Twilly does not make him clean the windows. Yet Sekt notices a question beneath the humiliation: Pax checked the records and still cannot explain how you entered the arena. Chud had claimed responsibility, but the former High Warlord cannot confirm that account. The uncertainty carries into Sekt's own tale.

Sekt and the Fourth Dimensional Pyramid

Sekt insists that his account deserves more respect than Pax's, though he first has to explain what a fourth-dimensional pyramid is. The structure is a tesseract feeding on the sun, and finishing its meal would kill the council along with everyone else on Lore. As Pharaoh of the Black Hole Sun, Sekt believes an ancient prophecy requires him to kill you. His story begins with you emerging from a sarcophagus, unsure where you are, then confronting him and taking the Eye of the Old Gods from his staff. The cursed crystal controls the pyramid, but escaping it requires more than defeating its ruler.

Following scraps of the prophecy, you pull levers that turn the tesseract and change where its passages lead. One stuck lever yields to mummy grease, an unexpectedly useful answer hidden in a joke Pax made at the council. Beyond it, you meet another version of yourself. Your counterpart remembers standing where you are and hearing this same explanation only a short time before. Neither of you fully understands the trap, but your future self gives you the instructions they once received, keeping you moving through the pyramid.

Another version of you offers a more urgent warning: the sarcophagus seems able to restore the dead, and you must trust yourself when the time comes. The route takes you across bridges powered by tesseract energy and through teleporters whose destinations depend on their gems. Eventually you stand on the other side of the first conversation, assigning your earlier self the tasks you remember completing. Farther on, a sick and dying version of you hears voices and speaks of a leap of faith. When you find your own smoking bones, the sarcophagus begins to explain how those encounters fit together.

You mark the wall to keep track of repeated attempts, joining the tally marks already covering it. More levers and another teleporter bring you back to the urgent warning, this time as the one giving it. Returning to Sekt, you propose using the Eye to reverse the pyramid's conversion of suns into black holes. He admits the crystal can control the tesseract, but says one is nowhere near enough. Reversing a Black Hole Sun requires a million Eyes, and the final lever releases a plague that brings madness and death. When he asks whether you would die a million times for your world, you tell him that you already have.

The repeated journeys have accumulated the Eyes through a million deaths and revivals. Now you release the Black Plague and defeat it, accepting the infection rather than let it destroy the pyramid and Lore. Dying, you struggle toward the sarcophagus while voices from the Darkness say that nobody is coming and speak of telling you about the Throne. Breaking the loop has left you as its last version. There is no later self waiting to carry you into the sarcophagus, and your strength is failing before you can reach it.

At the council, Sekt explains why he never claimed to have come closest to killing you. The prophecy demands that he be your killer, and allowing the plague to finish you would deny him that role. He saves you himself, preserving the enemy he still intends to slay. A purple, smoky presence surrounds his staff as the others remember his warning about what touching the Black Plague does. His rescue has kept you alive without turning him into an ally, while the Darkness's unfinished reference to the Throne remains unanswered.

Scarletta and the Tower of Mirrors

Scarletta's story begins with the missing people who drew you toward her Tower of Mirrors. In the Hedge Maze of Reflection, reversed letters and hostile reflections point toward captives beyond the glass. A Shattered Knight helps you repair and illuminate a mirror so you can defeat its guardian, but his cooperation only takes you farther into the maze. Scarletta appears through a mirror, admits that the missing people are in her tower and directs you back through the route from its opposite side.

The letters become readable after you cross, revealing promises of careers, study and recognition that brought their writers here. The Knight abandons his pretense of helping and tries to stop you. Defeating him and the resurrected Minotaur opens the way to Scarletta's tower, where she offers a cruel choice: surrender through one mirror to save her prisoners, or enter the other and let them die. Both are traps. You escape the illusion that should have satisfied your desire to rescue everyone because an imagined rescue is not the real difference you came to make.

Inside, the Thief of Hearts agrees to help free the captives. His potion strengthens your hold on reality as you enter their mirror worlds and face the Mirror Knights guarding them. Melodia has become the singer she always wanted to be and does not want to return to failure. You promise her a chance to be heard outside the illusion, then follow her plea to rescue Andres. His modeling fantasy leads to Gisele's pageant, Emilia's theatrical career and Dora's forest of strange creatures. Each rescue reveals another person whose ambitions Scarletta has used to keep them imprisoned.

The repeated fashions and performances have already made some captives question their worlds. Dora suspected another plane and hoped to study its wildlife, only to learn that the creatures are illusions. You do not ask them to give up their ambitions, but offer a way to pursue them beyond Scarletta's control. Dora directs you toward the rejected suitors in the Fiend Zone. Taking their tokens of affection draws the queen's attention and brings you to the throne room with some of those you have freed.

Scarletta Tyral boasts that the people in her mirrors preserve her youth and increase her power. She once enjoyed having heroes rescue her and rulers fight over her beauty, then bargained with the darkness in a mirror when age threatened that influence. Now she insists that you are still one of her thousands of captives. You stall long enough to learn that every mirror connects to the throne room, then ask Melodia for the highest, loudest note she can sing.

Melodia's voice shatters the mirrors and Scarletta's mirrored eyes. With the spell broken, her beauty disappears and the enormous, tusked Groglurk beneath it is exposed. You defeat her, and the captives are released. Scarletta retreats into the shattered tower's ruins, which she says became Bludrut Keep. At the gathering, her account finally gives the living table a chance to interrupt. Plank has been listening all along and now promises to explain the cursed artifacts and the figure beneath the host's robes.

Darkwood and the Cursed Artifact Shop

Plank's story begins with a box you bring to the Cursed Artifact Shop for appraisal. Dr. Dryden Darkwood presents himself as an expert on forbidden objects, while his assistant Skudly is more interested in smashing the customer. Reaching the shopkeeper means fighting possessed furniture, and Darkwood adds every broken antique to your bill. He blames the box for stirring up his merchandise and denies that you could have taken another route. By the time you reach him, he demands ten million gold.

Darkwood offers to erase the debt if you retrieve his favorite robe from the cellar. Only then does he admit that the back entrance could have spared you the fighting: he needed the bill to make you undertake the dangerous errand. You overcome the Arcane Sentinel guarding the robe and bring it back. Darkwood orders tea with two lumps, which Skudly supplies by beating you unconscious. Wearing the recovered robe, the shopkeeper tells his accomplices to call him Mysterious and prepares to summon the villains to the castle.

The host tells his guests that you have been imprisoned beneath them throughout their stories, waiting for the meeting's grand finale. In the dungeon, however, you provoke Skudly into opening your cell and defeat him before he can lock you inside again. Searching for help brings you to Nia Marmara, a Chronolord who arranged her own imprisonment because she expected you to rescue her. She acknowledges opposing you in the portal maze, though whether that encounter belongs to your past or future remains uncertain. She says both actions are necessary.

Nia leaves you free to escape, but warns that abandoning the castle would let Darkwood's plan proceed. You follow her directions into the vault, where six familiar artifacts wait beside your own box: Vaden's Grimskull Gauntlet, Xeven's missing Tachyon Blade, Ziri's Necklace of Wishes, Pax's Medallion of Immortality, Sekt's Eye of the Old Gods and Scarletta's Crown of Eternal Beauty. Taking them keeps their power out of Darkwood's hands and sends you toward the gathering instead of the exit.

You intercept Darkwood and defeat Skudly again when another order for tea becomes an attack. Offered a chance to stop, the shopkeeper insists that IT is coming regardless of who carries out the plan. He wants to be on the winning side and admits that he intended to sacrifice you at the meeting's end. You defeat him before he can do it, leaving his warning unresolved and his robe available for a different wearer.

The Alliance Against the Throne of Darkness

As Plank reaches that part of the account, Xeight realizes the real Mysterious was defeated before the gathering began. You reveal yourself beneath the robe, having listened to the villains tell their stories from the other side. Their surprise turns to anger before you can explain why you stayed. Vaden, Xeight, Ziri, Pax, Sekt and Groglurk each attack, forcing six rematches before they will finally listen.

You ask for their help and return the artifacts recovered from Darkwood's vault. Scarletta regains her human beauty, Sekt's ragged form gives way to a golden pharaonic appearance and Ziri celebrates the return of his necklace. Vaden finds that his gauntlet fits poorly over his replacement Horc arm, while Pax notes that recovering his medallion has not ended his janitorial job. Their possessions are restored, but their grudges have not all disappeared.

The whispers in the darkness warn of something greater than any of them, and you need allies for a special mission to stop it. Vaden vows his unlife. Xeight promises help while quietly preserving her intention to kill you afterward. Ziri joins eagerly, Pax gives his word and Sekt offers his wisdom and power. Scarletta recognizes that restoring her appearance cannot conceal the ugliness in her heart. She refuses to apologize to the world, but agrees to join the mission to atone.

Plank initially refuses, protesting that he is a table rather than a hero and claiming to be IT's table. When the others agree to help, he asks whom they are supposed to face. You turn the question back to him, and he offers a whispered secret about the box that brought you to the antique shop. The closing whispers describe a figure on a Throne of Darkness whose shadows spread across the land, insisting that what is undead can never die. A dark, sharply spiked helm appears, leaving its owner unnamed as the new alliance faces the threat still to come.