Chapter Text
It was dark, but they didn't mind. They were the darkness, it was them. If some previous Shade Lord had resided there before they'd taken over, they felt bad about replacing them, but that couldn't be helped. They were here now, in the Abyss, their home, long before it had been polluted by the king's rejected children.
It was beautiful, in its dark and empty way, larger and cleaner than the Abyss they remembered, less weighed down by loneliness. The void sea, and its rivers and lakes, gleamed serenely in the minimal light of the Shade Lord's eight eyes. What would have felt foreboding and alien to most bugs felt welcoming to the young higher being. What would have been mysterious and unknowable was an open book, albeit a long and complex one. No longer (or rather, not yet) covered up by the anger and desperation of their siblings, the older memories held by the void were immediately visible to Ghost, although difficult to pick apart, records of ages long past flowing into each other, beginning to bleed together where their separate events, rulers and cultures met common themes, where history and regret repeated.
They could spend years just listening to it all.
But as wonderous as it was (and it was wonderous), Ghost had thought they'd be able to do more. After all, if even time was in their command, what couldn't they do?
The answer was, apparently, "most of what they'd planned."
They couldn't leave the Abyss. They couldn't find Seer or the Godseeker, or kill the Radiance. They couldn't even threaten the Pale King to leave them alone, to let their siblings have a life, to show some more respect for the moths.
In fact, they couldn't even sense what was going on outside. Their power was unlimited in their own world, but didn't extend to outside of it. And while it was far from boring (and, in fact, ruling over it felt like everything they should have been meant for), they couldn't do anything. They couldn't make it better. They had wanted to help people. They had gone back with the goal of resolving regrets, of making there be at least a little less tragedy in Hallownest's time. And now they couldn't do that.
...Well, they realized, there was something they could change. Some that they could save. They'd just have to be patient.