The return to the surface felt like crawling out of a dream—muddy, slow, and too quiet.
They emerged from the Ashen Wastes as the first gray light filtered across a wounded sky. Clouds had begun to form again, sluggish and torn, but real. A wind stirred—a broken thing relearning how to breathe.
Marek helped Nyssa up the final ledge. She winced, her arm bound in bloodstained cloth. Lola was already out, pacing restlessly, her spellbook clutched tight. Jack came last, cradling the now-dormant Blade of Echoes against his chest like a fallen star.
None of them spoke at first.
The world hadn't ended—but it hadn't been saved either.
Not yet.
"Where do we go now?" Marek asked at last, squinting eastward. "There's no path left."
Jack didn't answer right away.
Because he could feel it now—something had changed. Not just in the world, but inside him. The seal on his chest still shimmered faintly beneath his shirt, but it no longer burned. It pulsed softly, like a heartbeat not his own.
The Blade no longer whispered in visions. The voices had gone silent. And yet… something else had awakened.
"We're being watched," Lola said suddenly, turning sharply.
They all froze.
From the ridge above, a silhouette stood—a tall figure wrapped in layered veils of black and gold. Eyes like dying suns watched them from beneath a porcelain mask etched with voidscript.
Jack's hand went to his blade. "Another Ash-Bound?"
"No," Lola said grimly. "Worse."
The figure descended slowly, barefoot, leaving no prints on the ash.
"I am called Raleth," it said. "First of the Hollow Crown."
Jack narrowed his eyes. "Never heard of you."
"Few have," Raleth replied. "We dwell where memory dies. Where echoes cannot reach."
Nyssa stepped forward, blade half-drawn. "You work for the Devourer?"
Raleth tilted their head, amused. "We serve no one. The Devourer was… a symptom. A wound, not the blade. We watched it feed, yes. And now we've watched it fail."
"Then what do you want?"
Raleth's voice became quiet. "Balance."
Jack frowned. "Define 'balance.'"
Raleth moved closer, and for the first time, Jack saw what they carried: a crown of bone and voidsilver, hovering above their palm. It pulsed with the same light as the broken seal—only colder.
"The Sundering was never just destruction," Raleth said. "It was a realignment. The cycle you severed has created a fracture. The old order is gone. The balance must be restored."
Jack stepped forward. "By what? Starting it all over again?"
"No," Raleth said, gaze steady. "By crowning what comes next."
He extended the crown.
And it turned to face Jack.
Nyssa reached for her weapon, but Jack stopped her with a glance.
"What is it?" he asked.
Raleth smiled faintly. "The throne was never a seat. It was a tether. A focal point. Someone must wear the Hollow Crown. If not the Devourer… then you."
Jack stared at it.
He could feel its pull—not power, but weight. Responsibility. Memory. A convergence point of every version of himself that might have been.
"I'm not your king," he said.
Raleth shrugged. "That may be true. But you are the wound. And the wound decides what grows around the scar."
Jack looked at the others. Marek's jaw was set. Nyssa's eyes burned with defiance. Lola shook her head slowly, already forming wards in her palms.
"No," Jack said. "We won't let the cycle restart. We'll rebuild something different."
Raleth sighed.
"So be it."
They turned—and vanished, leaving only a single strand of black silk behind.
Lola let out a breath. "The Hollow Crown… they're real. I thought they vanished during the Third Shattering."
Marek muttered, "We're always finding new nightmares."
Nyssa looked at Jack. "You okay?"
Jack nodded slowly. "No. But I will be."
He turned eastward.
"There's still one place we haven't looked. Where the first tether to the Devourer was forged."
"Where?" Marek asked.
Jack's voice was distant. "The Hollow Spire. The place where Thalon made his bargain."
The wind picked up.
And in the distance, across scorched lands slowly beginning to heal, a dark spire rose beyond the horizon—one that hadn't been there before.
Far beneath the earth, Kael awoke.
Not in pain.
Not alone.
He was suspended in a space of endless dark and glass-like silence. Around him, a thousand voices echoed faintly—fragments of memories that weren't his. A timeline stitched back wrong.
Before him stood a woman cloaked in living shadow, her hair like flowing ink. Her eyes were stars.
"Where am I?" Kael asked.
"In the between," she answered. "Where those who should have died wait to become something else."
"Who are you?"
She smiled. "A mistake. Like you. But mistakes can reshape the world."
She reached forward—and touched his heart.
And Kael remembered who he was.
Not a tether.
Not a vessel.
A key.
And the locks had only just begun to appear.