The sky above the Endless Dunes turned crimson as the sun dipped below the jagged horizon, but Althar's mind was already far beyond the desert.
Six crowns.
Six trials.
Each one had tested not just his power—but his will to remain who he was becoming, rather than who he had been.
And now, only one remained.
The Seventh Crown.
The Crown of Echoes.
The one tied to the Shattered Realm.
A place that, according to Seris, should not exist.
They made camp at the edge of a half-buried canyon—the last known passage before the Shattered Realm. The wind here screamed like it had a soul.
Rorek stabbed a post into the sand and looked over his shoulder. "This place smells like the end of things."
Ariya sat beside Althar near the fire, her fingers playing absently with a small charm she'd carved from old bone. "The Seventh Crown… you don't remember it, do you?"
Althar shook his head.
"No. The others I remembered. Images. Flashes. Emotions I didn't understand at the time. But this one... it's blank."
Seris flipped through her enchanted atlas, pages glowing faintly. "That's because the Shattered Realm isn't just a place—it's a rift. A wound. Torn open during the War of Crowns."
She paused. "You caused that wound."
Althar didn't flinch.
"I know."
Ariya stared into the fire. "And the Crown of Echoes… what does it do?"
Seris hesitated. "They say it holds every voice that was lost to time. Every soul that never found peace. It doesn't burn, or crush, or bind—it remembers. Too much."
Althar spoke quietly. "Then it will remember me, too."
That night, Althar stood alone on the ridge overlooking the dunes. He watched the stars—so many more visible here, away from cities, away from war. For a long time, he felt nothing.
Then he heard it.
A voice.
Soft. Familiar.
"You are almost whole."
He turned. No one.
But he knew the voice.
It was his mother's. From a world long gone.
More followed. A whispering chorus. Names he hadn't thought of in centuries. Faces he could barely picture.
The Crown of Echoes was already reaching for him.
And it was close.
At dawn, they descended into the canyon. The deeper they went, the more reality seemed to shift. The stone was smooth and mirrored. The air crackled. Sometimes, the walls whispered.
Then, without warning, the canyon ended.
Not with a wall, or a cliff.
But with emptiness.
Before them was a sky that bled color. Floating shards of land twisted through the void, tethered by veins of light. Gravity bent sideways. Storms howled without sound.
The Shattered Realm.
Ariya gasped. "What… is this?"
Seris was pale. "It's where everything broken ends up."
And floating in the center of it all—resting on a pillar of fractured time—was the Crown of Echoes.
But they were not alone.
Figures emerged from the void. Shadows with faces. Echoes of men and women long dead.
They wore familiar faces.
Althar's old generals. His lovers. His enemies. Himself.
"Welcome home," they said in unison.