The Fourth Crown was said to lie in Viremyr, the Shattered Vale, a once-prosperous kingdom swallowed by a temporal rift during the final days of the Nine Kings' war. Few maps marked its location anymore. Fewer dared to speak its name.
Yet Kaelen felt the pull of the Crown like a thread in his chest — humming through the Ember, resonant beneath his ribs. It pulled northeast, into the wilds beyond the Ashen Marshes, where sky and earth no longer agreed on the hour.
They left the coast behind, traveling through ragged borderlands under skies that flickered between seasons. Aelric kept his blade close and his jokes closer. Even he grew quiet when they entered the marsh — a place where time flowed like water, pooling in forgotten hollows and rushing in chaotic torrents through others.
One morning, they awoke to find their boots thick with ice and the trees heavy with blossoms. It was midspring and deepwinter at once.
"Remind me again," Aelric muttered, "why we aren't running away from the cursed time swamp?"
"Because the Crown is inside," Kaelen said.
"That's not encouraging."
The deeper they traveled, the stranger the world became. Roads appeared and vanished. Buildings flickered between ruin and restoration. At one point, they passed through a village where the same woman fetched water from the same well five times in five minutes — her every action repeating like a wheel stuck in the mud of time.
Kaelen kept the Ember close to his chest. It seemed to repel the worst of the rift's madness. Aelric, after briefly swapping ages with a passing ghost-boy, insisted on staying within arm's reach.
Eventually, they reached the edge of a chasm — the Vale itself, split by a wound in the land so wide it could not be seen across. Floating islands drifted lazily through the mist, tethered by chains of cracked obsidian and memory-light. Ruins hung in midair, some upright, others sideways or inverted.
A bridge of light shimmered into being as Kaelen stepped forward, summoned by the Ember's will. He took a breath and stepped across.
Each step echoed in his bones.
The bridge wound through the floating remnants of Viremyr — towers turned inside out, libraries scattered across wind, time-shattered halls where voices murmured backwards. Aelric clutched his head more than once, wincing.
"I swear this place is trying to remember me."
Kaelen moved forward steadily. He trusted the pull — not just of the Ember, but of something deeper. Memory, maybe. Or fate.
They crossed into the central isle as the sky fractured, revealing a ceiling of stars that spun like a wheel. At the center stood the remnants of a throne hall — twisted in on itself, vines of silver light binding its cracked pillars.
And there, floating above a fractured dais, hovered the Fourth Crown.
Unlike the others, it wasn't made of gold or bone or coral. It was a lattice of crystal and shadow, constantly shifting, never the same shape twice. Every time Kaelen blinked, it changed.
"It's… thinking," he said aloud.
Then a voice boomed from behind them, hollow and grand.
"It remembers you."
A figure emerged from the throne's remains. Clad in layered armor that glimmered with frost and ash, a helm in the shape of an owl's skull covering its face.
The Chronarch.
Guardian of the Crown of Time.
Kaelen stepped forward, but the air thickened. The Chronarch raised one hand, and the world slowed.
Aelric froze midstep.
The wind halted.
Even Kaelen felt his heartbeat lag behind.
"You walk with fire in your chest," the Chronarch said. "You hold the Crowns of Sun, Dusk, and Sea. But Viremyr was not drowned or burned. We were forgotten."
Kaelen struggled to speak. "I'm here to remember."
The Chronarch tilted its head. "Then prove that you are worthy of our curse."
The Crown exploded into shards of time.
Kaelen found himself alone — elsewhen.
He stood in a golden field. A city gleamed on the horizon. Bells rang. Children laughed. Soldiers trained in a courtyard nearby, swords clanging, voices sharp.
It was Viremyr before the fall.
He turned — and saw a young version of the Chronarch, unmasked, laughing with his sister beneath the boughs of an elder tree.
Then the light dimmed. The sky cracked. He saw the war come — how the Chronarch had shattered the temporal boundary in a desperate act of protection, sealing Viremyr from the Hollow King's advance. Trapping it in endless echoes.
And himself with it.
Kaelen reached out. "I see you."
The Chronarch turned. Older again. Wearing the helm once more.
"Then take what remains of me."
The vision vanished. Kaelen stood once more in the throne hall. The Crown coalesced in the air before him — no longer shifting, but whole. Waiting.
He took it.
The moment he did, the realm around them shimmered — and began to heal. Islands drifted inward, vines of silver light wove together the broken pieces of time. The chasm sealed itself with a sound like thunder heard through water.
Aelric stumbled forward, blinking. "Please tell me that was you and not the marsh gods."
Kaelen held up the Crown of Viremyr. "Four."
The sky steadied.
Somewhere beyond the vale, a wind changed direction — as if the world had felt a piece of itself return.