The moment Kael's fingers closed around the second shard, the world fractured.
Not just the chamber. Everything.
Reality broke apart like glass, splitting into a thousand mirrored echoes of itself. The ground beneath him shuddered, his vision distorting as time itself seemed to collapse. He was falling, weightless, yet standing still. He could see Selene reaching for him, her voice lost in the distortion, her body flickering in and out of existence like a shadow cast across broken light.
The battle between the Hollow Order and the Harbingers blurred—warriors phasing between realities, their forms doubling, tripling, as the entire structure of the ruin collapsed inward on itself.
And then—
Darkness.
Deep, suffocating, endless.
Kael floated in it, weightless, the shards in his chest pulsing in unison. The second fragment merged with the first, their energies twisting together, fusing into something greater, something more complete.
And then the voices came.
---
Visions of the Vanished
"Forsaken child…"
The voice rippled through him, a thousand tones speaking as one.
Kael turned—though he wasn't sure he had a body anymore. He was somewhere… else. A space between moments. A memory that wasn't his.
The darkness shifted, forming into something vast.
And then he saw it.
The lost world of the Harbingers.
It had been beautiful once—a realm crafted from golden spires, its sky an endless swirl of vibrant energy, the very air humming with power. It was not just a civilization. It was a source.
And at its heart, the Crown sat whole.
The Harbingers had been its first wielders, the original heirs to its power. They had shaped reality itself, bending the fundamental threads of existence. They were the architects before the Architects.
But then…
The invasion came.
Kael watched it happen, his mind struggling to comprehend the scale. The Harbingers' golden realm shattered, ripped apart from within as another force seized the Crown. Not the Hollow Order. Not the Forsaken like Kael.
The Architects.
They were not creators as the Hollow Order had claimed.
They were conquerors.
They had stolen the Fractured Crown from the Harbingers, erasing them from history, severing them from their own existence. And without the Crown to sustain them, the Harbingers had vanished, trapped in the spaces between time, exiled to the cracks of reality itself.
Until now.
Kael staggered as the vision blurred, fading back into darkness. The voices whispered again.
"You hold the Crown's fragments, child. And now, you carry our burden as well."
---
Kael's eyes snapped open.
He was back in the ruins, the battle still raging around him. The moment he had taken the second shard had lasted seconds, yet it felt like he had lived through centuries of stolen history.
And something was different.
The world felt sharper, as if he could see the individual threads of reality around him. The very air hummed against his skin. The fragments inside him burned, but it was not pain. It was…
Power.
Selene was at his side, pulling him to his feet.
"Kael, what the hell just happened?"
He couldn't answer. Not yet. His mind was still reeling from the knowledge, the weight of what he had seen.
But there was no time to process it.
The Hollow Order and the Harbingers had turned their attention toward him now.
They had felt the shards awaken.
They knew what he had become.
And they weren't going to let him walk away.
---
The Change in Kael
The first Harbinger warrior moved to strike. Kael's body reacted before his mind did, his form shifting—not stepping, but phasing.
One second, he was standing still.
The next, he was behind his attacker.
The movement was impossible.
But it had felt… natural.
The Harbinger hesitated, eyes narrowing beneath his helmet. "He is adapting to the Crown's echoes…"
The Hollow Ascendant, Vaelcor, raised a hand. "No. He is becoming something else."
Selene looked at Kael, and this time, she did not hide her fear.
"Kael… what are you?"
He clenched his fists. He could feel the answer inside himself, but he didn't dare speak it yet.
Because if he did…
It would make it real.
---
The Choice Ahead
The battle around them ceased.
The Hollow Order and the Harbingers were no longer fighting each other.
They were watching Kael.
Waiting.
Because now, he was no longer just a Forsaken scavenger who had stumbled onto a fragment of the Crown.
He was something new.
The Harbingers had seen their past in him.
The Hollow Order had seen their fear.
And Kael knew, without a doubt, that he had just changed the course of the war forever.
The Fractured Crown was no longer a myth or a relic of history.
It was waking up.
And for the first time…
Kael wasn't sure if he was still in control.