Chapter 106 - Time Breaks

The gates of the Crownless City lay in ruin, a shattered mouth yawning open to the storm-wracked world beyond. What was once a proud threshold—fortified, feared, and fabled—had become rubble beneath a mourning sky. Rain poured in sheets, relentless and cold, washing the blood of old battles into the fractured streets. Smoke twisted upward from the ruins, thick and slow, slithering through the cracks in the stone like serpents awakened by tremors in the earth. It was not mere destruction that marred the land, but something deeper—older. Magic bled freely now, no longer contained by ancient wards or whispered pacts. It wept from the broken stones like a wound torn open by fate itself. The air reeked of rusted iron, wet ash, and something unnamable—something that tasted like memory dredged from a forgotten grave.