The world was dying.
Not in fire. Not in flood. But in silence — the kind that follows the collapse of something ancient, eternal, and tired.
Skies cracked like fractured glass above kingdoms torn by war. The seas roiled with forgotten gods, their bones surfacing in tides that no longer obeyed the moon. Cities stood abandoned, monarchs gone mad or vanished, temples desecrated, and once-mighty thrones reduced to dust.
All of it… the fallout of the Crown of Shadows.
Raizen stood at the edge of what remained.
The winds carried ash, and the sun no longer warmed. Time itself seemed uncertain, ticking forward not by seconds, but by destinies unraveling.
Here — at the convergence of the final lines of fate — he would make his last stand.
They came to him, the last of his crew.
Zuri, her blade cracked but her stance unshaken.
Jin, his mechanical arm sparking, eyes hollow from all he'd lost.
Kora, limping from the last siege, fire still in her voice.
Even Kaze, the exile who had once betrayed them, returned bloodied and worn but loyal — perhaps for the first time.
"We're all that's left," Kora said softly.
Raizen looked across them, these broken warriors who had become more than comrades. They were family. Scarred by battle. Forged in fire.
He nodded. "Then we're enough."
The battlefield was not a field at all.
It was a rift in the sky, suspended between dimensions. The Crown of Shadows had begun to reassemble itself in the void between worlds — its shattered fragments orbiting a heart of pure darkness, pulsing like a second sun.
And from that center came the Last Warden.
Neither mortal nor divine, it was a being born of the Crown's will — the final guardian, forged of stolen power, wearing the faces of the dead, speaking in voices Raizen had once loved.
"You were meant to be the new god," the Warden whispered, its voice a blend of Drax, of Raizen's mother, of the first king. "Why do you resist the inevitable?"
"Because I've seen it," Raizen growled. "And I know what it costs."
The battle that followed was not fought with blades alone.
It was a war of ideals, of memory and sacrifice.
Zuri held the Warden at bay with her shattered twin sabers, carving fire into the void.
Jin unleashed the last of his stolen tech — a detonator of celestial energy that tore through illusions.
Kora sang an ancient hymn, a prayer to silence the lies of fate, and for a moment, the darkness trembled.
And Raizen… stepped into the core.
The Crown called to him, one last time.
It showed him a world rebuilt — perfect, peaceful, sterile.
No war. No hunger. No death.
No choice.
But Raizen had made his choice long ago.
He reached into his chest — to the cursed seal his ancestor had left — and ripped it free.
The raw, divine power surged into him, not as a gift, but as a burden he chose to carry.
Not to rule.
Not to reign.
But to end it.
He turned to the Warden and spoke a single word:
"Enough."
And with that, the power unraveled. Not in an explosion. Not in glory.
But in release.
The Crown of Shadows shattered again — not into fragments, but into dust, scattered on a wind that reached every corner of the broken world.
The skies cleared. The rift sealed.
And Raizen collapsed.
When he woke, it was dawn.
Real dawn. Light that warmed. Winds that carried life instead of death.
Kora sat beside him, battered and bruised.
"You did it," she said. "It's over."
Raizen looked to the sky.
"No," he said. "It's beginning."
Across the world, the ruins stirred.
People emerged from hiding. Kingdoms sent out envoys, not soldiers. Healers replaced kings. Builders replaced warriors.
The Age of Thrones had ended.
And in its place… a world no longer ruled by fear or prophecy, but by will.
Raizen would not be remembered as a god.
Not as a king.
But as the man who broke the cycle.
The Hollow Reckoning had come.
And from its ashes…
a new legacy would rise.
END OF THE CHAPTER1