The Crown of Shadows was broken…But Raizen was not whole.
The world hailed him as a savior. Across continents and scattered seas, songs were sung in his name. The tyrants had fallen. The gods had vanished into myth. The skies had cleared, and the Hollow Throne was no more.
And yet—
Raizen could feel it, deep within:A splinter in his soul.A thousand voices beneath his skin.A path no longer linear, but fractured.
The Crown may have been shattered, but he had wielded it — even if only briefly. And now, the residue of its divine will lingered in him like poison… or prophecy.
His crew noticed the change first.
Zuri's sharp eyes watched him with silent unease.Jin, once eager to speak with his captain, now hesitated before every sentence.Even Kora, who had once followed Raizen through fire and flood, whispered to the others when she thought he couldn't hear:
"He's… not the same."
And she was right.
Raizen's laughter came less frequently. His eyes lingered on nothingness longer than they should. Sometimes, he'd speak words in ancient tongues — languages he had never learned. His dreams were no longer his own.
And when he awoke, it was often in cold sweat, muttering fragments of visions:
"The Skywheel spins… the tether breaks… gods weep in reverse…"
He didn't know what they meant.
But he feared the day he would.
The signs worsened.
On the third night after the Hollow Reckoning, Raizen's reflection moved before he did — its eyes burning with a dark glow.
He collapsed mid-step during a diplomatic summit in Verdona — and when he rose, he had no memory of what he had said to the kings and queens present.But they all knelt before him.
Later, Kora told him:
"You promised them eternity."
He secluded himself.
Far from thrones and temples, in a forgotten ruin atop the cliffs of Murakai, Raizen began searching for answers. He traced symbols in ash, meditated for days, and spoke with spirits only he could see.
In the cracks of the stone walls, he saw his fractured path:
One path led toward apotheosis — becoming a new god to replace the ones fallen.Another led toward oblivion — rejecting power, but dooming himself to spiritual disintegration.The third… was hidden still.
"Was I ever meant to survive this?" he asked the empty wind.
And the wind whispered back, in a voice he recognized as his own:
"Only as something else."
On the seventh night, the Crown pulsed from within him.
Not as an object — it was gone — but as an echo, buried in his marrow, in his blood. He felt its rhythm syncing with his heartbeat.
And then came the Riftwalkers.
Entities that existed beyond the veil — neither gods nor mortals, but remnants of an old era. They appeared at the edge of Raizen's vision, cloaked in shifting shadows and flame. They did not speak. They only watched.
Judging.
Waiting.
Raizen understood.
His path was no longer just his own.
Every step forward risked dragging the world with him — into light, or into something far darker.
He stood before his crew once again, the cliffs behind him, the dawn on his face. They looked to him not with awe, but fear.
"I don't know what I am anymore," he told them. "But I know what I'm not — I'm not done."
And they stood with him.
Even if the man before them was becoming something… other.
The path was shattered.
But he would walk it anyway.
Even if it led to ruin.
Even if it led to divinity.
Even if it meant walking alone.
Raizen's journey was not over.It had only changed form — just as he had.
END OF THE CHAPTER2