Crispin David hated silence. Not the comfortable kind that comes after laughter, or the peace of early mornings when the city's still deciding if it wants to live or die again. No, he hated this kind of silence—the one that crept into your bones, wrapped its cold fingers around your spine, and whispered things you weren't ready to hear. He sat in a sleek, matte-black transport speeding beneath the surface of Virelia, flanked by two quiet guards in obsidian armor. Revenna sat across from him, legs crossed, hands folded, eyes never blinking. "You're thinking too loud," she said at last. Crispin didn't answer. His thoughts weren't thoughts anymore. They were flashes. Yara's scream. The Watcher's empty gaze. The Echo that spoke in Arlen's voice. And the god-tier entity that had ripped a celestial being apart like it was paper. "Where are we going?" he finally asked. "The place you were never supposed to find," Revenna said. "The Watchtower." "Underground?" "Below underground." "Sounds cozy." "Only if you survive the introduction."
They arrived ten minutes later. Not with a grand entrance. No swirling gates or divine banners. Just a quiet hiss of pressure as the transport halted in a black tunnel and opened to reveal a hallway carved from onyx and lit with silver veins that pulsed like veins under skin. No noise. No reception. Just silence and walls that felt like they were breathing. Revenna led the way. Her pace was measured, like she knew every step before she took it. Crispin followed, flanked by the guards who hadn't spoken once. Every so often, he'd catch a glimpse of something through slitted glass—training chambers, libraries with floating tomes, containment rooms with glowing coffins. It was a city of secrets, stitched beneath a city that was already pretending not to break. The Watchtower was older than the Guild, older than the System, older than the idea that anyone had control of anything. And it existed for one reason: to monitor those who weren't meant to exist.
"You're not the first anomaly," Revenna said as they entered an open atrium with a domed ceiling showing a false night sky. "But you're the first to wake up without being prompted. The first to resist a Watcher and command a god-tier Echo." "Lucky me." "Don't confuse luck with lineage." "You think this is about blood?" "I think this is about something worse." She turned and handed him a plain black band. "Put this on. It'll keep the deeper parts of you asleep." "And if I don't?" "Then you'll summon something worse than the last one, and none of us are ready for that." He stared at the band. It hummed faintly in his hand. A suppression tool, no doubt. Crispin was tired of chains, but he slipped it over his wrist anyway. For now.
They took him to a chamber carved into the bedrock of existence itself. That's how it felt, anyway. The room was circular, lined with faint blue runes, and at its center stood a monolith made of translucent stone—hovering, humming, waiting. "Sit," Revenna said. Crispin did. A tendril of light licked across the air and attached itself to his temple. He flinched but didn't pull back. "What is this?" "A Trial. Not of strength. Not of power. Of memory." "Whose?" "Yours." Then everything went black.
He was six again. His mother crying in the kitchen, her hands red with soap, face redder with grief. Yara was still a baby. His father wasn't mentioned. Not in this house. Not in this timeline. He watched himself watching her, watched his own confusion, watched the night the walls vibrated with unseen power and a white crack formed under his bed for only a moment. He watched himself sleep beside it. Watched his mother erase it the next day without speaking. Then ten years old. First fight. First blood. Something inside him answered when that boy punched him. Something that grinned behind his eyes. He didn't remember that part. But it was real. Then fifteen. The first Gate breach he survived alone. He shouldn't have. Everyone else died. But something stepped between him and the monster's claw. Something he couldn't see, but that the monster could. It had bowed. Called him "Halfblood." And died by its own blade. Then seventeen. Arlen. Their first job. Their first kill. Their first laugh after almost dying. The first time Crispin felt like maybe he wasn't going to die poor and forgotten. Then Arlen's death. Again. Again. Again. He screamed.
The chamber cracked.
The monolith pulsed and shattered into pieces.
Crispin collapsed to his hands and knees, choking on memories.
Revenna's voice echoed from somewhere above him. "He's not bound. He's fragmenting."
A new voice cut in—male, old, and terrifying. "Let him. If he's truly the Hollow King, this won't kill him. It'll crown him."
And something inside Crispin answered.
The band on his wrist melted into ash.
Every Echo he'd ever summoned appeared at once. Not in the room. In his mind. In his soul.
They weren't tools.
They were fragments of him.
Fears. Rage. Shame. Grief. Hope.
All of them real.
All of them him.
And they whispered.
"We are waiting."
He stood.
The room vibrated.
Stone peeled away.
The runes on the walls lit up, not with control—but with surrender.
He wasn't a prisoner.
He was a door.
And something was trying to walk through.
"What is this?" he gasped.
Revenna appeared beside him, eyes wide, jaw tight. "A Sovereign's signature."
Crispin blinked. "You said they were just stories."
"I lied."
A glyph on the wall ignited. A glyph that hadn't shone in a thousand years.
Then the voice came.
It wasn't human.
It wasn't even words.
It was truth.
"I AM THE FIRST WHO WAS SACRIFICED. I AM THE PRICE PAID TO OPEN THE SYSTEM. I AM THE SEED. YOU ARE THE FRUIT."
Crispin staggered backward.
Revenna stepped forward, shielding him instinctively.
The glyph pulsed again.
A hollow crown shimmered in the air and dropped into Crispin's hands.
But it wasn't metal.
It was made of memory.
Every soul he'd ever taken. Every pain he'd ever felt. Every name he'd forgotten.
A crown forged from the weight of surviving.
He lifted it.
The System wept.
[CROWN OF THE FIRSTBORN SOVEREIGN OBTAINED]
[CLASS ADVANCEMENT AVAILABLE: HOLLOW KING → ECLIPSED THRONEBEARER]
[WARNING: THIS CHOICE CANNOT BE UNDONE]
He stared at the choice.
The last one.
Become something the Sovereigns fear.
Or go back to pretending he didn't already break the rules.
"Do it," Revenna said, voice calm. "We need you to become it before they find you."
Crispin didn't hesitate.
He put the crown on.
The world ended.
And then was rewritten.
The moment the crown touched his head, a shiver tore down Crispin's spine like lightning carving stone. It wasn't cold or hot. It was all temperatures at once—fire and ice, blood and void, pain and numbness—melding into a single roar inside his mind.
Visions struck him like a tidal wave. Faces flashed—ancient, forgotten, broken. They weren't his, but their agony sang through his veins. He saw the creation of the System, the First Gate opening in a burst of light that birthed—and destroyed worlds. He felt the sacrifice of the one who became the Seed, the first Sovereign who gave his existence to chain chaos.
Then the crown whispered.
Not words. Not commands. But a question.
Will you wear the burden? Will you bear the silence of the throne?
He staggered, collapsing onto the cold floor, clutching the monolith's shards.
Revenna knelt beside him.
"Speak your choice."
He looked up into her cybernetic eyes, the kind of eyes that didn't lie.
"I don't know if I'm ready," Crispin confessed.
She smiled, almost kindly.
"No one ever is. But you have to be. The Sovereigns aren't waiting. They're coming. And they will burn everything that stands between you and the throne."
With that, the chamber trembled again.
A new Gate opened inside the Watchtower.
A Gate made of smoke and shadows.
From it stepped figures—Sovereigns themselves, their power crackling like static storms. Their eyes glowed with the promise of oblivion.
And Crispin, Hollow King, wearer of the Crown of the Firstborn Sovereign, rose to meet them.