Power doesn't change you. It reveals you. That's what Revenna had said, once, somewhere between silence and threat. But Crispin wasn't sure anymore. Because the thing squirming under his skin wasn't just revealing him—it was rewriting him. One flick of his hand and the ground shook. One breath too deep and shadows stretched toward him like hounds recognizing a buried master.
The Watchtower's deepest training vaults weren't built for comfort. They were built for monsters. Thick stone sealed with runes. No air vents. No exits. Just a chamber that could withstand the wrath of beings who shouldn't exist. Revenna stood against the far wall with her arms crossed and that same half-impressed, half-disgusted expression she wore every time Crispin failed to explode something on command.
"Again," she said.
Crispin exhaled, hand out. Black mist curled around his fingers like smoke with purpose.
"I said again."
He gritted his teeth and pushed.
The mist ignited. Not with flame—but with form.
An Echo stepped forward from the smoke. Tall. Elegant. No face. A body wrapped in ink-black ribbons of scripture, floating above the floor. One of the Crowned Ones. It bowed, silent.
Revenna nodded. "That's one."
Crispin winced. His temples screamed.
Another gesture. Another Echo.
Then another. Three. Four. Seven. They lined up behind him like a procession of ghosts in mourning robes.
Sweat poured down his back. His legs shook.
"You're stopping at seven?" Revenna asked.
"That's all I can—"
"No. That's all you believe you can."
He glared at her. "You think I'm holding back?"
"I think the part of you that was born human is trying to protect what's left of your sanity."
"Maybe I'd like to keep it."
Revenna stepped forward. Her voice softened, but her eyes did not.
"There's no going back, Crispin. Not after the Crown. Not after summoning a Sovereign-tier Echo. You've left the road, and now you're walking the cliffs."
He didn't answer. Couldn't.
The Echoes behind him knelt. One turned its head—no face, but Crispin knew it was seeing him. Not just observing. Judging.
Then the whisper came again.
Not from Revenna.
Not from the Echoes.
From the Crown.
"Feed me."
Crispin stumbled back, one hand to his forehead.
"What was that?" he asked, his voice thin.
Revenna's face went still. "You heard it?"
"I didn't just hear it. I felt it."
She stepped forward, slow. "That wasn't one of us."
"What the hell does that mean?"
Revenna stared at him a long moment. "It means the Crown is waking up. And it's not just a conduit. It's a gate. One the Sovereigns sealed long ago… using the System as a cage."
Crispin's mouth went dry. "I thought the System created the Gates."
Revenna shook her head. "No. The Gates were already there. The System just kept us from falling into them all at once."
He felt cold. Like the truth had just knocked out a piece of his spine.
"Then what am I?" he asked.
She hesitated.
Then: "You're a continuation of something that was supposed to die."
Before he could answer, alarms screamed.
Not blaring. Not sirens.
Harmonics.
The kind of sound that vibrated in bone instead of air. The kind that couldn't be faked or misunderstood.
A Sovereign was here.
The Watchtower had been breached.
The lights in the Watchtower dimmed, not because of power failure but because something else was shining brighter. From the ceiling, a fracture opened—a perfect vertical seam in the air, like someone had unzipped reality itself.
Crispin felt it immediately. The pressure. The gravity. The kind of dread that wasn't learned—it was inherited.
He stumbled back as Revenna raised a hand and activated a silent alarm. Red glyphs flared to life along the walls. The floor locked into place. Dozens of Watchtower agents emerged from hidden alcoves, armor humming, weapons drawn—but none moved.
They knew. Everyone knew.
This wasn't a battle they could win.
A shape emerged from the tear in space. Slow. Purposeful. It didn't walk. It glided. Not a Sovereign itself—no, Crispin could feel that. This was… a voice. A whisper of a Sovereign made flesh.
The being was draped in deep red robes that flowed unnaturally, like blood underwater. Its face was obscured by a lattice of bone and light. Its presence made time slow down. Made thought harder.
It stopped three paces from Crispin and bowed.
Not mockingly.
Respectfully.
"I greet the Bearer of the Crown," it said, voice like a thousand people speaking in sync.
Crispin said nothing. He couldn't. His breath had been stolen the second it entered the room.
Revenna raised her weapon. "Identify yourself."
The figure turned to her. "I am Mouren, Hand of the Third Sovereign, Voice of the Abyss-Twin, Memory of the Hollow Oath."
It turned back to Crispin.
"I come not to kill, but to offer remembrance."
The room tightened. Even the Echoes stood alert now, frozen.
"What do you want?" Crispin forced out.
"To return something that was taken from you."
"I didn't lose anything."
Mouren reached into the folds of its robes and pulled out an object wrapped in silk.
He unwrapped it slowly.
It was a mask.
Simple. Pale. Cracked.
And Crispin recognized it.
He didn't know how.
He didn't know why.
But some part of him, deeper than memory, screamed with familiarity.
"This belonged to your father," Mouren said softly.
Crispin stepped forward, heart pounding.
"My father was no Sovereign."
"No," Mouren agreed. "But he was the First Gatekeeper. The one who opened the very first breach… and chained himself inside it to hold back the dark."
"No," Crispin whispered. "That's a lie."
"Then why does the crown not reject you?"
The words hit harder than any blade.
Revenna's face changed. Something passed behind her expression—shock, calculation, something else.
Crispin stared at the mask.
"I watched him die."
"No," Mouren said, stepping forward. "You watched his echo vanish. The System ensured you wouldn't remember the truth. But the Crown woke it. And so did your Echoes."
The Echoes behind Crispin shifted uneasily.
One stepped forward.
The one he'd summoned from his first kill.
It knelt, not to him… but to the mask.
Crispin's knees buckled.
"What am I?" he asked, voice raw.
Mouren didn't blink. "You are not a mistake. You are a continuation. The child of the Gate and the Warden who sealed it. The final key. The Hollow King."
He held the mask out.
Crispin reached for it.
His fingers trembled.
But he touched it.
And the world broke open again.
The moment Crispin's fingers brushed the mask, his body convulsed. Not outwardly. Not visibly. Internally. Like something ancient and waiting had just been uncaged. His vision dimmed. Sound vanished. For a moment, he wasn't standing in the Watchtower.
He was falling.
Through memories that were not his.
Through lives that had never been lived.
He saw a tower built in reverse, from the heavens down into the earth. He saw men with glowing eyes carving the runes that would become the foundation of the System. And at the center of it all, he saw a man—tall, wrapped in white flame, weeping as he closed a Gate with his bare hands.
The man looked up. And saw him.
"My son," he whispered.
Crispin screamed. Not in fear. In recognition.
It wasn't just a memory.
It was a message.
"You must finish what I could not. You must undo the chain, or you will become its next link."
Crispin dropped the mask.
He was back in the Watchtower. Revenna was beside him, hand on his shoulder, trying to ground him.
The red-robed Mouren stood motionless.
"What did you see?" she asked.
Crispin didn't answer.
Instead, he turned to Mouren.
"Why show me this?"
"Because you must make a choice. Remain as you are—half-broken, half-powerful—or accept your inheritance."
Crispin looked at his hand.
It glowed faintly now, etched with a new symbol.
A lock.
No… a key.
"Your father was not a Sovereign," Mouren continued. "But he made a bargain with them. He bought Virelia ten thousand years of peace… by giving up you."
The words slammed into him harder than any blade.
He staggered back. Revenna caught him.
"I'm… not supposed to exist," he muttered.
"You are supposed to end what he began," Mouren replied. "And if you don't—another will take your place."
"No one can take my place."
"Then prove it."
The room shifted.
The walls vanished.
The ground cracked.
Suddenly, they were not in the Watchtower anymore.
They were standing in a void between Gates, a space the System itself could not monitor.
And there, waiting for him, was an Echo unlike anything he'd ever summoned.
It wore a mirror for a face.
And it looked exactly like him.