They arrived at night.
There was no ceremony. No team. No clearance.
Only Crispin, Revenna, and Yara.
The streets of Old Virelia were silent—buildings hunched like sleeping beasts, windows dark, roads split by the roots of time. Beneath them, a forgotten city sprawled like a memory that refused to die. This wasn't where tourists wandered or families built lives. This was the city beneath the city—where magic bled before the System was ever born.
And somewhere beneath it, the Gate pulsed.
Revenna led them through an alley carved from redbrick and rune-stone. No one followed. No one would dare. The Sovereign fragment's attack had left the city humming with fear. Yet here they were, entering a place that should have never been opened.
Yara walked beside Crispin silently. She hadn't spoken much since the attack. Not out of trauma—no. She was thinking. Remembering. Every now and then, she'd look at him like she was seeing a ghost.
They reached a rusted stairwell leading downward into black. Revenna tapped the seal on the wall. It dissolved like ash in water.
Below waited a vault. Circular. Carved by no human hand. Stone too old for records. Air too thick for breath.
Crispin stepped in first. The moment his foot touched the stone, the Gate responded.
The Crown pulsed.
And the room lit up.
Glyphs awakened across the walls—ancient, looping, written in a language that didn't belong to any world they knew. The Gate itself wasn't shaped like the others. Not a portal. Not a rift. But a well, descending forever.
And from within that pit, a voice echoed.
"Crispin."
He froze.
Yara grabbed his hand. Revenna raised her weapon.
"Don't," Crispin whispered. "I know that voice."
And then he saw it.
A shape.
Floating at the center of the pit.
Not alive.
But not dead.
Suspended in a cocoon of chained light, was a man.
Crispin knew his face.
His jaw. His eyes. His scar.
It was the face that had looked down on him as a child with tired pride.
His father.
Only… wrong.
The body twitched.
The light flickered.
And then the Gate spoke through him.
"I gave you the Crown to seal what I failed to."
The voice was his. And wasn't.
Crispin stepped forward. "What is this?"
Revenna whispered, "It's a consciousness bind. A Sovereign-level tether. Your father isn't alive. But his essence—his will—was locked here to serve as the Crown's anchor."
"You're telling me he's a prison?"
"No," said the voice. "I am the key. The one who closed the First Gate… but never left."
Crispin dropped to one knee, not out of reverence.
Out of grief.
"Why didn't you come back?"
"I couldn't. I was the only one who could bind the root of the System… and I paid with myself. You were never supposed to find this place."
"But I did."
The light pulsed.
"Then that means the Sovereigns are stirring."
"They already have. One came for Yara."
At her name, the light shook.
"She is the tether," the voice said.
Revenna turned sharply. "What do you mean?"
"She is the one the Crown listens to."
"No," Crispin said. "It listens to me."
"Because she still remembers your name."
Silence.
Then—
"I sealed your memories the day I vanished. You and Yara both. I hoped the Crown would never awaken again. But the moment it touched you… your Echoes remembered. And so did she."
Yara stepped forward. "What am I?"
"My last promise."
The words hit hard.
Crispin didn't speak.
Couldn't.
The voice continued. "The System was never meant to last. It was a patch—a failing bandage over a wound too old to close. The Sovereigns never left. They just agreed to sleep… so long as the Gates stayed shut."
Revenna's voice was low. "But someone's opening them."
"No," the voice said. "Someone is creating new ones."
That chilled them all.
Crispin stood. "Who?"
"You've met him," said the voice.
And suddenly, a memory flashed.
The red-robed Mouren.
The fragment that smiled too easily.
The words: You wear his blood.
It wasn't a message. It was a warning.
"Mouren?"
"No," said the voice. "The one who made Mouren. The Architect."
Revenna gasped.
"That's a myth."
"No," said Crispin's father. "He is real. He is the one who lit the First Gate from the other side. I closed it… but he remains. And now, through your Crown, he sees again."
Crispin's hands trembled.
"What do I do?"
The chains around the man's body glowed. "Break the link. Free me. Let me show you the Architect's shape."
Revenna raised her gun.
"No. We don't know what's sealed in him."
Crispin ignored her.
He reached out.
Touched the light.
And the world shifted.
Not outside.
Inside.
He wasn't in the chamber anymore.
He was on a bridge of light, above a chasm of shifting memories. His father stood across from him—whole. Alive.
"I don't have long," the man said.
"Are you real?"
"Enough. Listen. The Architect isn't a Sovereign. He is what comes after Sovereigns die. A consequence. He is the code beneath the code. The rot the System was built to hide."
Crispin stepped forward. "Why me?"
"Because you carry both keys. The Crown. And the bloodline. You are what the Gates were designed to stop."
"You mean I can open them."
"No. You can end them. Every Gate. Every System. Every Sovereign. Gone. But you'll have to give up the thing you're trying hardest to hold on to."
Crispin's heart cracked.
"My humanity."
His father nodded.
"I don't want to lose who I am."
"You already have. The question now is what you become instead."
Suddenly, the memory cracked. His father began to fade.
"Wait!" Crispin shouted.
But it was too late.
He was falling again.
Back to the Gate.
The body had gone still.
The light was dying.
"Revenna—"
She turned. "He's gone."
Yara was crying. Not from fear. From recognition.
"He loved you," she said quietly.
"I know," Crispin said.
And then the Gate shifted.
The cocoon opened.
And a black flame rose from the corpse—not his father anymore.
It formed into a shape—a tall, eyeless figure with symbols spiraling across its chest.
The flame spoke.
"I am the Architect."
Crispin stepped back.
Revenna fired.
The bullets melted before they reached it.
Yara grabbed Crispin's arm. "We have to run."
"No," he said. "We have to end it."
The Architect smiled.
"You think yourself a King. But you are still a boy in a tomb full of liars."
And with that, it vanished.
Gone.
No trace.
No echo.
Only a name left behind.
A new name etched into the Crown.
[NEW TARGET RECOGNIZED: THE ARCHITECT]
[CROWN INTEGRATION LEVEL: 83%]
[WARNING: SYSTEM ERROR—ROOT CODE COLLAPSING]
Crispin looked at Revenna.
"What does that mean?"
She checked her scanner.
"It means the System is breaking down."
Yara stared at the Gate, eyes wide.
"It means we don't have much time."
Crispin turned to the darkness.
"Then we bring the fight to him."
He raised the Crown.
And a new Gate bloomed behind him.
One that had no coordinates.
No shape.
Only purpose.
Hunt the Architect.
And end the Gates forever.