Silence.
Not the silence of an empty room, but the kind that crushed the mind—a silence so absolute it swallowed thought itself.
Kaen drifted in it, weightless. Burning. Frozen.
He tried to move, but there was no body to command. Only pain, threaded through every part of what he was—searing, relentless.
Somewhere distant, voices echoed. Not words—emotions: anger, sorrow, betrayal.
Then, out of the darkness, something stirred.
A figure.
No—a presence. Towering. Crowned in shadow, cloaked in a shroud of shifting memories. Its face was ever-changing: sometimes a king, sometimes a corpse, sometimes a boy not much older than Kaen himself.
"You wear the shards," the voice said—low, almost thoughtful. "Yet you do not kneel."
Kaen willed himself to speak, but only a raw breath escaped him.
The crowned shadow drifted closer, and the emptiness around them coiled like living mist. "You carry the remnants of what was forsaken. You are the fracture. The broken line."
Kaen grit his teeth. He felt something deep inside him—a stubborn spark that refused to be crushed.
"I don't care about thrones," he rasped. "Or crowns. I never did."
The shadow loomed closer still, and the mist condensed into chains, writhing and clinking.
"No one cares... until the crown chooses them."
In one motion, the shadow thrust out a hand—and the chains snapped toward Kaen. He tried to dodge, but there was no space, no ground, no reality to move in.
The chains wrapped around him—chilling, burning—binding him in place.
The crowned figure leaned down, eyes burning like twin coals.
"Prove yourself," it hissed. "Or be consumed."
Before Kaen could react, a memory that wasn't his own crashed into him—a battlefield drowned in blood, screams, and flame.
Knights clashed under a sunless sky. A king wept upon a broken throne. A sword—the same ruined blade Kaen had touched—plunged through a heart wrapped in golden armor.
The pain was unbearable.
Kaen screamed again, but this time, something inside him roared back.
A flare of power erupted from within—wild, raw, not entirely human. The chains shattered into fragments of light.
The crowned shadow reeled, its form flickering.
Kaen dropped onto something solid for the first time in what felt like eternity—a floor of cracked black stone.
Gasping, he pushed himself up. The shards of the Forsaken Blade still burned under his skin, but now they felt alive—responding to his rage, his refusal to break.
The crowned figure steadied itself, and for a moment, something almost like approval flickered in its burning gaze.
"Very well," it said. "You have been marked."
A searing symbol branded itself onto Kaen's forearm—a twisted crown of ash and flame.
"You walk the path of the Hollow Crown now," the voice said, fading with the mist. "Remember: power does not come without price."
The ground trembled again—and this time, Kaen felt himself rising.
A blinding light engulfed him.
When he opened his eyes, he was back in the stone chamber.
Or what was left of it.
The dais had collapsed into rubble. The armored sentinels were gone—nothing more than piles of twisted metal and dust.
Lira knelt beside him, her face pale with worry, her hands on his shoulders.
"Kaen!" she gasped. "You're—you're alive."
He blinked, heart pounding. His whole body ached, but the power burning inside him hadn't faded.
"I'm... something," he managed, voice hoarse.
Lira helped him to his feet. Her eyes caught the new mark on his arm, and her expression tightened with unspoken questions. But she didn't ask—not yet.
Behind them, the passage they'd come from had sealed shut. The only way now was forward.
Kaen flexed his fingers. For a moment, his palm glowed with a faint, flickering fire—ash-gray and crimson.
"I don't know what just happened," he said, voice steadying, "but we're not the same anymore."
Lira gave a grim smile. "Good. Because I have a feeling... things are
about to get much worse."
Together, they turned and walked into the waiting dark.