The first thing Jerome felt was pain.A deep, throbbing ache pulsing through his ribs, jaw, and neck. His entire body screamed like he’d been hit by a truck, then thrown into another. His eyes opened slowly, vision swimming, light stinging.He wasn’t on the ground anymore. He was lying on a couch. A small, warm apartment — pale green walls, faint vanilla scent in the air, and a dim lamp glowing near a stack of books.Not his house. Not his room.And most importantly… not alone.“Hey.”Margareth’s voice cut through the haze.She was sitting in a worn armchair across the room, legs tucked beneath her, eyes red and tired, but focused entirely on him.Jerome tried to sit up, but pain flared in his side.“Easy,” she said, standing quickly. “You hit your head. Or something hit it for you.”He winced as she helped him lean back against the cushions.“What... happened?” he asked, voice raspy.“I found you. In the alley behind those apartments near 8th Street. You were unconscious. Bleeding. A

The motel room sat quiet in a way that felt unnatural, like the world outside had been turned off and sealed behind glass. The hum of the air conditioner had stopped sometime after midnight, and the only sound left was the occasional creak of old wood settling beneath layers of dust and cheap carpet.Jerome sat on the bed with his legs crossed, the chain resting in his hands, glowing faintly like a lantern submerged in dark water. Margareth had fallen asleep in the chair near the window, arms crossed over her chest, her body wrapped in a motel-issue blanket, and her head tilted slightly to the side like someone caught between alertness and collapse.She hadn’t said much since they returned from Elden Reach, and Jerome hadn’t pushed. He didn’t have the energy. All he knew was that the longer he held the necklace, the heavier it felt — not physically, but as if its history pressed through the metal into his veins, weighing down his chest and spine with stories he hadn’t lived but someho

Margareth kept her eyes on the road, one hand resting tensely on the steering wheel, the other clutching the journal open in her lap. Jerome sat beside her, silent, hunched slightly forward with his fingers curled into the sleeves of his hoodie, as if trying to shrink away from the warmth still pulsing beneath the mark on his forearm. The mark hadn’t gone away. In fact, it had started to deepen. Faint lines had appeared around it, delicate as veins, but glowing softly beneath the skin like ink burned with memory. Neither of them had slept much since the graveyard. The vision—shared, tangible, real—had rattled something loose in both of them. It had proven that Jerome wasn’t imagining things, but it also proved something worse: that whatever Aerian Callen failed to seal wasn’t just breaking free. It was aware of Jerome now.“There,” Margareth said, slowing the car as they turned down a side road near the base of the cemetery hill. “That’s the cabin the journal mentioned. Guy named Elia

He sat upon a blackened throne carved from iron and stone, its edges jagged like broken teeth, its base wrapped in twisted roots that pulsed with red light. Around him, towers crumbled into dust, cities sank beneath rivers of flame, and an army of shadows stood kneeling before him. Their faces were hidden, their mouths sewn shut, but still they whispered his name. The sound came not from their throats, but from the world itself — the wind, the ground, the sky. His name echoed through everything.“Heir.”The Crown was not metal. It was alive.It moved as it rested on his head, shifting like a serpent coiled around his skull, whispering promises not through language, but through sensation — images, impulses, clarity. There was no fear here. No hunger. No weakness. Every wound Jerome had carried — his loneliness, his anger, his resentment toward the world that had forgotten him — it all melted under the weight of that presence. He could see the timeline stretch before him, not in hours o

Jerome woke before sunrise, drenched in sweat, heart hammering in his chest like it was trying to knock itself loose. The word echoed through his skull like a bell that wouldn’t stop ringing — not just a sound, but a memory trying to force its way out. “Arvail.” It wasn’t his name. Not the one his mother gave him. Not the one on his ID. But it felt right in a way that terrified him. Like slipping into someone else’s skin and finding it already fit. He sat up slowly, the motel room still half-cast in dawn’s early shadow. Margareth was curled up on the second bed, deep in sleep. Selene was nowhere to be seen.The stone Cassiel had left sat on the table. The chain beside it had dimmed, but not faded. Jerome stared at them both, breath shallow. He hadn’t told them what the Crown said. Not the voice. Not the name. Because it didn’t feel like something he could share without unraveling completely.He dressed in silence, then pulled out the old journal. He hadn’t opened it in hours. Now he f