The false Jerome — the mirror, the echo, the shadow — knelt in the hollowed field where symbols still burned faintly in the ground. Its form shimmered like heat over stone, struggling to hold together, no longer mimicking Jerome perfectly but flickering between faces. Not other people — other possibilities.Jerome stood a few feet away, the shattered memory vial still steaming on the grass beside him. The image it had unleashed — of his own grief, his own brokenness — lingered in the air like fog, soft and gray. Not magic. Just memory, made too vivid to disappear.Margareth moved first, stepping between Selene and the woman, eyes locked on Jerome’s stillness.“What is it doing?”“It’s not attacking,” Selene murmured.“It doesn’t need to,” said Rhydan. “That thing wasn’t meant to destroy us.”Jerome didn’t move. “It was meant to ask us.”“Ask us what?”“To finish what we started.”The false Jerome lifted its head again, but its face was no longer a blur — it had formed completely. And

The Crown screamed, and the world recoiled.Not just the sky, not just the dirt — but everything in between. Trees bent backward. Stones cracked beneath feet that hadn’t moved. The echoes — the twisted fragments of Jerome’s past selves — trembled and dissolved into smoke. The field dimmed, as if the sun had stepped behind a veil.Jerome stood alone, the chain lifted in his hand. It vibrated with impossible tension, glowing not from within but in response — to the boy, to the Crown, to the choice he was about to make.The boy — the child of memory, the seal-born heir — didn’t cry out. He didn’t move. His gaze stayed locked with Jerome’s, calm and steady.He nodded once. A gesture of surrender. Of trust.And still, Jerome hesitated.Behind him, Margareth rose to her feet, staggering toward him. “Jerome, you have to do it.”“He’s just a boy,” he said hoarsely.“He’s more than that,” the woman said from the side, her eyes locked on the Crown still spinning behind the child. “He’s all of y

The voice inside the woman’s body wasn’t hers.It moved through her like wind through a cave — deep, endless, echoing off chambers no one had touched in centuries. Her lips moved, but the sound didn’t belong to a living thing. It was old. It was exact.Jerome felt every hair along his arms rise.“I was the first to crown you,” the voice said again, “and I will be the last to test you.”The gold in her eyes wasn’t magic. It was memory.And Jerome knew — even before the name formed on his tongue — who was speaking.“Veyra,” he whispered.The moment he said the name, a gust of hot wind spiraled from the earth, circling their group in a slow, tightening ring. The light dimmed again, even though no clouds passed the sun. It was like something in the atmosphere flinched.Rhydan growled, stepping forward. “She’s dead.”“No,” Jerome said. “She was sealed. By me. A long time ago.”Selene moved in beside Rhydan. “You sealed a bearer inside another bearer?”“No,” Jerome said softly. “I sealed th

The breeze had stopped entirely, not because the weather had shifted, but because the land itself was holding its breath. Even the birds had vanished — as if nature instinctively recoiled from what had just been said.“He’s waking now.”Veyra’s voice echoed, not aloud but deep in each of their minds, resonating like thunder inside a sealed chamber. And it wasn’t just prophecy. It wasn’t threat. It was memory crawling out of a locked cage.Jerome’s face had gone pale. His breath fogged the air even though the air wasn’t cold. The rest of the group stood in a loose circle around him — Margareth to his left, Selene gripping her blade to his right, and Rhydan a step behind him, arms crossed, flame hovering in each palm like a heartbeat ready to ignite.“What does that mean?” Selene asked, her voice low, sharp with unease. “Who’s waking?”Jerome didn’t answer.Couldn’t.He could still feel it — the ghost of the version she’d spoken of. The one he’d buried not in the world, but inside her.

Even after the First vanished — unraveled by the chain and Margareth’s defiant touch — the walls seemed to breathe, like the tower itself hadn’t decided whether to collapse or continue. The green light from the chain had faded from brilliance to ember, still alive, but no longer wild. It pulsed gently now, like a heartbeat remembering how to slow down.Jerome lay on the floor, breath shallow, eyes wide but unfocused. His skin was pale with sweat, and his body trembled as though every muscle had been emptied and refilled with cold fire.Margareth didn’t leave his side. She held his head in her lap, brushing damp curls away from his forehead, whispering to him in a language they hadn’t used in years — not magic, not prophecy.Just comfort.Selene crouched nearby, her blade still unsheathed but slack in her hand. Rhydan stood with arms crossed, jaw clenched, eyes not on Jerome, but on the spot where the First had stood.Veyra leaned against the stone wall, blood on her lips and smoke in