The world screamed.Mountains tore open like wounds. Seas boiled into vapor. The sky split into fractured constellations that rewrote themselves every heartbeat.And in the heart of this dying reality, one name echoed through the storm.“Ethan…”Amara staggered through the burning ruins of the Citadel, ash falling around her like snow. The streets were filled with phantoms—echoes of people who had already been rewritten. Their faces blurred, their movements looping like broken film.Above them all, he floated—Ethan, or what remained of him.His wings of light and shadow stretched across the horizon, his voice overlapping in countless tones, divine and human, whispering, pleading, commanding all at once.“All worlds. All timelines. All must be made right.”The Shadow of Eryndor was no longer just Ethan’s curse.It was becoming the law of creation itself.Deep beneath the surface, in the remnants of the old Hydra vaults, the survivors of New Avalon gathered—scientists, soldiers, prophet

The sky was on fire.Not the ordinary kind—this flame was alive.It didn’t burn. It consumed.New Avalon screamed beneath it.Every tower of steel and glass, every hovering skydrone, every soul still breathing in the city below looked up as the heavens cracked open. The rift stretched like a wound across the horizon—pouring molten light and shadow into the world.Sirens blared through the streets.Energy conduits overloaded, bursting into sparks.Reality itself twisted in ripples that made the air hum like thunder trapped in glass.And at the heart of it—Ethan Hale stood, his cloak whipping in the solar wind, his eyes reflecting the apocalypse above him.The other Ethan—the Shadow—floated amidst the inferno, arms spread like a fallen god reborn. His laughter echoed across the burning sky.“You see it now, don’t you?”“This is what we were meant to be.”Ethan’s voice was a snarl. “You’re not me.”The shadow smiled. “Not yet.”Then he vanished in a flash of black fire.“Ethan!”Amara’s

The stars no longer twinkled. They watched. Above the reborn skyline of New Avalon, the constellations seemed to shift and move with intent—forming unfamiliar patterns that pulsed like eyes opening for the first time in centuries. The night had become a living thing, and the city beneath it… a fragile dream clinging to borrowed time. Amara stood atop the reconstructed Citadel balcony, the wind tugging at her cloak. Below, New Avalon thrived again—markets reopened, lights flickered in homes, laughter returned to the streets. Yet for all its vitality, she couldn’t shake the dread crawling beneath her skin. Because she could feel it. Something had awoken beyond the veil. Something ancient. Behind her, the sound of slow, uneven footsteps echoed against the marble. She didn’t turn; she already knew who it was. Ethan Hale—or what remained of him. He leaned against the balcony rail beside her, his expression calm but his eyes distant. The faint golden veins beneath his skin still p

The city still burned.Even after the last of the Black Cross Syndicate fell, Bluehaven’s skyline was a canvas of smoke and flame. Fire engines wailed in the distance. The rain that had poured moments ago now hissed against the smoldering ruins of the docks, turning to steam that hung over the bay like a ghost.Ethan Hale stood at the edge of it all, coat soaked, blood on his hands that wasn’t his own.Beside him, Jasmine leaned weakly against a concrete barrier, bandaged, trembling — alive, but not unchanged. The echoes of what she’d endured had carved fear into her eyes.Behind them, the Legion worked silently — securing the area, clearing debris, and burning what was left of the Syndicate’s weapons cache.But Ethan wasn’t watching them.He was staring into the storm.A feeling — ancient and familiar — pressed against his senses.A cold power, heavy and regal, moving through the ether like a whisper made of ice and death.“She’s here,” he murmured.Jasmine looked up weakly. “Who?”E

The sky tore like skin. New Avalon let out a sound that was not human — a shuddered, animal scream as stars blinked and the air itself folded. The city that had rebuilt itself on Ethan Hale’s rulings, on the fragile treaties and hard-won truces, went quiet in the second between heartbeats. People stopped midstep. Drones hung like stunned insects. Lamps flickered in perfect, terrified rhythm. Somewhere, a child began to cry and the sound bent, stretched, and multiplied into a chorus of fear. Ethan’s body convulsed on the marble at the center of the Citadel. He was upright one breath and sprawled the next; he roared, claws of light tearing at the air. The golden veins under his skin pulsed, then blackened like charred rope. He tore off the collar of his coat as if it burned him from the inside. Amara—Phantom Queen of Light—fell to her knees beside him, hands pressed flat to his chest as if she could hold a sun in her palms. Around them, the two Queens’ domains bled together: her ru