The silence was not content with names.It wanted the man behind them.***The Breaking DreamThat night Damian dreamed of a hall of mirrors.Each reflection wore his face. Some younger. Some older. Some crowned, some bleeding. One wore Mara’s smile. Another held Eryn’s eyes. All whispered the same word:“Damian.”The hammer pulsed in his grip, but when he swung it, the glass only multiplied—every shatter making more of him. More names. More faces.Until the silence itself stood behind him, hand pressed to his shoulder.> “You cannot break them all,” it murmured.“But you can break the one that matters.”Damian turned—only to see himself smiling back, lips stitched with silver thread.He woke gasping, the fire burned to coals. Mara dozed against her blade. Eryn sat awake, eyes on him, as though she had been waiting.“You dreamed it again,” she said flatly.Damian rubbed his brow. “Not dream. Warning.”***The Choice Spoken AloudAt dawn, Mara found him on the battlements, the hammer a

The silence had always spoken through mouths.Now it wore his face.***The StandoffThe field was torn to shreds, the ground split where the hammer had struck. Smoke and dust still curled from the fissures, but the legion had steadied. They formed ranks again, a wall of ash-painted shields.At their head, the general stood unmoved. His helm, polished like a mirror, gleamed with Damian’s reflection—smeared with blood, lined with exhaustion, eyes hollow with rage.The general’s voice rang, neither human nor hollow, but something between. “You resist the silence, yet you carry it. You deny the crown, yet you wear its shadow. Look at me, Damian. I am what you will become when the denial ends.”Mara growled, blade dripping. “He’s a lie wrapped in steel.”But Damian knew better. Lies only worked when they carried a sliver of truth.***The Mirror UnmaskedDamian stepped forward, hammer in one hand, shard in the other. “Show yourself. If you are me, then cast off the steel.”The general lau

The battlefield still smoked.Where the storm had raged, only silence remained. A silence too heavy, too knowing—like breath held before a scream. The shattered legion sprawled across the ground, unmoving now, their chant finally silenced.But in the sky, the scars remained.Black streaks arced across the horizon in every direction, fading slowly into night. Each was a shard’s path. Each was a seed of him.Damian forced himself upright, every bone aching. His hammer sagged against the earth, its glow dim. Blood seeped from his side, warm and constant. He hadn’t the strength to bind it. Not yet.Mara crouched before him, gripping his chin hard enough to drag his eyes to hers. Her face was a map of cuts and grime, but her stare was unbroken steel. “Stay with me. Don’t drift.”“I’m here,” Damian rasped.“No,” she snarled. “You’re slipping. Look at me and say it.”“I’m here.” Louder this time. A lie made into defiance.Only then did she let go.Eryn had her bow across her knees, but her h

The fortress groaned as it split.Walls cracked open, towers crumbled into dust, shards burst from stone like veins of living glass. The ground tilted beneath Damian’s boots, dragging blood and rubble into the widening fault that cut the courtyard in two.And at its center—standing tall amid collapse—the False King.Shards circled him like a crown of knives. His black-flame hammer burned brighter now, as though the world itself poured strength into his hands. His smile stretched wide, cruel and calm.“You thought this was a duel,” he said, voice carrying through falling stone. “It is war.”The soldiers of silence roared as one, slamming shields and spears in rhythm. The sound echoed like a heartbeat, filling the ruin with thunder.Mara pulled Damian back from the crumbling edge. Her face was streaked with blood, one eye swelling shut, but her grip was iron. “You stand or we’re done.”Eryn staggered up beside them, bowstring trembling, three arrows already nocked despite the raw skin o

The sky did not mend.It tore wider.When Damian’s hammers collided with the False King’s blow, the world broke into layers—like glass cracking but refusing to shatter fully. He staggered to his knees as a storm of shards poured from the wound in the sky, each fragment glowing with twisted memories. They fell not as simple glass but as blades, each one screaming a name, a choice, a path abandoned.And above the battlefield, two crowns of jagged light spiraled into being. One black as voidfire. One red as blood made flame. Both hovered, both waiting.The False King tilted his head back, laughter echoing across both worlds at once. “The storm has crowned us both. You cannot run from what you are.”Damian’s vision blurred. The ground beneath him split—not into ruin, but into two realities. One half was smooth stone, neat and ordered, silent soldiers kneeling before him. The other was chaos—broken walls, wraiths screaming, Mara clutching his arm, Eryn loosing arrows into a storm that neve