Three days passed like held breath.They moved through desert ravines where sand wouldn't betray their tracks. Elysia led, knife always drawn. Miranda walked in silence beside her sister. Kaelin's crew scanned horizons for pursuit that never came.That bothered Zhilak most. Veyra had vanished. The world felt wrong too quiet, like the pause before lightning struck.His wrist burned constantly. Red and blue chains coiled beneath his skin, visible through flesh. Chaos whispered in his right ear. Harmony hummed in his left. The golden threads of Eternity lay dormant, but he felt them. Sleeping serpents waiting to wake.On the third night, they reached the Glasslands.The desert ended abruptly at a plain of crystallized sand. Lightning storms had fused the ground into smooth, translucent sheets. Stars reflected beneath their boots.At the center rose the Spire black glass twisting upward like a corkscrew, sharp enough to cut."The Conclave meets there," Elysia said, hand tight on her knife

The Spire's walls blazed with violet warnings. Through transparent glass, golden light clawed skyward from the distant desert, each beam thick as a citadel tower. The air itself screamed, bending around the eruption.Lysander's white crown flared. "Impossible. We mapped every inch of those ruins.""The Omnixir family scattered them on purpose." Zhilak's voice came hollow. The Crown of Dominion fed him knowledge like poison down his throat. "Three sites. Three seals. They never kept the Crowns together."Meridian was already moving, armored boots ringing on obsidian. "How long before Veyra completes the binding?"Zhilak closed his eyes. The Crown's presence wrapped around his pulse, showing him what it saw through its brother artifact. "She's fighting it. The Crown of Subjugation wants a different kind of host. Someone who already knows how to break minds.""And Veyra's cracked crown gives her that," Miranda said from the doorway. She'd followed them down, Elysia beside her. "She's bee

The golden pillar tore through the sky like a wound. Where it touched, reality simply stopped. No explosion. No fire. Just absence. Buildings in the far distance blinked out of existence. Mountains erased themselves. The stars above dimmed and died in spreading waves.Zhilak clutched his bleeding side, vision swimming. The black threads in his wrist went ice cold. Dominion's voice carried something he'd never heard before.Fear."Obliteration woke. This wasn't supposed to happen for centuries."Veyra stumbled backward, her Subjugation crown flickering. The controlled people collapsed, eyes clearing. Elysia and Miranda gasped, blinking away the black fog."Zhilak!" Elysia dropped beside him, hands pressing his wound. "Stay with me."He tried to speak. Blood filled his mouth.The voice boomed again, shaking the chasm walls. "Two little crowns playing war. How precious. Let me show you what real power looks like."A figure stepped from the golden light. Distance made details impossible,

Inside the Consume, physics was a suggestion.Zhilak floated in a space that shouldn't exist. No up or down. No light source, yet he could see. Fragments of devoured worlds drifted past like snow. A mountain. A child's toy. Half a city. All slowly dissolving into gray nothing.His body felt wrong. Translucent. Fading at the edges. The Master Crown fragment in his chest pulsed, the only thing keeping him solid.And ahead, chained to a pillar made of compressed reality, hung the figure.The man's body was broken. Limbs twisted at wrong angles. Skin covered in symbols that burned and healed in endless cycle. But his face was unmistakable. The same sharp features Zhilak had seen in Dominion's memories.Kael Omnixir. The founder. The one who'd created the Crowns.His eyes opened. They held no sanity. Just pain and something worse. Recognition."Another one," Kael whispered. His voice cracked like old wood. "Come to join the feast.""You're alive." Zhilak's voice echoed strangely here. "Afte

Zhilak's hands moved before his mind caught up. Right palm blazed red. Chaos shot forward, aimed at Astraea's chest.The blast dissolved three feet from her throne. No shield. No barrier. Just gone."Cute." Astraea didn't move. "But Dominion left you when you sealed the Consume. You're running on fumes."Zhilak looked at his wrist. The black threads were gone. Red and blue chains remained, but faded. Dying embers."How am I alive?" His voice cracked. "I dissolved. Completely.""I put you back together." Astraea gestured at the crown-covered walls. "Each of these holds a different aspect of reality. Creation. Destruction. Time. Space. I simply used the right combination."She stood. The movement made the throne room's Aether ripple. "The Consume wasn't always a mindless hunger. I created it. Shaped it. Pointed it at worlds I wanted cleared."Zhilak backed toward the door. His legs shook. Harmony flickered weakly, trying to stabilize his reformed body."There's no door behind you," Astr