Dawn crawled slowly across Veilmoor’s ruins, reluctant and pale, as if even the sun feared to touch what the night had become.Draven sat at the edge of the shattered square where the Queen of Ashes had fallen. The spectral glow had faded, leaving behind only dust and silence. The air smelled of iron and burnt magic. His hands still trembled, though not from weakness — from the echo of power that refused to die inside him.Lucen hovered near the fountain, faint light flickering in and out. “You’ve been quiet for too long,” he said. “That’s never a good sign.”Draven didn’t answer. His eyes were fixed on the mark on his chest. It pulsed faintly now, but with a second rhythm — something alien threaded through it, something old. The Queen’s magic hadn’t just touched him. It had fused with the Reaper’s brand.Seren stirred beside him, clutching her arm where the invisible chains had bitten into her skin. “Whatever she did, it’s still in you.”He finally looked up. “She was right about one

Darkness swallowed Draven whole.Not the emptiness of the void he had fallen through before—this was denser, heavier. A darkness made of feeling, thick with memory and grief. It clung to his skin, pulled at his bones, whispered along the shell of his mind.When he opened his eyes, he wasn’t in Aetheris anymore.He was standing inside a sunlit courtyard.Warm wind danced through flowering vines. Gold banners fluttered from high balconies. People laughed in the distance. The scent of fresh bread drifted on the air.Draven’s throat tightened.This was the palace garden of Solenhold. His home. Before everything went wrong.He took one step—and the world trembled, settling into place like a storybook that had been waiting for him to open it.Behind him, the gate he’d fallen through shimmered faintly, now nothing more than a tall mirror resting against a hedge. His reflection stared back—not the scarred man he was today, but the version the mirror wanted him to be.A man who hadn’t yet tast

Silence swallowed the courtyard as the figure approached. Not just silence—absence. A stillness so complete that even the fog froze around them, suspended like glass dust.Death did not walk. He arrived, existence bending to make room for him.Draven could not breathe.He faced the one being he once served… the one who had ended him… the one who had brought him back.Death’s eyes—dark, depthless, unreadable—rested on him with a quiet fondness that made Draven’s skin crawl.“Hello, my favorite disappointment,” Death murmured.Lysandra stepped forward immediately, blade half-drawn. “Don’t come closer.”Death didn’t even look at her. He did not need to.Her blade trembled in her grip, refusing to leave its sheath.Aric backed up behind a half-crumbled column, heart pounding so loudly Draven could hear it.The rival necromancers lowered their gazes, forced into a wordless bow by the weight of Death’s presence.Draven alone stood unmoving—the only one who dared to meet Death’s eyes.And De

The darkness peeled open like a great curtain, revealing the vast shape that waited beyond it.Draven felt the air thin.Not from fear.From recognition.He didn’t know this being… yet something in him responded, like an old scar aching before rain.The colossal silhouette leaned forward. Its form shifted—sometimes human, sometimes monstrous, sometimes nothing at all. A presence older than Death himself.Death stood beside Draven—not as a master, not as an enemy, but as a silent witness. And for the first time, Draven sensed it…Death was afraid of this thing.The being’s voice rolled through the abyss, calm and terrible.“You wonder who I am.”Draven forced his voice steady. “Tell me.”Its shape rippled.“I am the one who forged Death’s crown. The one who built the first Veil. The one who wrote the laws your world has forgotten.”Draven’s pulse hammered. A name formed on his tongue—one whispered only in forbidden texts.“The Architect,” he breathed.The being seemed almost amused. “Y

Draven jolted upward with a sharp gasp.The void vanished. The ruins, the future, the Architect’s shadow—all gone.Cold air hit his lungs first. Then stone beneath his palms. Then the tremor of someone gripping his shoulders.“Draven—look at me.”The voice was warm, breathless, trembling.Eira.His vision swam, resolving into her face hovering over him—eyes wide with fear, hands cupping his jaw as though anchoring him to the world.He blinked hard, breath ragged. “Eira…?”Relief washed over her so intensely it almost hurt to see. “You were gone—you stopped breathing—Draven, what happened?”He couldn’t answer at first.His mind still hung between worlds. The Architect’s voice still echoed in his bones. And the memory of the future—that broken, empty Draven—still clung to him like frost.He squeezed his eyes shut.Eira touched his forehead gently. “You’re burning.”“No,” he whispered. “I’m remembering.”Her brows knit, confusion flickering across her face, but she didn’t push. Eira neve