The lobby of the Thorne Citadel was no longer a monument to corporate divinity; it was a slaughterhouse of shattered glass and scorched marble. I stood at the center, leaning on the soot-stained hilt of Aethelgard. My silver hair was matted with blood, and my Divine Void Stage Qi felt like a flickering candle in a hurricane.The elevator doors groaned, forced open by a hydraulic spreader. A dozen mercenaries in jagged, street-tech armor stormed out. Their leader, a brute named Varkas with a bionic jaw, leveled a pulse-rifle at my head."Look at the mighty God-Emperor," Varkas laughed, his voice amplified by a cheap vocoder. "He hasn't even got enough credits to pay his own light bill. Move aside, kid. The Merchant of Worlds said we get the scrap metal, and that sword looks like it's worth a few thousand.""You’re making a mistake, Varkas," I said, my voice a hollow, tectonic rumble. "I might be penniless, but I still own the air in this room.""You own nothing!" Varkas roared. "Seize

The George Washington Bridge loomed through the radioactive haze like the skeleton of a prehistoric beast. But as we approached the Manhattan ramp, the air didn't just turn cold; it turned lethal. A thick, necrotic frost was crawling up the steel suspension cables, turning the massive girders into jagged spears of translucent ice. Standing atop the highest suspension tower, silhouetted against a pale, sickly sun, was Prince Caelum.He was the second of my mother’s Shadow Princes, and unlike the frenetic, smoky Malos, Caelum was a monument to absolute stillness. He wore robes of pristine white silk that didn't flutter in the wind, and his skin had the bluish tint of a man who had spent an eternity at the bottom of a glacier."Stop!" I called out, my voice cracking the silence of the frozen intersection. "General, keep the civilians back. Chen, check the thermal readings on that steel.""It’s not just cold, Sire," Chen said, his breath hitching as he looked at his handheld scanner. "The

The Primal Gate did not hum; it roared with the sound of a thousand collapsing stars. The white radiance was so absolute it felt physical, a wall of pure potentiality that seemed to wash away the blood, the soot, and the weight of ninety-nine failed lifetimes. I stood at the threshold, my hand locked in Lydia’s, while the two hundred survivors—my army of beggars and ghosts—stared into the abyss of light with a mixture of terror and hope."Is this it, Elias?" Lydia’s voice was barely a whisper, yet it cut through the roar of the dimensional vacuum. "The Higher Realm? The place where the Thorne debt doesn't exist?""It has to be," I rasped. My silver hair was matted with the frozen grime of the Hudson, and every breath felt like inhaling shards of glass. "The map in your blood, the Star-Iron in my hand... it all points to this. We step through, and we rewrite the script.""Sire! The fleet!" the General bellowed, pointing his scarred hand toward the sky.The clouds above the Catskill val

The mahogany desk felt too solid. The air in the executive suite smelled too much like expensive sandalwood and success. I stood before the floor-to-ceiling windows of my skyscraper, the city of New York sprawling beneath me like a conquered jewel. My reflection in the glass was a stranger—a man with no scars, no silver in his hair, and eyes that held only the shallow glow of corporate ambition. "The merger is finalized, Elias," the Lawyer said, leaning against the doorframe of my office. He wasn't wearing a nebula-suit here; he was in a sharp, three-piece charcoal pinstripe. "You’ve done it. You own the city. Why do you look like you’re waiting for a funeral?" "Because this city is a corpse," I said, my voice sounding thin and mortal in my own ears. "And you’re the maggot feeding on it." The Lawyer’s smile didn't falter. "Such drama. You have Sarah waiting for you at a five-star gala. You have Marcus begging for his job in the basement. You have everything you ever wanted before

The silver eye of the First King pulsed in the void, its gaze heavier than a collapsing star. Below it, the Weaver’s web groaned, the silver threads snapping under the weight of an entity that shouldn't exist. The Merchant of Worlds stood on his glass casket, his usual smugness replaced by a frantic checking of his ledgers."Merchant! What is happening?" I roared, struggling to free my legs from the Weaver’s grip."The timeline is hemorrhaging, Elias!" the Merchant shouted back. "The Weaver’s 'Possibility' threads didn't just show a vision. They opened a door. And something walked through."The silver eye blinked, and a tear of pure liquid light fell from the void. It didn't hit the web; it transformed. The light curled and hardened, taking the shape of a youth no older than seventeen. He landed on a strand of silk with the weightlessness of a ghost. He had my silver hair, Lydia’s defiant jaw, and eyes that were twin vortices of violet destruction."The Destroyer," the Weaver hissed,