The world seemed to stop breathing.Blackwood stood frozen on the ridge as the ancient symbol burned across his chest beneath his armor.Pain shot through his body.Not the pain of wounds.Not the pain of broken bones.Something deeper.Older.The mark felt alive.It pulsed like a second heart.Nyx immediately grabbed his arm."Diamond!"Blackwood clenched his teeth.For the first time since the battlefield, he nearly fell.The symbol blazed brighter.The old scholar staggered backward in terror.His face had become completely pale."No..."His voice cracked."It can't be."Blackwood forced himself upright."What is it?"The scholar looked as though he wished he had never found them."The Mark of Judgment."The words hung in the air.Nyx frowned."And what does that mean?"The old man swallowed hard."It means the prophecy was incomplete."Far beyond the mountains, the giant figure moved again.One step.The earth shook.Another.Entire hills collapsed.The sky itself seemed darker wi

The world seemed to stop.The mountains.The wind.The approaching Watcher.Everything felt distant. Because only one sentence remained inside Diamond Blackwood's mind."The last Judge failed.""He was your father."For the first time since the battlefield, Blackwood felt genuine shock.Not anger.Not grief but Shock.Impossible.His father had died in a prison cell beneath Darkhole.Broken.Tortured.Human.Nothing more.Lord Eryx Blackwood had never spoken of ancient wars.Never mentioned forgotten empires.Never hinted at powers older than kings.The idea made no sense, and yet the mark on Blackwood's chest was burning harder than ever. As though it recognized the truth.Nyx immediately noticed something was wrong."You look like you've seen a ghost."Blackwood remained silent.The scholar watched him carefully."What happened?"Blackwood turned toward him.Slowly.Deliberately."My father."The scholar froze."What about him?"Blackwood's voice hardened."The voice said the last J

The scream of the ancient woman echoed across the shattered mountains."No!"For the first time since Blackwood had met her, fear completely overwhelmed her composure.Not fear of death, Not even fear of defeat,but fear of certainty.The mark on Blackwood's chest continued changing.The original symbol of Judgment twisted and shifted beneath his skin. As Lines moved, Patterns rearranged themselves and the ancient light turned dark.The pain was unbearable. Blackwood immediately fell to one knee, his fists dug into the earth.Every nerve in his body felt like it was burning.Nyx rushed forward immediately."Diamond!"She grabbed his shoulder.The moment her hand touched him, a shockwave exploded outward.The force threw her backward across the ridge.Rocks shattered.Trees uprooted.The mountain trembled and Blackwood looked down.The mark had finished changing.Silence followed.Heavy.Terrifying.The ancient woman stared at it with horror.The scholar collapsed to the ground, his lip

The voice echoed inside Diamond Blackwood's soul.Choose.Just one word, one impossible command.The vision faded from the sky, but its images remained burned into everyone's minds.Darkhole in flames.The oceans are boiling,the stars are falling.Nyx is dead.Eryx kneeling.The Watcher destroyed. The Devourer screaming, and Diamond Blackwood seated upon a throne built from the bones of gods.Silence followed.The kind of silence that arrives before disaster.No one spoke.No one even moved, because everyone understood something terrible.The future they had witnessed was real not prophecy.Not a possibility but a real future one of many. And somehow Blackwood stood at the center of all of them.The mark on his chest continued glowing.Each pulse felt like a heartbeat.Not his heartbeat but something else's.Something ancient.Something waking.Far above, the Devourer stared.Its enormous eyes narrowed.For the first time since its release, it looked uncertain.The Watcher looked equall

The world had survived wars.It had survived kings who slaughtered their own people.It had even survived monsters that came from beyond the stars. But nothing could prepare Diamond Blackwood for the truth standing in front of him.His father.The man who taught him honor.The man who taught him discipline.The man who taught him that weakness was a choice. Was also the man who had created his suffering.The Origin watched silently,almost enjoying the moment it had waited thousands of years for this, not because it wanted revenge Non because it wanted victory but because it wanted the truth to finally destroy the one thing that had always escaped its control.Diamond Blackwood.Blackwood stared at Eryx."Say it again."His voice was calm.Too calm.Nyx knew that voice.She had heard it before executions.Before battles. Before men realized they had already lost.Eryx lowered his head."Your mother did not die giving birth to you."The wind stopped."She died because she tried to stop