The gates of the Last Sanctum shut behind them with a final, grinding groan of rusted metal.
Kael didn't look back.
The ruins had already begun to fade into the choking mist that swallowed the horizon, and there was nothing left for him there. Only ghosts. Whispers of the past. A city clinging to the last scraps of what it once was. He had spent his whole life surviving in places like that—forgotten ruins, scavenged streets, walls barely holding back the death of the world.
But now, he had something else. A destination. A road to follow. A war that had begun long before him, but one that now carried his name.
The Fractured Crown was stirring.
And he was caught in its wake.
They traveled in silence for hours. Selene led the way, her movements effortless as she weaved through the shifting terrain of the Wastes. She moved like someone who had done this a thousand times before, yet every step seemed deliberate, precise—like she was walking through the pages of a book she had already read.
Kael followed, one hand still resting over the shard beneath his coat. Its pulse had become steady now, like it had accepted him. Or maybe he had accepted it. He wasn't sure yet which way the control flowed.
He glanced up at the sky, where the sun should have been, but there was only a dim, sullen light filtering through thick clouds of dust. The world felt like it had forgotten what day and night were supposed to be.
After what felt like an eternity of walking, he finally spoke.
"Where are we going?"
Selene didn't turn to face him.
"East. To the ruins of the Skyfane."
Kael frowned. He had heard the name before, whispered in stories passed between scavengers and exiles. A temple that had once stood in defiance of the old world's fall. A place where reality itself had fractured.
"What's there?"
Selene finally stopped. She turned to face him, arms crossed, expression unreadable behind her cracked mask.
"Another shard. The second piece of the Crown."
Kael inhaled slowly. He had known this was coming. The map in the Last Sanctum had burned itself into his mind—scattered fractures, spread across the dying world, each one calling to the next.
"And the Blight knows about it?"
Selene nodded.
"They know. And they won't be the only ones looking for it."
Kael exhaled through his nose, tightening his grip on the rifle slung over his shoulder. The Ashen Blight had already tried to kill him once. They wouldn't stop. Not now.
Not ever.
And worse—more would come. Selene had warned him that the Fractured Crown's awakening would send ripples across existence. Every faction that had ever sought its power would rise from whatever hole they had been hiding in. Some would want to destroy it. Others would want to claim it.
And Kael? He wasn't sure where he stood yet.
All he knew was that the war had already begun.
And it would only end when the Crown's final piece was found.
---
The Shadow of the Skyfane
They reached the Skyfane's outskirts by nightfall.
Or at least, what remained of it.
The ruins stretched before them like the bones of a dead god—shattered columns jutting from the ground, archways half-buried in the sand, stonework twisted as if something had torn the place apart from within.
The shard in Kael's chest hummed, resonating with the air around them.
"It's close," Selene murmured.
Kael could feel it, too. A pull, deep and instinctive. He didn't need a map. He didn't need guidance. The shard inside him knew exactly where its missing piece lay.
But they weren't alone.
Figures moved in the ruins. Shadows shifting between collapsed pillars. At first, Kael thought it was the Blight—but no. The way they moved was different. More controlled. More precise.
Selene stiffened beside him.
"The Hollow Order," she said quietly.
Kael's stomach sank. He had never encountered them before, but their name carried weight.
Unlike the Blight, who sought only to collapse existence, the Hollow Order had a different philosophy. They believed the Fractured Crown's power had been stolen from something greater—that it belonged to the ones who had created the first world before time began.
To them, Kael was not just an enemy.
He was a thief.
And thieves did not get the chance to surrender.
---
The First Strike
A whisper of steel.
Selene moved first, drawing her twin blades in a single fluid motion. The first of the Hollow Order fell before he had even realized she was there, her blade slicing through his throat in silence.
Kael wasn't so fast.
Another figure lunged from the side, and he barely dodged in time, rolling across the cracked stone as a spear slammed into the dirt where he had stood. He fired a shot from his rifle, but the figure vanished, shifting impossibly through the air—one moment solid, the next dissolving into mist.
They're phasing through reality.
Kael's mind raced. These weren't normal warriors. They were wielding power from the Crown's fragments.
The thought barely had time to register before another attacked. Kael raised his shard on instinct—
And the air shattered around him.
A shockwave erupted, sending his attacker flying backward, crashing into the ruins with a sickening crack. Kael stumbled, panting, the shard's glow dimming again.
Selene cut down another. The rest hesitated, their masked faces turning toward Kael.
They had felt what he just did.
They knew what it meant.
And that meant they would never stop hunting him.
---
The Path Forward
By the time the last of them fled into the ruins, Kael and Selene were both breathing hard. The night had swallowed the battlefield, leaving only silence and the bodies left behind.
Kael leaned against the remains of a pillar, his fingers still tingling from the shard's power.
"They're going to keep coming, aren't they?"
Selene wiped blood from her blade before sliding it back into its sheath.
"They will. Until one side wins."
Kael let out a dry, bitter laugh.
"And what happens when we find the next shard?"
Selene met his gaze.
"Then the real war begins."
Kael looked out over the ruins, toward the horizon, where the next piece of the Fractured Crown awaited. The path ahead was uncertain.
But one thing was clear.
He wasn't running anymore.
He was chasing something now.
And the world was finally starting to realize it.