The sky was already broken. The cracks shimmered like fractured glass, bending starlight into twisted halos. Wind no longer moved in natural patterns. It pulsed—like breath from a dying god.Kael stood at the center of it all, chest rising and falling as if his very lungs were struggling to keep him rooted in a reality that no longer obeyed the rules.And then… they came.The Tribunal.Not projections. Not holograms. Not seated on their usual golden thrones.This time, they descended themselves.Six figures cloaked in shadows and silver, floating above the ruined city with gravity that bent the air around them. Their voices echoed before their mouths moved, as if time itself bent to their will.“You were warned,” one of them spoke.“You were judged,” whispered another.“And now… you are to be undone.”Kael narrowed his eyes. “You can’t stop what’s already broken.”“We don’t intend to stop it,” the High Warden said. “We intend to erase it. And you.”With that, the sky split wider—and

The world was a blur of broken time and unraveling reality. Kael’s breath caught in his throat as he stood before the one he had seen in the void—his predecessor, his reflection, his origin.The man didn’t look divine. He didn’t wear armor forged in celestial fires, or glow with the radiance of ancient stars. No.He looked tired. Scarred. Worn down by lifetimes of battles that never truly ended.Yet there was something in his eyes. Something beyond time. Something godlike.Kael opened his mouth. “What are you?”The original Kael turned toward him, slow and steady, his footsteps echoing like thunder over glass.“You mean what were we,” the original said quietly. “Before they broke us. Before they cut us down piece by piece and buried our names.”Kael swallowed hard. “You’re me.”“No,” the original replied. “You’re me. But I’m what came first. Before the Tribunal. Before the Director. Before the concept of control ever existed.”“I was the mistake they couldn’t afford to let repeat.”

The sky didn’t settle after the Tribunal vanished.It writhed.Lightning danced across colors that had no name. The ground trembled beneath them, and a sound like the grinding of history echoed from above. It wasn’t thunder. It was older. It was the groaning of something waking up—something that should have stayed asleep.Kael stood there, motionless, his chest rising and falling like he had just climbed out of a grave.Elias walked toward him, slowly.“You felt it too, didn’t you?” Elias said, his voice low. “You didn’t just kill the Tribunal. You cracked the seal.”Kael’s fingers clenched. His veins pulsed with that strange light again.“They lied,” he muttered. “They told me I was the threat. But I was just the door.”Pamela stood to the side, her body still not fully recovered from the changes the Tribunal’s failed erasure had caused. But she held her ground.“Kael…” she said, voice shaking. “Something’s wrong. I can feel it. It’s in the air. It’s—”A pulse rippled across the h

Kael wasn’t breathing.Not because he couldn’t—but because something inside him had frozen.Not fear. Not confusion.Recognition.A truth buried for lifetimes had just opened its eyes inside him.The Tribunal’s final weapon hovered behind him, pulsing with raw, ancient energy. The battlefield crackled beneath their feet. Elias stood a few paces away, strangely calm, arms crossed, eyes on Kael like he’d been waiting for this moment forever.Pamela was kneeling beside Marcus, who was barely conscious, his skin still shifting under the aftershock of Kael’s unleashed power. Neither of them spoke. They couldn’t. Something bigger than all of them had just cracked open the sky.Kael took a slow step forward, and then another.And then it hit him.A rush of heat behind his eyes. Pressure in his chest. The world bent sideways, and—He dropped.Darkness.Except it wasn’t empty.Flashes. Slices of memory, jagged and violent, began tearing through his mind.A voice echoed across the space inside

The wind had stopped.There was no sound anymore. Not even the sound of their own breathing.The sky—if it could still be called that—was cracked wide open, like glass that had been dropped from the heavens. Beyond it, darkness churned. Not empty darkness, but alive. Moving. Watching.Kael stood at the edge of it all, his fists clenched, his pulse thundering in his ears.He had faced monsters. Gods. His own brother. Himself.But nothing… nothing had ever made him feel like this.Not until now.Because they weren’t just coming.They were here.From the breach in the sky, shapes descended.Not ships.Not beings.Not anything that made sense.They shimmered and shifted, like liquid shadows draped in light. Their forms refused to settle. No eyes, no mouths—just moving, breathing erasure. Wherever they passed, the world disappeared. Ground dissolved. Stone turned to vapor. Even the memory of what was there—gone.Not broken. Erased.Pamela took a slow step back. Her lips parted, but no soun