There was no sound, only the vibration of something ancient coming undone.
In the heart of the battlefield—if it could still be called that—Raizen stood suspended in a space where nothing held shape. The sky was gone. The earth, the stars, the breath of the world… all gone. What remained was a storm of raw, unchecked power, spiraling outward from the place where the Crown of Shadows had once rested.
It was no longer a crown. It was a sun collapsing in reverse.
The moment it shattered, it did not simply break apart — it screamed. The scream did not come from metal or magic, but from time itself. Every fragment of the Crown became a conduit for the secrets it held, and those secrets poured into the universe like wildfire. Each shard cut reality, sliced memory, spilled truth into the void with brutal honesty. Whole civilizations hidden by its magic were revealed. Entire lies upon which empires had been built were disintegrated.
Raizen had seen many things in his lifetime — death, rebirth, betrayal, the birth of gods, the fall of friends — but nothing had prepared him for the moment the Crown died.
The world knew.
From the forests of the Great Shroud to the sky temples of the East, from the floating isles to the deepest abyssal oceans, all sentient life paused. People dropped to their knees as if some internal compass had been shattered. There was a moment of silence that swept across the planet, not born of awe but of disorientation. The weight they had unknowingly carried — the influence of the Crown's subtle presence — was gone.
Raizen floated amid the fallout, every muscle strained, every breath labored. His body was scorched by the explosion. His soul felt torn, barely tethered. But worse than the pain was the clarity. The Crown had always acted as a veil, a filter. Now, that veil was gone. His mind burned with visions not just of what was, but of what could have been — futures lost, futures stolen, futures corrupted.
He saw the truth.
The Crown of Shadows had never truly granted power. It had redirected it. Twisted it. Concentrated the dreams and fears of the world into a single point and fed off it like a parasite. It offered strength, but only by siphoning it from somewhere else. The gods who made it had not forged a weapon. They had forged a siphon. A safety valve for a force too wild to understand.
And now… it was free.
The energy unleashed from the Crown did not dissipate — it wandered. It found cracks in the world. Cracks in hearts. Cracks in the fabric of time. It leaked into the broken places, like blood through shattered glass. Some people would find themselves gifted. Others cursed. The world had changed — not just politically, not just spiritually — but fundamentally.
Raizen descended at last, his feet touching solid ground for the first time in what felt like forever. Or perhaps it was an illusion, a kindness granted by a world unsure if it still existed. The field around him was unrecognizable. The Endbringer's essence had vanished. The sky had returned — pale, distant, and hollow. His allies lay scattered, breathing but battered. Some missing. Some forever silent.
He walked forward.
Every step was an effort. Every heartbeat carried the echoes of what he'd unleashed. His hands were empty now. The blade made from the Crown's fragment had turned to ash in the explosion. He was no longer a wielder. No longer a king. The power was gone, or at least beyond grasp.
He found Kaela's scarf beneath a stone — frayed, stained with blood, but intact. He held it for a long time, unmoving.
The others began to stir. Juno called out to him. Dazren limped forward, eyes hollow but alive. Aruun was gone. So were many others. Too many.
And still, they looked to him.
Not as a god. Not as a savior.
But as the one who had borne the Crown to its end.
He turned his eyes to the sky. A great crack shimmered through it — like a scar, still glowing with the Crown's remnants. It would never close, not entirely. The world would always remember the day the Crown shattered.
New wars would be fought over its fragments. New myths would form around what had happened here. Some would call Raizen a fool. Others a hero. And many would never know the truth.
He would not tell them.
Because the truth was this:
The power of the Crown had never been his. Nor had the burden. It belonged to the world. To every life twisted under its shadow. And now that shadow had been lifted — but not destroyed.
Only scattered.
And Raizen… would spend the rest of his life making sure it never reassembled.
END OF CHAPTER 10