Raizen had believed, or perhaps merely hoped, that when the Crown of Shadows shattered in the cataclysm that ended the final battle, its hold on the world would vanish with it. The explosion that followed its destruction had lit the skies with a brilliance not seen since the earliest ages — a violent, cosmic purge that seemed to cleanse not only the battlefield but the very air of the Crown's influence. The fragments scattered like stardust, swept away by dimensional winds, lost to time and space. Or so they thought.
But power like that — ancient, absolute, and forged in primordial chaos — did not die so easily.
It began with dreams.
Raizen found himself walking through blackened corridors in his sleep — twisted mirror-versions of places he had once known. He saw reflections of himself with eyes that shimmered like dying stars and heard voices calling to him in tongues he had heard only once before, when he wore the Crown and teetered on the edge of godhood. At first, he dismissed them as echoes, residues of trauma. But then, others began to dream as well. Entire villages woke screaming the same phrases. Temples lit up with forgotten glyphs. Artifacts long dormant began humming softly, responding to something none could name.
He sent scouts. He dispatched old allies — those who had sworn to watch over the realms in his stead. They returned with tales of strange monoliths rising from the earth in remote regions, surrounded by black flora that refused to burn, stone that bled when touched, and whispers that drove even the strongest mad after a night's exposure.
In the fractured kingdoms, rumors spread of a cult calling themselves the "Scions of the True Crown." They preached rebirth — not just of the Crown, but of an age where power was the only truth, and all would bend before the One Who Returns. These Scions were collecting. Not people, not land. Fragments.
The Crown had not died.
It had only splintered.
And now, someone — or something — was gathering the pieces.
At first, it seemed impossible. The Crown's destruction had been absolute, witnessed by hundreds. But Raizen, with growing dread, remembered that it had not been a singular object. It had always been a convergence — a vessel for something older than any crown, older even than the gods who once fought over it. The vessel could be broken. But the essence… the essence could live on, diffused, diluted, but waiting. Watching. Searching for hosts.
Raizen assembled a covert task force — warriors, scholars, clairvoyants, those who had either resisted the Crown's allure or survived it. They moved in shadows, tracing the Scions' movements, infiltrating their temples. And what they found chilled them to the marrow.
Each site held a fragment. Not metal, not gemstone — but some fusion of thought, memory, and power. Fragments of Raizen himself, even. His anger. His ambition. His sacrifice. The Crown had used him as a conduit, and now its shards bore imprints of his soul. The Scions weren't just collecting power. They were collecting him — or at least, the parts of him that the Crown had once amplified.
Worse still, some of those fragments had bonded.
The first fusion site they found had already claimed a host — a child born under a black sun, with no name and no parents. When the team arrived, the child was gone, the village burned to ashes, and the skies over that place refused to clear. Lightning struck ground that no longer responded to gravity. Time bent near the crater. The reports said nothing could survive there.
Raizen went there himself.
The moment his foot crossed the threshold of the crater, he felt the shard call to him — not in words, but in raw instinct. It wanted him. Or it wanted to be him. And when he reached the center, where once the earth had cracked from celestial fire, he found a symbol. His symbol. Burned into the stone.
The Scions were not restoring the Crown to the way it was.
They were forging a new one.
One built not from celestial design, but from stolen will and harvested memory — shaped not by ancient gods but by mortal hands twisted by ambition. The new Crown would be less a weapon and more a parasite, grown stronger through its hosts. Raizen realized that destroying the old Crown had not ended its threat. It had only decentralized it — made it more insidious, more adaptable.
The return of power had begun.
Not as a roar, but as a whisper.
And across the world, people were beginning to listen.
END OF CHAPTER 5