The first sign that something was wrong came in the middle of the night.
Not an attack. Not a vision.
A silence.
The kind that presses into your ears and makes your heartbeat sound like a thunderclap.
I sat up in bed, breath caught halfway in my throat. The Crown Mark wasn't pulsing. It wasn't glowing. It wasn't doing anything.
It was just… there.
Dormant.
Lifeless.
I reached out with my mana instinctively, searching for that familiar golden thread of connection—but there was nothing. Like trying to grab smoke.
For the first time since my rebirth, I felt empty.
And that terrified me more than anything else ever had.
Investigation
By sunrise, the Council had already called another emergency session. Word had spread quickly—too quickly—that the Crown's energy had fluctuated. Some saw it as sabotage. Others saw it as confirmation that I was losing control.
Kaelen kept his composure, but his eyes were tight when I arrived.
"You're sure you felt nothing?" he asked.
"Yes. It's like something's severed."
Cira stepped in beside me, arms crossed. "We ran diagnostics on your mana pattern. Everything on your end is stable—but the Crown isn't projecting any active resonance."
"So either it's asleep…" Kieran said, leaning against a pillar.
"Or someone's trying to shut it down," Elara finished, frowning.
The room fell silent.
Until Cira pulled up a new projection, a swirling 3D glyph structure rotating above the table.
"This," she said, "is a Crown fragment recovered from the Undervaults during our last scan. But it's corrupted. It's broadcasting anti-divin signals… like static wrapped in intent."
"Sabotage," Kaelen muttered. "Who has the tech to even touch something like that?"
Cira looked up slowly. "Not tech. Someone with inside access to the Crown's tether."
I knew exactly what that meant.
Someone was digging through my memories.
A Fractured Dream
That night, I didn't sleep.
Instead, I slipped into the Crown's internal plane—a realm of endless sky, thought, and gold-woven pathways that normally welcomed me like a heartbeat.
But now…
It was cracked.
The skies above were split, and a storm of broken thoughts swirled across the edges of my vision. Memories flashed and vanished—my childhood, the first time I killed, Elara's smile, Kieran's laugh, Darian's betrayal—all bleeding together.
Then I saw it.
A tear in the memory fabric. Floating in the distance like a wound in the sky. Pulsing with red static.
And standing at the edge…
A figure cloaked in grey light.
Not the Harbinger.
Not a god.
Someone else.
They turned toward me—but their face wasn't visible. Just a blur. An idea without form.
They raised a hand.
The memories behind me began to burn.
Emergency Wake-Up
I snapped awake in a cold sweat, the mark on my chest flashing wildly before flickering out again.
Cira was already by my side, having overridden the door lock. "I felt the surge," she said quickly. "Something's wrong inside the Crown."
"I know," I said. "Someone's inside it. Tampering with my past."
"Tampering how?"
"They're… rewriting things. Distorting my tether."
She paused, then slowly said, "That would mean they're not just hacking memories. They're trying to change who you are."
The Crownshapers
Later that day, Kaelen revealed what we feared.
"There's a group," he said in a private meeting with me, Elara, Cira, and Kieran. "A forgotten sect called the Crownshapers. They were once part of the original god-forged resistance—but they went rogue."
"What did they want?" Kieran asked.
"Not power," Kaelen said. "Purity. They believed the Crown was never meant to be used by anyone mortal. They see Sylas as a threat. An infection that must be burned out."
"And now they're trying to rewrite me from the inside," I muttered.
Cira nodded. "They're using a mind-weft device. Old tech. Probably hidden inside one of the seal sites. If we can find the beacon and destroy it, we can stabilize the Crown again."
Kaelen tapped the map. "We tracked a signal to the broken zone near Velraith's Scar—where the first seal was unearthed centuries ago."
Kieran grinned. "Then let's crack some ghosts."
Meanwhile… Darian's Gambit
Elsewhere, deep beneath the ruins of a forgotten steampunk vault, Darian Voss knelt before a shimmering pool of liquid mana. His face was lined with exhaustion, his thoughts racing.
The Harbinger appeared before him in a reflection.
"You've come," the shadow said.
"I want to stop him," Darian replied. "But I won't kill him. He's still my brother."
"Then help me," the Harbinger said softly. "Seal the gods out. And give your people a future not chained to fate."
Darian hesitated.
Then reached into the pool.
And everything changed.
The Beacon
The flight to Velraith's Scar took six hours—and every second felt heavier than the last. By the time we landed near the shattered cliffs, the air was thick with static mana. The sky was dark, though the sun hadn't set.
We moved quickly—Kieran leading the front, Elara flanking, Cira watching our tech levels.
At the heart of the Scar stood a spire—small, jagged, humming with crimson light.
"That's it," Cira said. "The beacon. It's threading into the Crown's frequency."
"How do we disable it?" I asked.
"We don't," she replied. "You do."
Inside the Rift
I stepped forward.
The moment I touched the spire, my vision blurred—and I was back inside the Crown's memory field.
Only this time, it was shattered.
I saw fragments of myself—one kind, one cruel, one crowned in light, one soaked in blood. They argued. Fought. Blamed each other.
"You don't deserve the Crown," one whispered.
"You'll become the next Harbinger," said another.
"You should have died in the last life."
"No," I said. "I chose to change."
I raised my hand—and summoned every memory I still believed in.
My parents' faces.
Elara's hand in mine.
Kieran's laughter.
Cira's defiance.
Darian's faith—even now.
The Crown pulsed.
The fracture burned.
And with a scream, I tore the beacon's influence free.
Aftermath
I collapsed outside the spire, gasping for air. Elara helped me up as Cira scanned my vitals.
"You're clear," she said. "The Crown's stable again."
But I knew better.
It wasn't just stable.
It was… changed.
Now, I could feel something deeper. A second layer. Something buried.
A whisper from the Crown itself:
"There's more beneath. And you must remember it… before they do."