When I was a boy, my father once told me the stars never lied.
Even when kings fell and empires burned, the stars would still whisper truth to those willing to listen.
He was wrong.
Because now, the stars had changed.
And I couldn't tell if they were whispering anymore…
…or screaming.
Signs of Distortion
Back aboard The Valkyris, Cira ran her third scan of the celestial map. The others sat or stood in tense silence. Elara leaned on the wall near me, arms crossed. Kieran paced like a caged animal.
"Confirmed," Cira said, finally looking up. "The starfields have shifted. Not just slight drift. We're talking entire constellations reoriented—dozens of them. Some missing. Some… new."
"Time broke," Kieran muttered.
"No," I corrected softly. "Time remembers. Just not the way it used to."
The battle at the Anchor hadn't ended reality. But it had left a scar.
Now, the past and future were blurring at the edges of the present.
Cira activated a projection showing three overlays of the sky from before, during, and after the Anchorfall.
"It's like two versions of history are trying to coexist," she explained. "And the universe can't decide which one to believe."
Echoes and Doubles
The effects weren't just astronomical.
Our network feeds from the western regions showed doubles—people reporting sightings of themselves walking through markets, speaking to loved ones long dead, or vanishing mid-step.
Worse still, some of these 'echoes' were making decisions.
Killing.
Whispering.
Changing things.
"I saw a version of me last night," Elara said quietly.
I looked at her.
"In my room," she continued. "Same clothes. Same hair. Same eyes. Just… empty. Like the soul was missing."
Kieran swore under his breath.
"This is how it starts," Cira muttered. "Timeline fusion. Eventually the discrepancies become too wide. One has to collapse."
"And what happens to everyone in the version that loses?" I asked.
She didn't answer.
The Voice in the Crown
That night, as I tried to meditate, the Crown pulsed with a different kind of energy.
It wasn't urgent.
It wasn't painful.
It was… curious.
I let it draw me inward.
And found myself standing in a library the size of a city, filled with books that hummed with light and shadow.
At the center sat a figure in robes of parchment and ink, their face blank and smooth—features ever-shifting like an unwritten page.
They spoke without sound, their voice printed into my thoughts.
"Greetings, Crownbearer."
"You have reached the threshold."
"And so, I am allowed to speak."
"I am the Archivist."
The Archivist
"Are you part of the Crown?" I asked, walking slowly around the towering shelves.
"No," it replied. "The Crown is a lock. I am the record of what it was made to contain."
I stopped. "The Chained God?"
"Among other things," the Archivist said. "Your current form—your current self—is a vessel of memory. Of choice. And soon, of judgment."
"Judgment by whom?"
The Archivist raised its hand, and a mirror formed.
In it, I saw myself—but not just as I was now.
I saw all of me.
The child.The tyrant.The protector.The killer.The hero.
"You."
"You will judge yourself."
A Warning
The Archivist turned away and gestured at a nearby wall.
Dozens of timelines played simultaneously—some with familiar outcomes, others twisted beyond recognition.
In one, I died at the Anchor.In another, I joined the Harbinger.In yet another, I wore a crown of bone and ruled a world made of fire.
"The timelines are converging," it said. "You've created a fracture by refusing the Harbinger's path. One that neither the gods nor their enemies can control."
"And what happens if I keep going?"
"Then you become something that has never existed."
Back to Reality
I woke with a gasp, drenched in cold sweat.
Elara was beside me instantly. "You okay?"
"Define 'okay,'" I muttered.
"Nightmare?"
"No," I said. "A meeting."
I looked up at the stars—some of which weren't stars at all anymore.
Just echoes of different skies.
"The Archivist contacted me," I told her. "It says… I've reached a threshold."
"What does that mean?"
I shook my head slowly. "That I'm no longer just fighting a war. I'm writing the outcome of reality."
The Crownless Strike
We didn't have time to recover.
Hours later, a high-priority alert reached us from the southern coasts.
A Crownless cell had located a sunken divine relic beneath the ocean trench near the ruins of Caedia.
And they had raised it.
Visuals showed an enormous golden machine—part cathedral, part war engine—rising from the sea, glowing with active glyphs older than any known language.
"Divine-class construct," Cira said, her face pale. "Pre-Crown era. Powered by living will."
"They intend to use it to destroy the remaining seal sites," Kaelen said over comms. "And possibly the gods themselves."
"They'll break the balance," Elara said. "Whether they succeed or not, the world won't recover."
I stared at the projection, watching the ancient machine's head turn toward the sky as if awakening from a dream.
"Then we intercept," I said.
"But not to stop them."
Everyone looked at me.
"We go to understand."
Final Scene: The Machine Awakens
Far below the waves, the golden construct known only as Seraph Null opened its eyes for the first time in millennia.
Its core glowed with pulsing light.
Its limbs shifted and clicked into place.
And at its heart, a single word whispered across its frame in all languages at once:
"Cleansing... initiated."
From its spine, wings of radiant fire erupted—blotting out the sea.