Chapter 17: The Fall of the Crown
The gate closed behind him.
Its edges rippled once, then collapsed in a soft sigh, like an old wound finally sealing. No flash. No sound. Just finality.
Anterz stood on the edge of the Tower Crown, the broken throne behind him, Elaria before him.
She didn't move at first.
Didn't speak.
Just stared at him with eyes that shimmered with quiet awe and deeper concern.
"You're back," she whispered.
He nodded.
"I didn't become him," Anterz said.
She stepped closer. "But something changed."
His eyes had lost their gold. They were darker now, colder. Not lifeless—but forged. The kind of gaze that had seen the shape of destiny and chosen not to wear it.
"I killed what I could've become," he said. "Or maybe I let it die."
Elaria's hand brushed his.
He didn't pull away.
---
Around them, the Tower began to tremble.
A soft, rhythmic pulsing echoed through the stone, like a heartbeat slowing down after centuries of overwork. Cracks spread across the obsidian floor beneath their feet. The air grew lighter.
Above, the sky bled sunlight for the first time since they entered.
"It's ending," Elaria said.
"No," Anterz replied. "It's releasing."
She looked up. The clouds that had encased the tower began to unravel like silk in the wind. Light poured down, golden and strange, as if the sun had remembered the world.
"What happens now?" she asked.
Anterz sheathed Valteris.
And looked below.
"We go back."
---
They descended the Tower as it unraveled.
Walls fell in slow-motion collapse—stone drifting into dust, stairways disassembling mid-step and reassembling behind them. The Tower wasn't dying in anger. It was letting go. Each floor they passed was quieter than the last. The mirror halls lay shattered, the god-forged altars cold.
Sivrael's throne was gone.
So was her crown.
Elaria bent to where it had been—only a single sliver of mirror remained, dull and cracked. She picked it up. For a moment, she saw a younger version of herself in it—wide-eyed, afraid.
She closed her hand around the shard.
"I'm not her anymore."
---
The ruins at the Tower's base had changed.
Where ash once choked the land, flowers now grew. Small. Pale. Defiant. The skeletal remains of the Ashblood lay buried beneath earth that trembled with rebirth. Fissures filled with water. Dead trees turned green at the tips.
But not all had healed.
Scattered across the outer ring of the Tower were figures—survivors.
Some Seekers of the End, their black armor dulled, swords dropped. Others were wanderers, drawn by dream or fate to the Tower's death.
And in the center, surrounded by fragments of shattered armor and old banners—
Stood Rayn Al Myst.
Alive.
Barely.
---
He leaned on a crooked spear, half his mask broken, blood dried along his coat.
"You took your time," he rasped.
Elaria ran to him, catching him as he stumbled.
"You're alive," she said.
Rayn chuckled hoarsely. "Not for long. The Tower didn't let me die. It wanted me to see the end."
Anterz approached.
Rayn raised his eyes.
"They'll come for you now. Not cultists. Not gods. People."
Anterz nodded.
"They'll want answers."
"They'll want a savior."
Anterz looked past him, toward the rising sun.
"Then they're chasing another lie."
---
They burned what remained of the Tower's gate that night.
Not in ceremony.
In closure.
The ash drifted high and wide, carried on winds newly born. The Tower wouldn't rise again. Its roots were undone, its throne abandoned, its heart left in the realm where only choice mattered.
Anterz stood at the edge of the firelight while Elaria and Rayn rested.
Valteris leaned against a stone nearby, humming softly.
> "You did it."
> "You broke the chain."
"I killed the path," Anterz murmured. "That's not the same."
Valteris pulsed.
> "No. It's more."
> "You became something not written."
---
He turned.
Far beyond the Tower's edge, in the ruins of Ember City, fires were being lit. Small caravans moved. Flags rose again. Survivors stirred. The land was waking.
But not all of it welcomed change.
He felt it in the soil. In the stars.
The echoes of what he'd undone.
> "You buried gods."
> "You shattered timelines."
> "Now the world must decide what it becomes without them."
---
Elaria joined him in the dark.
"Something's coming," she said.
He nodded.
"It's always coming."
She leaned against him.
"Do we stop it?"
He looked at her.
"No."
"We survive it."
She exhaled. "Good."
---
At dawn, Rayn sat beside them.
His breathing was shallow. His wounds still deep.
"I won't leave this place," he said. "The Tower and I… we're married now. Broken pieces of the same regret."
Anterz didn't argue.
Rayn smiled faintly.
"I saw her again last night. Sivrael. She didn't speak. Just stood beside the fire. Watching it burn."
Elaria whispered, "Do you think she was real?"
Rayn chuckled. "I think she wanted to be. That counts for something."
He looked up at Anterz.
"What will you be now? No crown. No throne. No sword in the sky."
Anterz was quiet.
"I'll be what they fear most."
"A man who chose not to be a god."
---
They left the Tower ruins by dusk.
Elaria carried only her blade and a sack of salvaged dreams. Anterz walked without weapon now—Valteris quiet in the satchel, no longer needing to lead.
Behind them, the world shivered.
And something watched.
Not evil.
Not divine.
Just curious.
It was the space between fate and free will.
A place the gods had never dared touch.
Now open.
Waiting.
---
In the southern lands, a boy dreamed of fire falling from the stars.
In the east, a merchant saw his dead daughter in the sky's reflection.
In the west, a creature made of stitched bones paused mid-hunt and whispered a name it shouldn't know.
> "Anterz."
The world remembered him.
Not as a savior.
Not as a ruin.
As a choice.
And choice, in a broken world, is the most dangerous magic of all.
---