The silence inside the hidden chamber was suffocating. Dust danced in the shafts of red light that pierced through the cracks in the stone ceiling. Deep within the ruins of the ancient sanctuary, far beneath the island of Embercliff, Raizen stood alone. The others waited above, unaware that the truth he sought had been etched into these forgotten walls — and into his blood.
Before him stood an obelisk of black stone, its surface etched with strange runes and worn carvings. Raizen's hand hovered over it, hesitant. It pulsed faintly, as if responding to his presence.
Then the voice came.
"You have come, at last."
Raizen froze. The voice wasn't spoken aloud — it resonated within his mind, echoing through his very soul. He took a cautious step forward, heart pounding.
"You carry her blood… her fire… and her burden."
The runes began to glow crimson.
Images surged into Raizen's mind in a flood of memory not his own — yet somehow intimately familiar.
He saw a young woman, fierce and proud, standing atop the golden towers of the Ancient Kingdom. She wore armor adorned with the sigil of a blazing sun entwined with a shadowed crown. Her eyes, bright and defiant, mirrored Raizen's own. This was his mother — not the quiet, weary woman he remembered from childhood, but a warrior, a leader.
She stood beside the last monarch of the Ancient Kingdom, not as a subordinate, but as his equal — a commander of the elite guard sworn to protect the kingdom's most dangerous artifact: the Crown of Shadows.
Then came the betrayal.
Raizen saw the fall — the fire, the screams, the sky darkening as the World Government rose in fury and fear. The Crown, created to shield the kingdom from annihilation, was turned into its curse. It warped, feeding on despair and vengeance. His mother, torn between loyalty and conscience, made a desperate choice.
She severed the link.
With her own hands, she dismantled the Crown's core, scattering its essence across the seas and vanishing into exile — pregnant with a child destined to inherit not only her blood, but her sins.
Raizen staggered back, the vision breaking. He gasped, clutching his chest. The obelisk still glowed, now humming with the same crimson light that had filled his vision.
He understood now.
The Crown of Shadows had not simply chosen him — it had called to him because it recognized him. He was its heir, not by power, but by lineage. His mother had been the last Warden of the Crown… and Raizen, born in the shadow of a kingdom's ruin, had been marked since birth as either its savior — or its final curse.
Footsteps echoed behind him.
Lyra stood at the threshold, watching silently. Her expression softened when she saw his face — pale, shaken, changed.
"What did you find?" she asked gently.
Raizen didn't answer at first. He turned to the obelisk, then back to her, his voice low.
"My mother… she helped create the Crown. She tried to stop it. She tried to stop all of this." He paused. "I was born so it could never rise again. Or… maybe so I could finish what she started."
Lyra stepped forward. "So… what now?"
Raizen stared at the glowing runes for a long moment. The weight of the truth pressed on his shoulders like an anchor. Everything — the bounty, the battles, the rebellion, the shadows — it all made sense now. The world wasn't just afraid of him. It needed to be.
"I'm not just fighting for a future," Raizen said slowly. "I'm fighting to make peace with the past. Not just mine. Everyone's."
He turned, the light of the obelisk burning behind him.
"I know who I am now," he said. "And I know what I have to do."
Above them, the storm clouds began to gather — not with dread, but with purpose. The world was changing again.
And Raizen would face it not as a fugitive or a warrior.
But as the inheritor of truth.
END OF CHAPTER10
4o