In front of the Tower of Death, Ethan stood, motionless.
The winds stirred around him, weak and irrelevant. The world felt quiet, subdued—as if it too recognized what had changed within him. Once, this place had filled him with fear, hope, ambition. Once, he'd walked up those steps with defiance burning in his chest.
Now?
He felt nothing.
No guilt, no excitement, no anticipation. The tower that had once loomed above him as an enigma, a structure full of unknowable challenges, was now... a relic of a journey long since completed.
All that was left was to end it.
The scent of blood still lingered faintly in his senses—from Seraphina, from Magnus, from countless others he had killed not out of necessity but for evolution. He didn't need to pretend. There was no justification, no grand purpose beyond power to return home.
And he had made peace with that.
