The sky was no longer a sky.
It had cracked.
Lines of burning gold etched themselves through the firmament, splitting stars open like overripe fruit. The world was bleeding light—and screaming silently.
The Traveler gasped, stumbling away from the lake's edge. His reflection… it was gone. Replaced by a towering figure cloaked in smoke and memory. A throne of bones and mirrors rose behind it.
The Echo of the Hollow Crown had taken form.
And it remembered them.
"You have worn many names," the Echo said, voice rippling across space and soul. "But none have ever fit you… quite like this one: Godkiller."
The boy stepped back. "What is that thing?!"
The Seer did not answer.
He was kneeling, face bowed.
Praying.
Elen, trembling, whispered, "That… that's my face. Why does it have my face?!"
The Echo smiled with teeth that never moved.
"Because you are the Crown's heir."
The Mirrorlake shattered.
They fell—
Not through space, but through stories.
Visions of forgotten wars, of gods feeding on faith, of worlds consumed by a single lie: "This is the only way."
The Traveler screamed, but no sound came out.
When he awoke, he was in a forest of iron trees and rivers that whispered secrets.
Elen was by his side, pale and cold.
The boy had vanished.
The Traveler rose, limbs aching, and stared ahead.
A path had appeared.
Carved in obsidian. Lit by moons he didn't remember.
A voice, not his own, spoke from the skyless air:
"You are near the Axis of All Ends."
"Take one more step, and the world will begin to remember what it tried to forget."
He looked down.
In his palm was a fragment of the shattered Mirrorlake—still reflecting that faceless god.
"So be it," he said, and stepped forward.