"Engage."
Kael's voice was sharp, resolute.
The Drowned Claimant surged forward like a collapsing ocean, dragging everything in its wake. It moved as though chained to a throne that no longer existed—yet each motion carried apocalyptic weight. Its form pulsed with corrupted regality: a king who'd drowned not in water, but in rejection.
Kael's command lines lit across the phalanx.
"Lock formation. Grid Theta. Deploy heavy suppressors!"
His Stormguard Bastions—a new elite summon class—slammed anchor spears into the seabed. Blue runes flared, forming a temporary stasis field.
But the Claimant shattered the stasis with a roar.
"You stole MY REMEMBRANCE!"
A sonic pulse rippled outward. Three summons disintegrated instantly. Nyra appeared above its head mid-blink, her blades coated in antimatter and veiled smoke.
"Then let's make sure no one remembers you."
She struck. The cut split one of the Claimant's crown-horns—but it didn't stagger. Instead, it laughed.
Iden and Rael moved through a collapsing passage of memory-stone, untouched by water. The world here was slower. The very laws bent beneath their feet.
It was like walking inside a sealed judgment.
"There's no light source," Rael whispered. "But I can see… everything."
The deeper they went, the more fragmented Iden's vision became. Until the space around them crystallized into something else:
A perfect throne room. Unused. Grand. Half-formed by thought alone.
At its center lay the fragment—hovering.
Not like an object, but like a wound in reality.
[World Fragment: Identity – Monarch Class][Proximity Threshold Achieved. Authority Sync: In Progress.]
Iden's chest tightened.
The weight was immense.
Rael stepped beside him, hand on her staff.
"If you reach for it, you might never come back the same."
"That's what power means now, Rael."
His hand reached out—
And time shattered.
The Claimant tore through three layers of Kael's mechanized summons. The Bastions began linking into their Martyr Protocol, a last-resort blast net. Kael called for retreat—
But the Claimant opened its mouth.
And spoke Iden's name.
"You stole what I was meant to be. Give it BACK!"
The pressure wave struck—
Nyra intercepted it mid-air, taking the full blast across her dual shields. She screamed, blood misting in the water.
Kael dove, catching her. Half her armor was gone.
"He knows Iden's evolving," she coughed. "That thing's… a failed one."
"It's not just fighting us," Kael said. "It's trying to stop Iden's coronation."
The fragment split.
Nine beams of silver, gold, and abyssal blue arced through Iden's body like destiny sewing him anew.
His feet rose from the ground.
[Authority Expansion: Sovereign Level Initiated][New Subdomain: Crowned Warden – Forming Throne Ring][Memory-Sigil: Anchor to All You Rule]
Rael's eyes filled with tears.
He wasn't just her brother anymore.
He was the binding law of a future realm.
But something else moved in the room.
A chained echo, lurking beyond the visible.
"Iden—" she whispered. "We're not alone."