"Some answers arrive only when you stop demanding them."
The Vale didn't crack open.
It peeled.
Like reality was a shell someone finally decided to remove.
Light erupted upward in a pillar so wide it swallowed the mountain's peak. The force hit Aarav like heat from a furnace door being thrown open — fierce, immediate, impossible to ignore. He stumbled back, one arm raised, eyes burning from the brightness.
Older Aarav grabbed his shoulder to steady him.
"Aarav — this is it. This is the real Convergence."
The rest of the team scrambled toward solid footing on the trembling stone.
Meera shielded the boy, pulling him behind her as she pressed her back against Amar.
Arin jammed his staff into a crack in the earth as if trying to anchor himself to a world quickly losing coherence.
The pillar wasn't just light.
It was presence.
A pressure building behind the sky.
Aarav felt the hum in his chest tighten until it threaded into the air around him. The Vale responded — not with its usual soft pulses, but with something sharper.
Fear?
Recognition?
Warning?
A low vibration rolled through the mountain.
A sound older than language.
Arin gasped. "He's forcing his world into ours."
Lightning fractured the pillar, splitting it into spiraling arms of radiance that arced down like roots searching for soil. Wherever they touched the stone, reality bent inward, warping like metal under too much heat.
The boy cried.
Meera held him tighter.
Aarav stepped forward despite everything in him screaming to stop.
Older Aarav grabbed his arm.
"What are you doing?"
Aarav's voice shook.
"He's not reaching for the world."
Older Aarav closed his eyes in bitter recognition.
"No. He's reaching for us."
The pillar expanded.
A silhouette began to form inside the light.
Not vague.
Not partial.
Not a fragment.
A figure tall enough to distort the sky.
Shoulders broad with burden.
A crown made of broken resonance lines.
A presence that pressed into the lungs like a second heartbeat.
The King.
Not an echo.
Not a memory.
Him.
Meera cursed under her breath, voice trembling even as she stepped in front of the boy again.
Amar spread his stance, palms crackling with the last of the Hollow Man's static.
Arin bowed his head in instinctive reverence and terror.
But Aarav stood very still.
The silhouette moved — not stepping, not walking — but **arriving**.
Every breath in the Vale froze.
The King lifted his head.
A sound rolled through the mountain — not a voice, not a word — but a resonance frequency so deep it pressed tears from Aarav's eyes.
Then the King spoke.
His voice wasn't loud.
Just **absolute.**
"Aarav."
The world reacted to his voice.
Stone split.
Grass wilted.
The sky wavered like glass hit by a hammer.
Aarav's breath caught.
The hum in his chest surged in response.
Older Aarav tensed.
"Don't answer him."
Aarav swallowed.
"I have to."
The pillar flared.
The silhouette sharpened.
When the King stepped out of the light, his form resolved into flesh and energy — human enough to recognize, inhuman enough to fear.
Tall.
Worn.
A face carved with grief that had outlived centuries.
Eyes rimmed in the remnants of shattered worlds.
He wasn't a monster.
He was a tragedy.
And he was looking only at Aarav.
"You defied my call."
The words made the mountain groan.
Aarav's knees nearly buckled from the pressure behind them.
Meera shouted, "Aarav! Step back!"
Aarav didn't move.
His voice was soft, shaking, but steady.
"I'm not your Anchor."
The King's expression didn't change.
But the air did.
Wind rushed outward as if the world inhaled sharply in fear of what the King would do next.
Older Aarav stepped between them.
"No."
The King's eyes flicked toward him with ancient recognition.
"You."
The older version didn't look away.
"You lost us. Let us go."
The King stared at him for a long, quiet second.
"You are a wound," the King said.
"And a wound cannot speak for the one it came from."
Older Aarav flinched.
Aarav stepped between them, heart pounding.
"Don't talk about him like he's broken."
The King's gaze locked onto Aarav again.
"Everything breaks.
Only purpose remains."
Aarav clenched his jaw.
"I choose my purpose. Not you."
The King's resonance rippled outward — slow, cold, deliberate.
"A world cannot choose its anchor," he said.
"An anchor is found.
Claimed.
Held."
"Then you're wrong," Aarav said.
The King stepped closer.
The Vale trembled.
The mountain bowed as if kneeling.
He stood less than a meter from Aarav.
"You are the closest shape to the one I lost," the King whispered.
"And the only one who has ever resisted me."
Aarav didn't look away.
"Because I'm not yours."
Silence stretched — sharp enough to cut.
The King raised a hand.
Light curved around his fingers like gravity bending to his will.
Aarav braced — but the King didn't strike.
He placed his palm against Aarav's cheek.
Not violent.
Not claiming.
Searching.
"You carry his echo," the King said softly.
"You carry what he left behind."
Aarav swallowed.
"I carry myself."
The King's eyes softened for a moment —
just a moment —
with something painfully human.
Then the world snapped.
The King's palm glowed.
Aarav's body jerked.
Older Aarav screamed, "NO!"
The resonance in Aarav's chest exploded outward—
—meeting the King's power head-on.
The shock wave tore across the mountain, sending Meera, Amar, Arin, and the boy flying backwards.
Aarav and the King slid apart, standing opposite each other on fractured stone.
The King's voice deepened.
"Then show me."
Aarav wiped blood from his lip.
"What?"
"Show me," the King said,
"who you are
if not mine."
The Vale itself reacted —
the world curving inward,
space tightening,
the Convergence sealing them into a battleground of identity.
Aarav exhaled.
"Fine."
He lifted his resonance.
The King lifted his hand.
And the fight
finally
began.
"The realization was small, but the world aligned around it."