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Chapter 143:
Ashes of Radiance
The silence that followed the collapse of the Hollow Queen's domain was not peace. It was the stillness of tension, the pause before the second blade strikes. Across the fractured caverns of the Queen's palace—where moonlight and madness once danced in kaleidoscopic ritual—embers flickered in the darkness. Echoes of forbidden melodies trembled through broken columns as the dust of a shattered crown settled.
An'narel knelt amid the wreckage, bathed in the pale glow of the relic sun he had awakened. It hovered behind him like a defiant halo, its light torn from some forgotten epoch, blazing gently through the ashes. His robes were torn, lips bloodied, one eye swollen shut from the battle—but his back remained straight. His aura did not flicker. If anything, it pulsed with an unsettling stillness—like a new dawn that dared not rise too quickly.
The betrayal by his kin had pierced deeper than any blade. Cousins once sworn to protect the line of Errin had turned on him for power, for prophecy, for fear. Some had fallen by his hand; others had vanished, leaving behind whispers of regret and shadow-bound pacts with elder factions of the many realms. But An'narel did not mourn. Not now.
Not when the true storm had yet to break.
From the deepest vault of the Hollow Queen's labyrinth, the Ends Library awoke. Its sigil-bound gates trembled open of their own volition—drawn by An'narel's flame, or perhaps fearing it. Ghostlights fluttered between forgotten tomes, illuminating forbidden knowledge etched in soul-skin and dream-ink. The floating stone tablets, suspended in a vortex of gravitational laws bent to ancient will, hummed with voices not heard since the Valley's first breath.
He stepped forward, sensing the pull of destiny—not one path, but many, fraying like roots beneath a growing tree. With each step, he felt the reactions across the outer realms intensify.
In the Heaven of the Glass Thorn, a mirror cracked for the first time in nine centuries. The silent god of fate, Veil'Nor, blinked once—only once—in all his existence, and muttered: "The flame has chosen a vessel."
Within the Iron Temples of the Searing Path, patriarchs held their sacred convocation. Maps of the stars shifted before their eyes, constellations rearranging themselves around a new gravitational center. Their sons—the chosen prodigies meant to inherit the might of a thousand battles—trembled as their cultivations destabilized. One spoke out, "He's rewriting the cycle."
And in the deep void, where dead stars formed conclaves and ruled over lost civilizations, something ancient stirred. The Leviathans, once defeated by Errin and banished into the darkness between worlds, uncoiled their limbs of oblivion. They remembered the taste of fear Errin once gave them. And now, his son shimmered like a flame with the same scent.
Back in the Ends Library, An'narel stretched out his palm. The books did not resist. They floated to him, opening their hidden veins. Wisdom not meant for mortals poured into his being. Not all was comprehensible. Some of it screamed in languages that only gods gone mad had spoken. But one truth was clear.
He was the hinge between eras.
Behind him, the jealous daughter of the Hollow Queen still lived—broken, bleeding, but not bowed. In her chest burned a twisted remnant of the Hollow Throne. She watched him—not with rage now, but with a seed of reluctant awe. Her voice, barely audible, cracked the silence.
"You will bring war."
An'narel turned his head, not fully. "No," he said, his voice gentler than steel, but no softer. "I will bring reckoning."
As the relic sun pulsed once more, the Valley itself felt the ripple. Elder beasts howled in caves long sealed. The Divine Tree shed a petal that glowed with unborn creation. And somewhere, far above, a god who had once walked with Errin paused his meditation and smiled.
The boy had survived the first flame.
And now, he would burn everything false.
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Shall we continue into Chapter 144: The Gods Who Dared Remember?