Lucian’s breath fogged as the air in the Sanctum thickened, the torch crystals dimming as if recoiling from what had been revealed.

The mirror gate pulsed again, and this time the reflection moved independently—raising a hand that Lucian hadn’t lifted, tilting its head with a grin stitched in malice.

Seraphis stepped in front of him, blade drawn. “Back away from it. Whatever’s inside is mimicking your essence.”

“No,” Lucian whispered. “It is my essence. A splinter I never knew I left behind.”

The mirror surface shimmered and dissolved, revealing a narrow tunnel bathed in cold, black light. Voices murmured within, layered and dissonant.

Lucian turned to Seraphis. “I have to go through.”

“That’s not a passage—it’s an invocation.”

Lucian reached into his coat and pulled out the seal of Astralis—the last artifact bearing his father’s crest. “Then I’ll invoke it. I was never meant to fight this war as one man.”

Before Seraphis could stop him, Lucian stepped into the void.

The other side was not a place, but a memory made real.

Lucian stood in an endless hall of shattered thrones, each representing a failed bloodline. Echoes of screams and coronations twisted together in an auditory blur. Spectral heirs wandered, blind and hollow, fragments of history that had been erased or rewritten.

In the center of the hall stood a figure: cloaked in the banners of fallen kingdoms, eyes glowing with red glyphs.

“You are late,” the figure said. “But still in time.”

Lucian approached. “Who are you?”

“A possibility. One the Court tried to purge from the timeline. But like all truths, I return.”

The entity extended its hand. “Make the pact, Lucian. Bind what is broken. But know this—the throne you seek to restore is already claimed.”

Lucian hesitated. “By who?”

The shadows behind the figure shifted.

A second Lucian stepped forward—darker, older, with scars and eyes that had seen the end of worlds. “By me.”

Lucian’s chest tightened. “What is this? Another echo?”

“No,” the darker Lucian said. “I am what you become if you sacrifice mercy for victory. I am the Supreme Heir unchained.”

The pact tome opened before them—a floating construct of light and bone. It hovered between the two Lucians.

Seraphis’s voice echoed faintly from the other side. “Lucian! Whatever you do, don’t sign—!”

But Lucian had already moved. Not to sign the pact... but to rewrite it.

Glyphs realigned. Words burned into the parchment. He wasn’t surrendering to fate—he was overwriting it.

“Then I’ll become the heir who rewrites the law,” he said.

The void cracked open as both Lucians screamed.

Lucian’s eyes snapped open in the real Sanctum.

Seraphis was kneeling beside him, blood at the corner of his mouth, the Sanctum trembling as a new sigil burned into the wall—Lucian’s own crest, reshaped.

“You were gone for five seconds,” Seraphis rasped, “but the whole place nearly collapsed.”

Lucian stood, steady despite the pain behind his eyes.

“I know who the true enemy is now,” he said. “And I know where they’ll strike next.”

“Where?”

Lucian turned toward the broken stairwell.

“The Coven of Glass. If we don’t reach them first, they’ll crown a false heir... and end the bloodline forever.”

Above them, unseen, the shattered throne pulsed once—acknowledging the pact that had just been made.