He said he will always defie the fate!

The farmhouse creaked under the weight of silence. The fire had burned out completely now, leaving only the faint glow of embers in the darkness.

Anna didn't move.

Ethan—or whatever he was now—stood across from her, his midnight-black eyes watching, calculating. He was still Ethan in body, still the man she had known in form. But the soul inside him?

That was an entirely different story.

She had fought wars against creatures beyond human understanding. She had tracked the Hollow King's influence for years, navigating the shifting tides of darkness and prophecy.

But this—this new version of Ethan—was something no prophecy had ever accounted for.

A man who should not exist.

A man who had broken the chains of both light and darkness.

A man whose power was entirely his own.

For the first time in years, Anna didn't know what happened next.

And that terrified her more than anything else.

Ethan's Perspective

He could feel it.

The weight of time, the echoes of all the lives he had lived—Lioris, the ghost of the past. Ethan Ward, the man forged in war. The Hollow King's pawn, the shadow that had nearly consumed him.

They had all fought for dominance.

Now?

They were gone.

Not forgotten. Not erased.

But absorbed.

He was no longer torn between them.

He was one.

Whole.

And he had never felt more powerful in his entire life.

Ethan lifted a hand, flexing his fingers experimentally. The air around them rippled, reality itself bending in response to his presence. He could feel the world shifting beneath his fingertips, like he had stepped beyond human limits into something else entirely.

It was intoxicating.

It was freedom.

And yet—

His eyes flickered toward Anna.

She was staring at him the way one might look at a storm standing in human form.

Wary. Calculating.

Afraid.

It should have amused him. Maybe it did, just a little.

But a part of him—the part that still remembered the weight of her name on his lips in another lifetime—felt something else.

Regret.

Because whether he admitted it or not, a line had been crossed.

There was no going back.

Meanwhile, in the Hollow King's Domain

Victoria moved like a specter through the ruins of her throne room.

She had spent years constructing her empire, bending men and monsters alike to her will. She had mastered the art of control, of manipulation, of power.

And now—

Now she was facing the first thing in centuries that had ever truly slipped from her grasp.

Ethan Ward.

Her fingers traced the edge of an ancient artifact, a blade formed from the first darkness. It pulsed with a hunger that mirrored her own.

She knew what had to be done.

He had broken free.

Now, he had to be erased.

Completely.

Before he became something even she could no longer control.

Victoria's lips curled into a slow, sharp smile.

"Time to end this."

The First Rift Opens

Back in the farmhouse, Anna's body tensed.

The air had changed.

She knew that feeling—the shift in pressure, the unnatural stillness that came before something wrong entered the world.

A rift had opened.

A deep, violent wound in the very fabric of reality.

She turned sharply, her instincts screaming. "Ethan—"

But he was already moving.

Faster than she could track.

Faster than anything she had ever seen.

One second he was across the room—the next, he was at the door, staring into the darkness beyond.

And for the first time since his transformation, his expression was unreadable.

Anna followed, standing beside him at the threshold of the farmhouse.

What she saw made her blood run cold.

The night sky had split open.

A gaping rift hung above the treetops, jagged and violent, bleeding darkness into the world. And from that abyss, shadows began to crawl forward.

Not Hollow King's creatures.

Something worse.

Ancient things. Forgotten things.

And at the center of it all—

A single, unmistakable presence.

Victoria.

She had come for him.

And she had brought hell with her.

The Final Confrontation Begins

Ethan exhaled slowly. He had known this was coming.

Victoria was never the type to accept loss.

She would rather burn the world down than see him walk away.

The old Ethan—the man she had once controlled so completely—would have hesitated.

But the man standing here now?

He was not afraid.

Victoria stepped forward, the darkness bowing to her will as she moved. Her gaze flickered between Ethan and Anna before settling on him.

"Look at you," she murmured, almost admiringly. "My greatest creation, and yet… no longer mine."

Ethan tilted his head slightly. "You sound disappointed."

Victoria's lips curled. "Not disappointed," she corrected. "Just fascinated. Do you even understand what you've become?"

Ethan didn't answer.

Because the truth was—he wasn't sure yet.

And that was what made him so dangerous.

Victoria's gaze hardened. "It doesn't matter," she said. "You had your chance to stand at my side." She raised a hand, and the shadows behind her surged forward, roaring to life like a tidal wave of pure destruction.

Ethan didn't flinch.

He simply smiled.

And then, without warning—he moved.

The Battle for Fate

One moment, the darkness was surging forward—

The next, Ethan was there, faster than thought, faster than reason.

The shadows never reached him.

He tore through them, his movements precise and devastating. Where he struck, the darkness shattered, unraveling into dust.

Victoria's expression didn't falter, but her eyes sharpened.

This wasn't the same Ethan she had once controlled.

This was something new.

Something even she didn't understand.

Good.

She loved a challenge.

With a flick of her wrist, the rift widened, and the world trembled.

The final battle had begun.