Chapter 4: Lost to Time

The ship drifted into stillness as the crew beheld a sight untouched by the march of centuries — a valley swallowed by time, hidden beneath the shifting sands of the Dead Meridian. A storm had revealed it, a titanic maelstrom that stripped away the desert's skin to expose stone spires, ancient towers, and a city carved into the earth itself.

Vael'Zhara — the City Beneath Silence.

It wasn't on any chart. No scholar had ever written its name. And yet, as Raizen stepped into its broken streets, he felt a memory in his blood.

Time had forgotten this place. But the Crown had not.

Guided by cryptic murals and the few remaining echoes of the Vael'Zharan language, Raizen and his crew descended into the city's heart — the Sanctum of Origin. There, etched into crystalline obelisks and chiseled into bones of unknown creatures, was a history buried by fear.

The Crown of Shadows was not created to rule.

It was forged as a weapon.

Not against mortals. Not even against gods.

But against something far older — far darker.

A cosmic entity that predated even the Primarchs.A being imprisoned at the edge of reality, sealed by the combined will of the first civilizations.Known only as "The Null Star."

The murals told of an age when stars went dark. When galaxies unraveled in silence. When will itself bent and broke. This entity — formless, vast, unknowable — had no hunger, no emotion. Only erasure.

Entire realms fell into nothingness as it moved. The Primarchs and the ancient Vael'Zharans stood together to fight it, sacrificing entire timelines to forge the Crown of Shadows — a key, a lock, and a blade all at once.

But when the war ended and the Null Star was bound, the truth was buried. Later rulers twisted the Crown's purpose into a tool of conquest. Its true origin became myth, then silence.

"Control was never the point," Raizen murmured, staring at the final mural — a dying Vael'Zharan casting the Crown into a pit of starlight."The Crown was meant to destroy the destroyer."

And now, its prison was weakening.

A rumble shook the city. Faint at first — then rising. Not an earthquake. Not wind.

A pulse.

From beyond the fabric of space.

Raizen looked skyward. No sun. No clouds. Only blackness.And in it — a faint shimmer, like a crack in the sky.

The Null Star was waking.

They fled the ruins before the storm returned, swallowing the city once more. But they left with knowledge that changed everything.

The final battle would not be against tyrants or crowns. It would be against what lies beyond.

As the ship sailed through starlight-soaked skies, Raizen held the Crown in his hands — no longer as a relic of rulership, but as a last hope.

"It was never about power," he said to his crew."It was about protection. About sacrifice."

And somewhere in the distant void, beyond the pull of time and tide, something ancient stirred…

…hungry for the end of everything.

END OF CHAPTER4