Origin of the Crownless King

The world had been torn apart.

Ash floated across the sky like snowfall from a dying star. The ruins of Halcyon Tower jutted from the earth like the bones of a buried titan. Everything was silent—too silent. Not the peaceful kind, but the kind that held its breath after a scream.

And in the center of the devastation…

A child stood.

He couldn't have been older than ten.

Hair the color of firelight. Eyes too ancient to belong to someone so young. They shimmered with fractured timelines, reflections of futures that hadn't yet been written.

He looked down at his palms.

No cuts. No burns.Just a faint, pulsing glyph on each—one mirrored Kael's, the other matched Aeris's.

"I remember... everything," the boy whispered, his voice hollow yet thunderous.

His name hadn't been given yet. But the world would come to know him as the Crownless King.

Not far away, Aeris stirred beneath a beam of shattered steel. Her fingers were bloodied from clawing through debris.

Her breath came in short, cracked sobs.

"Kael... Kael—where are you?"

She pushed herself up, trembling, each movement painting the concrete with red.

Then she saw him.

Kael's body lay a few meters away—limp, his coat half-burned, his skin pale. Blood had dried at the corner of his lips. But the worst part?

His mark was fading.

The Rift no longer pulsed in his palm.

"No. No no no…"

She dragged herself to him, hands shaking. Pressed her forehead to his. Whispered a thousand apologies into the crook of his neck.

The Crownless King watched from the shadows. His gaze flicked between the two.

"You shouldn't be alive," he said softly, stepping into the open.

Aeris froze.

Her head turned slowly. Her breath caught when she saw the child.

"Who… are you?"

"Your son," he said plainly.

Aeris blinked. Her blood ran cold. "That's not possible."

"Not in the way you think," he replied, voice distant. "I am the culmination of both your choices. The fracture. The union. The cost."

The ground rumbled.

The Rift crackled to life again—raw and unstable.

In the distance, the fractured skyline of Halcyon City began to shift. Buildings moved like pieces on a chessboard. Entire districts folded into themselves. Time loops unraveled like loose thread.

"They're coming," the boy said.

"Who?"

"The Paradox Judges."

Aeris narrowed her eyes. "They were erased."

The boy gave a tired, bitter smile. "No one is ever truly erased. Only delayed."

Then he reached down—gently, carefully—and touched Kael's heart.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then—

Kael gasped.

His body jolted violently, like it had been struck by lightning from within. His eyes snapped open, wide and panicked, before rolling back.

"You brought him back?" Aeris cried, cradling him again.

"No," the boy said. "I... restarted him."

Inside Kael's mind.

He stood in an endless void of glass, floating through memories not his own.

A tower made of screaming faces.A hand that reached from a collapsing sun.A woman who looked like Aeris, laughing as she burned the world.And the boy—older, wearing black—watching it all with dead eyes.

"Is this my fate?" Kael whispered into the void.

A whisper answered:

No. It's your choice.

Back in reality, Kael's body slowly stabilized.

But before Aeris could speak, a hole tore open in the sky.

A crack shaped like an eye.

And from it stepped three hooded figures — robes of obsidian, faces made of shifting star maps. The Paradox Judges.

"The Crownless King lives," one said, voice like breaking glass.

"The Rift must be balanced," said another.

"The debt must be paid," whispered the third.

The boy stepped in front of Aeris and Kael.

"If you want them... you'll have to go through me."

Then came the final blow.

The sky split again — this time not with light, but with shadow.

A fourth figure emerged, face concealed beneath a mirrored mask. A towering presence. Not a Judge. Something worse.

"You kept me waiting," the figure said. His voice was Kael's. But older. Broken.

The child's face drained of color.

Aeris stood, fists clenched, shielding Kael's barely conscious form.

"Who the hell are you?"

The figure removed his mask.

And Aeris stared in horror.

Because the man standing before her…

Was Kael.

But with dead eyes.

"I'm what he becomes... when you die."