Location: Everywhere and nowhere — the liminal echo of the Crown's memoryTime: The moment the leyline faltered
It begins as silence.
A stillness so absolute it severs breath from body.
Then, a low hum — felt first in bone, not ear.
In a single heartbeat, the vision grips them all.
Cassie staggers mid-step through the Sable Mire, frost curling from her fingertips. Her eyes go wide — gone glassy — as the forest around her fades into golden ash. Elara cries out, firelight flaring in her palms, then vanishing. She sees a great wheel of flame and shadow turning through the void. Revan drops to one knee, shadow magic leaking uncontrollably as his mind is torn from the present. Orien, on the mountain path, sees blood rain from a sunless sky. A great throne rises from a battlefield of broken masks.
Her grip tightens on her blade.
"No. I won't let it end like this."
The Scholar chokes on air, stumbling as time slips sideways — runes erupting in fire across the journal pages.
Kael steadies them, but he too reels, caught in the vision's pull.
And the Masked Woman…
She stands alone in her war chamber — and stillness bleeds across the floor like ink.Then the voice speaks — not to her, but through her:
"You are not my heir.You are not my end.You are the blade between."
She screams — not in fear, but fury.
"Then I will cut the world open to make you kneel."
The Vision Itself
All of them see it:A tower made of mirrors, each one cracked.Within it: the Hollow Crown — suspended, incomplete, bleeding light like a wound in the world.
A voice echoes in every mind, old and vast as stars forgotten:
"The last bearer lives still.And the final fragment is not hidden…It is buried within the price already paid."
The vision collapses — light exploding, silence returning.
Aftermath
The scholar gasps for breath, heart pounding.Kael grips his blade tighter than before.
Far away, the Masked Woman paces like a caged storm.
Cassie clutches her head. Revan bleeds shadow from his palms. Elara whispers, "That wasn't a vision. It was a warning."
And Orien? She stares at her reflection in the blade's edge.
"If the Crown dreams… we're already inside it."