I Own the Multiverse's General Store!

The Multiverse held its breath.

Lucius stood at the Forge's mouth, radiant in the Vessel of Becoming. Where once he had walked with inherited power, now he bore forged purpose. The storm within him had not been silenced—but harmonized.

The Dreamsmith's forge flickered, sparks drifting into the ether, each one a ripple that would seed change across time. Walter bowed deeply.

Lilith touched the Vessel's shoulder, her fingers lingering as if to confirm he was still flesh, still hers.

Alexia stood silent but close, eyes locked onto the pattern of stars shifting above.

And Luna… she grinned, but for once, said nothing.

Lucius turned to them.

"We return now," he said. "But not to rest."

Walter nodded. "The final tremor has begun."

"What tremor?" Lilith asked, stepping forward.

Walter turned to her, his eyes older than reality. "The Empress has moved. The Betrayer of the Last King. She knows what Lucius has become."

Alexia's eyes narrowed. "She will not give up her stolen crown."

Lucius exhaled. "Then it's time to end what she began."

They returned to the Core Citadel.

The Council had changed. Representatives gathered in worried clusters, celestial messengers arriving by the minute. Realms were destabilizing—threads of fate unweaving in clusters.

The Empress had begun severing key anchor-worlds.

Worlds that had chosen to ally with Lucius's Council.

She was not attacking directly.

She was shattering trust.

"Shatterpoint," Walter whispered. "The moment where belief fails, and collapse begins."

"She's undoing us from the inside out," Alexia said.

Lucius stepped into the Grand Hall.

Every eye turned.

"We stand on the edge," he said. "But we do not fall."

He raised a hand.

The Vessel of Becoming lit with living memory.

A projection flared—every world under threat, every envoy lost, every fracture growing.

"We move now. Together."

He turned to Lilith. "You and Luna secure the unstable corridors between allied worlds. Find who still believes."

To Alexia. "Rally the Council. No more observers. We need commitment."

To Walter. "You and I are going to the first Severed World."

"Which one?"

Lucius's eyes flared with Crownlight.

"The one she stole her army from. The world of Broken Kings."

As Lucius and Walter prepared for departure, a low resonance passed through the Citadel.

Doors shuddered. Pillars trembled. The very weave of the Multiverse's architecture groaned.

A shard of prophecy—a vision unbidden—descended into the council floor.

It was her.

The Empress.

Or rather, a projection of her will.

She appeared draped in violet shadow and silver flame. Her crown of fractured starlight shimmered, each gem a soul she had taken. Her voice was soft, like silk drawn across a blade.

"Lucius," she purred. "You've done so well… but you were always too kind to finish the work."

Lucius met her gaze, unflinching. "And you were too cruel to understand what the work really meant."

"Still clinging to your council? Your allies?" She laughed. "You will watch them shatter like every ideal before them. One by one. I know how to break kings. I broke the last."

Walter stepped forward, his voice like ice. "And I watched you betray him."

She tilted her head. "Then watch again."

Her projection shattered—into a rain of dying stars.

Lucius turned to the gathered Council.

"She fears us. That's why she acts now. That's why she reaches."

He looked around the chamber. At Sol'Ahn, Maerith, Eloreh. At the dozens of leaders who had chosen faith.

"She wants us divided. She wants us afraid. So let us give her what she cannot prepare for."

He extended his hand.

"A unity not of convenience… but of choice."

And the room rose—not just in gesture, but in will.

Outside, Walter conjured the path.

The way to the world of Broken Kings tore through the stars like a wound of history reopening. Around the rift, ghosts of former monarchs whispered in tongues that chilled the soul.

Lucius stepped toward the breach, each step lit by the glow of the Vessel.

Behind him, hope followed.

And ahead—

A reckoning waited.

***

The breach yawned open like a wound torn across the sky.

Lucius stepped through first.

Walter followed, his form swathed in golden script and shadow.

Together, they emerged into a realm that should not have existed.

The World of Broken Kings.

It was a land carved from betrayal, layered in the bones of empires. The sky hung heavy with rusted crowns, suspended by ancient regrets. Once majestic cities lay in ruin—palaces split by revolution, thrones shattered by their bearers' own hands. The wind carried no sound, only echoes of commands that had died before being obeyed.

They descended into a forest of petrified banners—tattered standards from dead kingdoms, now fossilized in mid-motion. The ground beneath them was not soil, but ash and regret. In every direction, statues of former kings lined the horizon, each twisted in agony, their faces contorted in disbelief.

Walter looked around, jaw tight. "She chose this place for a reason."

Lucius nodded. "A realm soaked in failure. Broken legacies. She thinks it's where I'll falter."

"And yet," Walter said, gesturing toward a ridge, "her army remains."

Atop the broken cliffs stood the Hollow Guard.

Once-men, now clad in obsidian plate that pulsed with dead oaths. Their eyes glowed with borrowed conviction—puppets bound by promises they could never fulfill. Each soldier bore the sigil of a fallen ruler, etched into black steel like a wound left to fester.

Their commander, a towering knight draped in funeral cloth, stepped forward.

"I am Sovereign Writhe," he boomed. "Breaker of Oaths. Herald of the Empress."

Lucius raised his chin. "You wear the name of kings, but not their wisdom."

The knight's voice curdled into fury. "We were forgotten! Their crowns fell. Their legacies dust. But she remembered. She gave us purpose."

"She gave you chains."

"We chose our chains. And now you'll wear them too."

He raised his blade.

The Hollow Guard surged forward.

Lucius's Vessel ignited.

Light erupted from his form—not brilliance, but balance. Every movement a lesson learned, every blow a memory endured. His strikes did not merely destroy—they redeemed. With each soldier he downed, a name returned to them. A piece of their broken soul restored.

Walter danced behind him, his magic weaving golden seals that unraveled lies. His staff became a pen, slashing through false conviction with strokes of clarity.

The battle was brutal.

And yet, it was not conquest.

It was deliverance.

Sovereign Writhe met Lucius in the center of a ruined amphitheater, where kings once held court over war and peace. Their blades clashed—steel against memory.

"You were never meant to lead," Writhe growled. "You speak of unity, but what good is unity when none remember your sacrifice?"

Lucius parried and struck, his voice calm. "Unity does not need memory. Only continuance."

Writhe faltered. "Then you'll die alone!"

Lucius gripped the hilt of his weapon tighter. "No. I carry all of them."

With a final burst of will, he broke Writhe's blade.

And then, instead of striking him down—he embraced him.

The Hollow Knight screamed once, then fell silent.

The bindings around his soul cracked.

And for the first time in centuries, he wept.

The remaining Hollow Guard bowed—not in defeat, but in release.

They knelt in silence, heads lowered, as the ash wind finally cleared.

Walter stood beside Lucius, breathing heavily. "You didn't destroy them. You remembered them."

Lucius looked out over the realm of broken kings.

"I had to."

And as they turned to leave, the first crown in the sky fell—shattering not with despair, but with peace.

***

In the depths of her palace of obsidian glass, the Empress stirred.

The breach had closed.

But the tremor had reached her.

For the first time in centuries, her eyes opened—not with triumph, but with warning. She had felt the shattering at the World of Broken Kings. The unraveling of Sovereign Writhe. The freeing of her bound soldiers.

She had underestimated him.

Lucius.

Not just as a rival. But as a force of restoration.

She paced the mirror corridors of her sanctuary, where every wall reflected not the present, but the past—images of her betrayal, of the Multiverse King's last breath, of the council she had silenced with lies and blade.

"What are you becoming?" she whispered into the dark.

Behind her, the Hall of Silent Crowns groaned. Hundreds of floating diadems spun slowly, each one humming with the bound will of a world she had conquered. One by one, the hums faltered.

She turned.

"No."

Another dimmed.

"No!"

She struck the air, and one of the mirrors shattered—revealing a deeper one beneath it. A memory she had buried.

Her and Walter.

At the beginning.

Standing beside the Multiverse King.

"You were his wisdom," she muttered. "I was his blade."

Another image.

Lucius. Holding the Vessel. Embracing a broken king.

The Empress clenched her fists. "He dares to heal what I built from ruin."

Her throne pulsed. A jagged spike of crystal, forged from the fractured Crown of her slain predecessor.

It began to flicker.

She stared.

It had never flickered before.

Across the throne's surface, a thin line of golden light appeared—memory.

Walter's magic.

Lucius's legacy.

The Empress screamed.

And the palace trembled.

Far away, in the Core Citadel, Lucius paused.

He felt it.

Not pain.

Not rage.

But fear.

The Empress remembered.

And the reckoning would come soon.