The purple lightning surrounding Mei flickered, freezing mid-arc as Malakor slowly raised his blade—not in a guard, but down, placing the tip against the cracked stone.
He chuckled, a low, rasping sound that turned into a bitter laugh.
"You still wear the crest of the Lotus Clan on your collar," Malakor said quietly, gesturing to the faded emblem embroidered on Mei’s dark leather armor. "You still fight like a daughter of the Ash Vale. Tell me, Mei... who told you the Shadow Dominion burned your home?"
Mei’s breath hitched, but her shadow-blades didn't drop an inch. "I watched it burn. I saw the Dominion flags flying over the corpses of my people. I saw you."
"You saw what you were meant to see," Malakor said. He reached up and unlocked the heavy iron clasps of his helmet, pulling the spiked steel free and dropping it to the basalt floor with a loud CLANG.
Joshua gasped. Fei stepped back, her blades trembling.
Beneath the terrifying armor of the Architect was not an ancient demon or a wasteland warlord. The man standing before them shared Mei’s sharp raven eyebrows, her silver-flecked irises, and the faint, jagged scar running down his jawline.
He was older, weathered by centuries of corruption, but the family resemblance was unmistakable.
"Uncle... Kael?" Mei’s voice cracked, the shadow-wings behind her wavering. "You... died in the siege. My father said—"
"Your father lied," Kael said coldly. "Grand Sovereign Ren didn't die defending the Lotus Clan. He traded us."
The air grew suffocatingly cold as Kael raised his left hand. The dark runes along the fortress wall altered their glow, projecting a colossal memory crystal's light into the space between them.
A holographic scene flickered to life: Seven hundred years ago, inside the pristine ivory halls of Mei’s ancestral home.
Mei’s father, the Grand Sovereign, stood before a shining tribunal of the Sovereign Council—the realm’s 'benevolent' rulers. On the table between them sat the Heart of the Apocalypse, radiant and uncorrupted.
"The realm cannot sustain five ruling clans," the Chief Chancellor’s voice echoed from the projection. "The void energy bleeding from the core will destroy us all unless it is sealed inside a living vessel. Give us your clan's shadow-line to contain it, Ren, and your city will be spared."
"Take my brother," Ren’s projected voice answered without a moment's hesitation. "Take Kael. Frame the Shadow Dominion for the catastrophe. If the populace believes an outside monster destroyed the Ash Vale, they will bow to the Council for protection. My line will rule the remaining realms in peace."
The projection shattered into light fragments.
Mei stood frozen, the blood draining from her face.
The Shadow Dominion wasn't an invading empire from another realm. It was a prison construct—a scapegoat engineered by the Sovereign Council to hide their sacrifice of the Ash Vale. Kael hadn't defected; he had been forcefully fused with the void core, left to rot in the sealed fortress while her father rewrote history.
"Your father wiped your memory of that night, Mei," Kael said softly, his voice echoing in the dead quiet of the drawbridge. "He left you in the wasteland to scavenge, believing you were a survivor of a tragedy, when you were simply an abandoned witness."
Mei’s chest heaved. The dark energy of the Heart inside her shoulder socket thrummed, not with wild rage, but with a terrifying, absolute clarity. The memories locked deep behind her inner seals began to crack—the smell of burning incense in the ivory hall, her father's cold hands on her temples, the forced sleep.
"He built his empire on our ashes," Mei whispered, her silver eyes turning entirely black once more—this time, controlled, silent, and lethal.
"He did," Kael agreed, lifting his obsidian longsword and pointing it past her, toward the shimmering golden spires visible far on the northern horizon—the Royal Capital of the Sovereign Council. "I guided you to the Tomb not to steal your power, Mei. I needed another of our bloodline strong enough to bear the core. Together, we have the strength to tear down their ivory tower."
Fei looked between Mei and the armored warlord, her hands tightening on her hilts. "Mei... what do we do?"
Mei slowly looked down at her gloved hands, then up toward the northern sky where the rich inner realms thrived in stolen light.
"The Shadow Dominion was a lie," Mei said, her voice dropping to a icy whisper that cut through the howling ash wind. She turned her back on the Black Crown Fortress and faced the northern horizon.
"Which means we've been hunting the wrong monsters."