The crowd screamed. Thousands of voices in an arena shaped like a coliseum carved into obsidian. Runes pulsed along its walls. Magic-tech drones hovered above, broadcasting the event across a hundred realms. It was not war. It was entertainment. It was empire.
Except the stage wasn’t an arena.
It was Keal’s island.
He didn’t know how they arrived—how they tethered their reality to his. He only knew the sky had cracked like stained glass, and the earth trembled beneath his feet. One moment he was alone, standing on the beach tracing runes into sand. The next—
The monster came.
A man-shaped juggernaut wreathed in crimson flame, tattoos burning like veins of molten iron. CRUX. Taller than Keal. Broader. His eyes were voids.
And behind him, high in the clouds, a fleet of surveillance dro
