The first crown raised without divine permission did not shine.
It weighed.
The declaration came at dawn from the Sunreach Plateau—a highland dominion once governed by layered shrine-oaths to three competing gods. Those altars had gone quiet when Heaven fractured. For three days, Sunreach descended into violent indecision: councils deadlocked, priests fled, warbands clashed in the open streets over whose doctrine still held authority.
Then the Alpha of Sunreach did something no pack in recorded history had dared.
He crowned himself.
Not beneath any altar.
Not before any god.
On the naked stone of the plateau’s highest ring, before his people alone.
By noon, the message reached Blackthorne.
“Sunreach has declared full sovereign independence,” Rowan reported grimly. “No heavenly aut
