The sky didn't open. It tore.
Just once.
Like something beneath the skin of the world finally snapped.
Somewhere beyond death, something opened its eyes.
Not a girl.
Not a ghost.
And definitely not the villainess they thought they buried.
Elariax Velintrae remembered the sound of her own execution.
The crack of the chains.
The silence of the crowd.
The way no one wept not even him.
They accused her of war crimes.
They called her a heretic, a traitor, a monster.
But all she did was choose herself in a world that demanded she kneel.
She died with her name in her mouth, and a curse in her heart.
"When I return," she whispered, "I'll be the one writing the ending."
Now she was back.
Not reborn.
Rewritten.
Her bones grew from a circle of runes etched in teeth.
Her skin remembered every betrayal.
And under her heart, something ancient pulsed not a heartbeat. A summoning.
She had returned as something worse than a villainess.
She had returned as the ending itself.
Across the empire, three men jolted awake at the same moment.
One with blood on his hands.
One with a dream of fire.
And one with her name stitched backwards into his memory.
They didn't know what was coming.
But they would.
She would teach them what a final boss really looks like.