I watch shadows twist across ancient stone as The Fellowship prepares their ritual, each hooded figure carrying artifacts that hurt my eyes. Beside me, hidden in a cathedral alcove, Mikey trembles - though whether from fear or anticipation, even four hundred years of manipulation can't help me read the boy.

  "They can't know we're here," I whisper, my voice carrying no echo despite the vast space. "Not until the moment is right."

  Through gaps in the stonework, we watch thirteen robed figures arrange themselves in a pattern that seems to continue into dimensions that shouldn't exist. Their chants ripple through reality, making Mikey's nose bleed. Each syllable they utter tears at the fabric of existence, opening wounds that leak possibilities.

  I've seen this before, in darker times. In temples high in the Himalayas where monks chanted reality into new shapes. In hidden chambers beneath Vatican City where cardinals spoke words that made time flow backwards. But this... this is different. More fundamental. Like they're trying to unmake the rules that hold everything together.

  The Fellowship has changed since I first encountered them centuries ago in Tibet. That original group – Chronos and his disciples Maelstrom, Torque, Veil, and my former master, Aahan – had sought to contain the shadows, to establish rules and boundaries for reality itself. I hunted them down one by one, building my empire in Star City while stealing their powers and breaking their hold on reality. I thought I'd destroyed their legacy, multiple times.*

  Yet here they stand, evolved, transformed, thirteen where once there were five, their robes no longer the saffron of Tibetan monks but midnight black, absorbing all light. Pretty fucking annoying actually.

  "The ritual," Mikey says quietly, wiping blood from his upper lip. "It’s not what The Fellowship thinks it is."

  I smile. Some strings are invisible even to me. Apparently, Mikey knows more than I thought. I humor him. "They have no idea what they are about to unleash.”

  I still remember words Aahan spoke with his final breath: “You’ve…doomed us all.” Everything I've done since that day—hunting down The Fellowship, battling Nyx and Lark, betrayal from my own family, losing Dredsen to the void —all of it now seems like prelude to this moment.*

  The Fellowship has chosen their location well - an old Gothic cathedral, deconsecrated centuries ago after too many parishioners reported seeing things moving in spaces that didn't exist. The architecture itself forms nested patterns that, viewed from certain angles, seem to bend reality. I remember when it was built - I pulled strings to ensure certain stones were laid just so, creating geometric frequencies that would resonate across centuries.

  I recognize Zariah, leader of the fellowship,as she raises a strange scepter, its crystalline head made of shadows and static. "Brothers and sisters," her voice resonates at frequencies that make reality shiver, "tonight we claim power over the spaces between spaces. Tonight, we-"

  The air screams.

  Every shadow in the cathedral suddenly moves wrong, flowing like oil against gravity. The temperature drops so fast the air itself crystallizes, forming patterns that hurt to look at. My strings tremble with recognition - I've felt this power before. When I lost everything I had worked for. My family. My son. It all started with this feeling.

  "No," Zariah gasps, her fingers tightening around the scepter. "It's too soon. The alignment isn't-"

  The Shadow Bearer emerges from spaces between moments, its form a living lattice of electromagnetic waves and stolen powers. What had once been Kwan Park now exists as pure frequency given form, trailing quantum static like a cloak. Through my enhanced perception, I see echoes of everyone it has consumed - each stolen power adding new harmonics to its impossible existence.

  "Your ritual," it says in a voice that broadcasts across all frequencies simultaneously, "was never meant to succeed."

  The Fellowship members try to run. Try to fight. Try to pray. The Shadow Bearer reaches out with its expanding consciousness, and...

  Their screams harmonize at exactly 437 MHz as their powers are torn from their quantum frameworks. Blood pours from their eyes, their ears, every orifice as the Shadow Bearer consumes ability after ability. Their bodies collapse like abandoned puppets, reality itself unraveling around them. I feel each death ripple through my strings, each power transferring from one vessel to another.

  Zariah's skull suddenly implodes with a sickening crunch, brain matter spattering across the ancient stone in a fan pattern that resembles the sigils of the forbidden texts. The scepter falls from her lifeless fingers, rolling across the floor, leaving a trail of reality-distortion in its wake.

  Another Fellowship member – a reality warper whose power signature reminds me of Veil, whom I once hunted through the illusory forests of her making – begins to twist inside out, his organs slipping into spaces that shouldn't exist while he remains horrifically conscious, screaming as his intestines disappear into shadow. His skin peels back like wet paper, revealing muscles that contort and stretch impossibly as his skeleton bends in directions that violate the laws of physics. His fingers elongate into foot-long bone needles that pierce his own eyes, yet still he screams – a living testimony to the Shadow Bearer's cruelty. With his final breath, he attempts to warp reality around himself, creating a shimmering bubble of distortion. The Shadow Bearer simply inhales it like mist, adding his considerable power to its growing collection.

  Three others attempt to combine their powers – a force field generator, a telekinetic, and a pyrokinetic. For a brief moment, their combined abilities create a sphere of protection around them, glowing with potential. I recognize their technique – the Triad Formation, one of the Fellowship's most formidable defensive measures. The pyrokinetic, a woman whose flames once melted an entire BACR containment facility, unleashes a tornado of blue-white fire that reaches temperatures hot enough to vaporize tungsten. The telekinetic, a man who once lifted an aircraft carrier from the ocean depths, creates layers of compressed air so dense they approach the solidity of steel. The force field generator, rumored to have withstood a direct nuclear strike during the Cold War, weaves quantum barriers that should be impenetrable.

  The Shadow Bearer merely laughs, the sound distorting reality itself. The force field inverts, becoming a prison rather than protection. The pyrokinetic's flames turn inward, consuming her from within, her skin charring and cracking to reveal a molten core that was once her heart. Her screams emerge as gouts of flame that burn the telekinetic's eyes from his skull. He panics, his telekinetic ability lashing out wildly, flaying the skin from his companions' bodies in long, bloody ribbons that dance in the air like macabre streamers. The force field generator makes one last desperate attempt, focusing her power into a needle-thin beam aimed at the Shadow Bearer's core.

  For a single heartbeat, I think she might succeed. The beam pierces the Shadow Bearer's form, creating a hole through which I glimpse... something else. Something worse.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Then the Shadow Bearer simply reabsorbs the hole, like water closing over a stone, and makes a gesture that defies description. Within seconds, the three are crushed into a singularity of flesh and bone and power, compressed until nothing remains but a wet smear on the cathedral floor and three fewer frequencies in existence. Their combined death cry resonates at harmonics that make the stone weep actual tears.

  A fourth Fellowship member – a mountain of a man whose densely muscled body houses the power to transmute matter – charges forward with a roar. His skin transforms into living diamond as he barrels toward the Shadow Bearer, each footstep cracking the ancient floor beneath him. I recognize him as well – Adamant, nearly invulnerable, capable of shattering mountains with his fists.

  The Shadow Bearer flows around his charge like smoke, then solidifies just enough to thrust a tendril of void-stuff through Adamant's diamond chest. The crystalline structure of his transformed body cracks from within, fracture lines spreading across his transparent form. He looks down in disbelief as his own body begins to transmute into something for which no language has a name – a substance that exists in negative space, that absorbs matter rather than consisting of it. His diamond mouth opens in a silent scream as his body collapses inward, leaving nothing but a perfect diamond heart floating in mid-air, which the Shadow Bearer plucks and crushes to dust between fingers made of stolen frequencies.

  Two more Fellowship members – twins who can manipulate cosmic energies – unleash a concentrated blast of what looks like bottled starlight. The cathedral's roof disintegrates as their combined attack tears a hole in reality itself, revealing the naked void beyond. Stars are visible in daylight through the dimensional breach, their light twisted and wrong. The twins float upward, drawing on solar prominences millions of miles away, channeling the fury of a star through their joined hands.

  The Shadow Bearer reaches up almost lazily, catching their cosmic energy in hands that somehow cup the very essence of stars. For a moment, the Shadow Bearer's form becomes transparent, and I see galaxies swirling within the void-spaces of its being. Then it simply redirects their attack, not back at them, but into the fabric of reality itself. Space-time tears around the twins like wet fabric. Their bodies elongate, stretching across light-years in an instant, their screams doppler-shifting as parts of them accelerate past the speed of light while other parts remain frozen in quantum uncertainty. They burn and freeze simultaneously, cosmic radiation cooking their flesh while vacuum crystallizes their blood. Their powers, which could have destroyed cities, are absorbed and transformed into yet another frequency in the Shadow Bearer's growing collection.

  Within moments, the cathedral becomes a charnel house of broken bodies and severed connections to reality. The Fellowship, an organization that has stood against cosmic threats for centuries, lies in ruin – victims of a power they sought to control but never truly understood. Even at my most brutal, when I hunted the original Fellowship members one by one, I never achieved such complete and devastating victory.

  The Shadow Bearer stands amid the devastation, absorbing the final ripples of dying frequencies, its form shifting and expanding with each new power it incorporates. What began as Kwan Park is now something that transcends comprehension, a living lattice of stolen abilities resonating in harmonies that should not exist.

  "Stop this," I command, stepping from hiding, pulling at strings that have manipulated centuries of events. "This isn't-"

  The Shadow Bearer turns its attention to me, its form shifting between states of matter. Through the quantum static, I sense something like recognition – something strangely familiar.

  It reaches for me with tendrils of pure electromagnetic force. I feel my carefully woven reality begin to unravel, feel powers accumulated over centuries begin to tear away from my quantum signature, a feeling I have felt many times over. Each string that breaks is like losing a piece of myself - centuries of carefully crafted manipulations dissolving into quantum foam.

  I attempt to fight back, throwing my electrified strings at the shadow beast. I then follow up with another group of strings, hoping to land a death blow.

  Then the Shadow Bearer simply... steps sideways, into a space that time doesn't touch. My trap collapses, and with it, more of my powers.

  I feel my immortality wavering – the most precious ability I ever stole from Chronos. My long life flashes before my eyes as I feel cold mortality brushing against my skin.

  .But then Mikey steps forward.

  "Oh," the Shadow Bearer says, its form stabilizing as it perceives the boy properly for the first time. "You were the one connecting with us. We see you now. See what you truly are. What you've always been."

  Mikey nods, blood still dripping from his nose. "I know. I've always known. Since the shadows first whispered to me."

  I try to pull my puppet's strings, to maintain control, but reality is shifting too fast. The Shadow Bearer reaches for Mikey, not to consume, but to... merge. I watch in horror as my carefully laid plans dissolve. All those years of manipulation, of preparing him for my purpose, undone in an instant.

  "You are not meant to be controlled," the Shadow Bearer says. "You are meant to Herald what comes after."

  Mikey nods slowly, “I know. I’ve felt it for awhile now. Ever since I was freed from that BACR facility.”

  The Hearld slinks towards Mikey and begins to wrap shadows around him.”They were trying to prevent you from becoming what you were really meant to be, becoming too powerful.”

  In a rare instance over the 400 years of my existence, fear washes over my face as I see Mikey accept The Shadow Bearer, almost swallowing his dark presence.

  Their forms combine in ways that break several laws of physics. Mikey's consciousness expands across possibilities as the Shadow Bearer's stolen powers flow into him, transforming him into something that exists in all timelines simultaneously. Reality screams as natural laws shatter under the weight of their union.

  A Fellowship member still clings to life, trying to crawl toward the scepter, leaving a smear of blood and liquefied organs across the stone floor. The newly-formed Herald gestures casually, and the man's body separates into its component elements – flesh, blood, bone, thought, and finally soul, each layer peeling away into different dimensions. His final scream exists as pure frequency, neither sound nor energy but something more fundamental.

  I feel my strings snapping one by one as I stagger toward the cathedral door. My carefully manipulated reality is coming undone, centuries of power unraveling into quantum uncertainty. Each step feels heavier as my influence over existence weakens. I have had my powers drain before but this time feels different. I feel...mortal.

  The newly powered Hearld floats towards me slowly. I can still see glimpses of Mikey embedded in whatever the “eyes” are on this thing. He pauses before he begins to speak.

  "Run," the being that had been Mikey says, its voice now layered with thousands of others - every version of itself speaking through shadows and static. I understood what was happening, Mikey was sparing my life. Perhaps as a “thank you” for freeing him to begin with. I knew I needed to accept it.

  I flee into the night, feeling my powers torn away with each step. Behind me, reality buckles as the Herald rises - no longer Mikey, no longer the Shadow Bearer, but something that exists in the spaces where reality forgot how to be real. The very air seems to forget how to carry sound, how to maintain consistency. As I look over my shoulder, I watch as shadows consume the monastery.

  Blood leaks from my eyes, ears, nose – mortality reasserting itself as my stolen immortality fades. Each drop of blood carries memories I've suppressed for centuries – my days as a street orphan in Star City, Aahan's patient lessons in the Tibetan monastery, the look in his eyes when I betrayed him, the systematic hunt for each Fellowship member, the building of my empire on stolen powers and broken lives.

  "I am the Voice of What Comes After," it proclaims, its consciousness touching every shadow, every frequency, every possibility. "I am the sound existence makes when it shatters. I am the Herald of unmaking, and remaking."

  I run until my strings can carry me no further. When I finally stop, I find I can no longer manipulate time as I once could. Can no longer pull reality's strings with the same strength. The world feels solid in a way it hasn't since I first learned to bend it to my will. Harsh. Immutable. Real.

  But I can still feel them. Still see them. Still know how they might be pulled. Four centuries of manipulation leave deeper marks than even the Shadow Bearer can erase. Perhaps this weakness, this mortality, is my penance. Perhaps it's my opportunity.

  It is safe to say that the stakes have risen. Fortunately, this isn’t my first rodeo. I always have a plan.

  The Shadow Bearer believes it has won, but it doesn't understand what centuries of manipulation have taught me:

  The most dangerous puppet is the one whose strings have been cut…

  * Read The ZENITH PROPHECY for the full story on The Marionette

  [Author's Note: The Marionette himself insisted on telling this version. His strings still reach through time, though weakened, trying to control even how his story is told. Most disturbing are the changes that appear in the text when read at exactly 4:13 - the words rearrange themselves, showing different versions of events, different choices made. The shadows say this is just another of his manipulations. But sometimes, in the spaces between paragraphs, I catch glimpses of puppet strings moving through the ink itself. And if you look closely at the page, you might notice how the letters seem to dance when you're not quite looking at them, as if being pulled by invisible threads.]