The coronation was unlike anything I'd ever imagined.

In Pain's world, time bent and music became light. Every step I took on the obsidian stairs bloomed with glowing flowers. Pain led me toward the highest throne - a place where no mortal had ever sat, until now.

The gods of his realm bowed. Celestial beings who had whispered through storms and sung lullabies into earthquakes now chanted my name.

Elara.

Chosen. Mortal Queen.

Beside me, Pain held my hand as we sat beneath a canopy of stardust and flaming petals. He leaned toward me. "This is our beginning."

I smiled. "Then let it begin."

Yet even as joy rippled through the kingdom, a shadow crept at the edges.

Junie.

He had not left.

He had not given up.

In the space between realms, he stood with a blade carved from hope and heartache. He wasn't here to destroy, but to remind me of what I left behind.

"Elara!" he cried. "You're being enchanted. Don't forget who you are!"

I turned to him. My voice was steady. "Junie, I remember. I remember everything. But I choose Pain. I choose the truth of who I am now."

Junie's shoulders slumped. But he nodded, quietly. "Then may you never forget? I loved you first."

Pain watched this quietly. No jealousy - only sorrow.

The celebration resumed.

But deep below, Hate was watching.

In the hidden heart of the world, he seethed. His own servants, twisted reflections of beauty and rage, prepared dark magic. A storm of vengeance.

He would not let a prophecy destroy him.

"The child must not be born," Hate hissed, carving runes into the bones of dead stars. "Even if I must shatter all realms to stop it."

And as fireworks lit the sky above, Elara and Pain kissed beneath the tree of eternity.

Unaware that the final chapter of peace had begun?

And war was coming.