The weight of memories crashed into me.
Chains.Stone.The phantom bite of cold iron against my wrists.
I had been here before.
I knew this place.
A slow, dreadful realization settled in my chest like a poisonous bloom.
I had been here with him.
The Black Wraith had brought me here.
Amir.
The world tilted, my pulse hammering with a terrible certainty.
Amir was him and I could no longer deny it.
The man who claimed to hunt the Black Wraith was the Black Wraith.
Relief and terror warred inside me.
He was not my father’s pawn.
But he was still a liar.
And then—my breath stilled.
Something glinted in the shadows.
Half-hidden beneath a wooden chest, nearly swallowed by darkness, something awaited me.
I dropped to my knees, my fingers trembling as I shoved the chest aside.
And there?—
The unmistakable, haunting mask of the Black Wraith.
I snatched it up, gripping the leather edges, turning it in my hands, my heartbeat roaring in my ears.
The mask was shaped like a skull, but it didn’t feel like something dead.It felt… possessed.Its surface was bone-white, not smooth but cracked—veins of shadow splitting across the forehead and cheeks like old wounds that never healed.I couldn’t tell if it had been damaged or if it had always been this broken.
The eye sockets were the worst.Deep, black voids that swallowed the light, wide enough to lose someone in.Staring into them felt like falling.As if something inside was still breathing.
Its grin stretched across the jaw, frozen in place.Not a smile.A snarl.The teeth were jagged, uneven—too detailed, too human.Like whoever made it had studied pain and carved it into every curve.
There was nothing ornate about it.No markings.No jewels.No color.Just white, black, and silence.And yet it radiated power.Sorrow.Rage.
A slow chill seeped into my bones.
This was it.
The proof.
No more denials.No more guessing.
Amir Hassan was the Black Wraith.
