Parker made his way to a building that shouldn't exist in any normal architectural sense—a crystalline structure that existed in folded space, hidden within the palace grounds but somehow containing more volume than the palace itself. This was where he'd been keeping his collection.
The automatic doors slid open with a whisper, revealing a vast chamber filled with beings who had once been human but were now something else entirely. The corrupted blessed—champions created by divine arrogance, weapons forged by fear, now tools for cosmic justice.
At the center of the group stood the Shadow Bearer, no longer the desperate street criminal who'd terrorized Manhattan. Parker's power had refined him, elevated him, turned him into something that radiated dark authority. His form seemed to shift between solid matter and living shadow, tendrils of darkness coiling around his arms like loyal serpents. When he moved, reality bent slightly around him, shadows deepening in his presence.
