The Crownless No More

It clung to the alleys and coiled beneath doorways, thick and unnatural, as if the city itself were holding its breath. On the bell tower of the ruined watchpost, Kaelen stood motionless, eyes narrowed. Below, the river crawled like a serpent through stone veins. And somewhere beyond it, the past stirred.

"They're watching," came Elaine's voice behind him.

Kaelen didn't turn. "Let them."

"You know who I mean."

He did.

The Inquisition had arrived.

Their silver-barred carriages rolled through Seravelle's lower quarter like teeth in a maw, each escorted by masked riders in bone-white armor. Above their banner—black flames devouring a crown—hung silence.

"What do they want?" Kaelen asked.

Elaine joined him on the edge. "What they always want. Blood. Order. Memory made clean."

Kaelen exhaled. "Then they came to the wrong city."

Later that day, beneath the crypt-library of Saint Nirell's Abbey, Kaelen gathered his fledgling circle.

They had no name yet. No oath. Only fragments.

A red-haired orphan with the gift to read blood like ink.

A blind woman who could see lies.

A deserter from the Inquisition with scars burned in holy script.

All were outcasts. All had been marked.

"We're not soldiers," Kaelen began, voice low, "and we're not rebels. Not yet."

He unrolled a piece of cloth on the stone table.

It was not a map.

It was a family tree.

But the lines were wrong. Names scratched out. Arrows looping backwards. At the center: a symbol none recognized—a throne split down the middle, bleeding from its base.

"They lied to us," Kaelen said. "About the bloodlines. About the first kings. Even about who can inherit."

Elaine stepped forward. "And you think we're going to fix that with... what? A few scraps of forgotten names?"

Kaelen's eyes gleamed.

"No," he said. "With the truth they buried under this city."

That night, he returned to the temple ruins.

But someone had been there before him.

The statue of Arathien was shattered. Not broken—ritually dismantled. Bones lay at its feet, arranged in a spiral. In the center: a mask. Not the one he knew.

This one was golden.

And weeping.

Kaelen bent to pick it up—

—and the world shuddered.

He stood again in that other place: the memory-realm, the echo of blood and stone.

Only now, it had changed.

The throne room was dark. Ruined. Vines crept up the columns. The throne itself stood empty—but pulsing, as if alive.

And someone stood before it.

Not the silver-haired boy.

Not Kaelen.

A woman.

Her face hidden. Her back turned. Her voice soft.

"Did you think the bloodline would save you?" she asked. "The throne does not choose by name. It chooses by hunger."

Kaelen stepped forward, fists clenched. "Then I'll break the throne."

The woman turned. Her mask was gold and weeping—the same one from the ruins.

"You misunderstand," she whispered. "You are the throne."

Back in the real world, Kaelen awoke gasping. Blood trickled from his nose.

Elaine caught him before he fell.

"Tell me," she said.

Kaelen looked at her, trembling.

"They didn't build the throne to rule," he whispered. "They built it to contain something. And whatever it was... it's waking up."

Elaine paled. "And what are you going to do?"

Kaelen stared into the firelight.

"Find the others."

Elsewhere, in the Inquisition's carriage, a masked figure lit a black candle.

"The Heir has touched the Veins," she said, her voice hollow.

A voice replied through the candle's flame.

"Then we must act. Before he remembers everything."