The mirror in the war-chamber was cracked.Just enough to split a reflection into fragments. Just enough to make a queen look like a ghost.Sirelia stared at herself.Still armored. Still unbowed. Still veiled in the dust-gray silk that had become her second skin.But behind the veil…She hadn’t looked in years.She didn’t need to.She knew what lay beneath.The scar.Elara had given it to her.Not in war.Not in rage.In mercy.A single cut. Deep enough to end a lie. Shallow enough to preserve a soul.The memory played again in her mind, as it always did before ceremony:A burning citadel.Elara on her knees.Sirelia cradling a flame in her hands.“Don’t make me do this,” Elara had whispered.Sirelia, too proud to plead.And then, steel flashing.Pain blooming.Blood on her cheek.Light gone.Time stopped.Now, years later, Sirelia traced the length of that scar through her veil.It had never healed.Not truly.And tonight, she would show it to them.Not because they asked.But becau
There were oaths deeper than memory.Vows not written, not spoken, but bled, sealed in the marrow of wolves and the bones of moons. Kael had once believed Elara’s greatest weapon was fire. Now he knew better.It was silence.And it was breaking.The Frostvale Sanctuary lay hidden in the crescent cliffs north of Moonfang, buried beneath a glacier older than the empire itself. Few knew of its existence. Fewer still remembered its purpose.Kael had traveled through the night to reach it, guided by an elder Moonbound who had once served in Elara’s personal guard. His name was Oren, ancient, scarred, and half-mad from years spent in vow-induced silence.They didn’t speak as they climbed the icy steps.Didn’t speak as the wind howled like dying gods around them.But when they reached the carved doors, silver etched with flame and fang, Oren finally stopped.He touched the center rune.And the door shuddered open.Inside, the walls whispered.The chamber was circular, lined with statues of w
There was no sky.No ground.No breath.Seren floated in a place shaped by memory and moonlight, by pain left unfinished and fire that hadn’t yet chosen its form. The world around her pulsed like a dying star, silver flame, black dust, and something else: echoes.She stood, not on earth, but on a mirror of ash.Each step she took left no mark.She wasn’t sure if her body had returned. Her hands felt weightless, her breath absent. But her scar still burned, the crescent over her heart glowing softly with every movement.“Where am I?”Her voice barely carried.Yet it echoed.And something… answered.Not in words.In whispers.In memories.She saw visions spiral around her:Elara weeping on a throne of bone., Kael bleeding beneath a red sky., A child screaming in the fire., The sigil of two flames, spiraling in opposite directions.She reached out, touched one memory, and was pulled through it like water.Suddenly, she was inside a war.The air cracked with fire and fang.Swords clashed
The throne was not supposed to be alive.And yet it pulsed beneath her.Sirelia sat still at the heart of the Dustborn sanctum, barefoot, cloaked in nothing but ash-stained linen and the weight of a thousand betrayals. Around her, the hall echoed with the distant chants of priestesses and the pounding of war drums from training courts carved into the sandstone cliffs. But within this chamber, there was only breath.Not hers.The throne’s.The seat rose from the floor in a spire of fused bone, melted iron, and blackened sigil-stone. It had no shape a craftsman could mimic, more spine than seat, more ribcage than relic. And nestled within its core, hidden beneath layers of war trophies and sacred char, lay the pieces no one spoke of:, The fragment of Elara’s crown., The blade Sirelia once held against her own throat., The ash of the sister she buried in memory.Sirelia exhaled.The throne inhaled.And then it spoke.“You are not her.”The voice was everywhere and nowhere, gravel and
The trees had teeth.That was the first thought Seren had as she ran, frost crunching underfoot, pine branches slashing her skin with every desperate stride. They clawed at her arms, tore at her cloak, but she didn’t stop. Couldn’t.Behind her, the Dustborn scouts moved like smoke through the wilds, silent, masked, relentless.The wolves were nowhere.Mourne had vanished at first light, promising to “find answers.” But answers didn’t bleed. And Seren was bleeding.The ambush came just after dawn.One moment, she was climbing the slope of a ruined ridge. Next, black arrows rained from the trees. One missed her ear by an inch. Another tore a line down her thigh. Her body moved on instinct, ducking, rolling, running.Now she was alone.She burst into a clearing, a hollow of stone where old roots strangled forgotten statues. At the center: a broken moonstone column, half-buried in ash and snow. Her heart pounded in her ears.Think. Breathe. Fight.But she had no weapon.Only the fire in h
The Moonbound were not supposed to lie.They had sworn their oaths in fire and silver under the eclipse. Chosen from birth, bound to Elara’s blood, they were more than guardians. They were memory made flesh, truth wrapped in blades.And now, one of them was a traitor.Kael stood in the center of the High Chamber, his eyes fixed on the prisoner bound in moonsteel chains. The man knelt without struggle, hood drawn back to reveal pale hair slicked with blood and sweat. His name was Ciran. He had once been the youngest of the Moonbound sentinels. Elara herself had touched his brow during his naming rite.Now he wouldn’t meet Kael’s eyes.“You knew what you were doing,” Kael said, voice cold as the frost creeping up the windowpanes. “You passed maps. Fort placements. Ciphered signals.”Ciran said nothing.Kael paced in slow circles around him. “The Dustborn knew where to strike the Crescent Wall. Two hundred dead. Forty of them were civilians. And all because of your hands.”Still no reply