Semua Bab The Forgotten Heiress: Rise of The Lycan Queen: Bab 271 - Bab 280

The bridge still stood.Cracked. Fractured. But unyielding—a skeleton of a promise arched between the twin cliffs of Elthelion’s Reach, spanning a wound in the world so deep even the bravest cartographers left it nameless. Once, this place had been a hymn: the Bridge of Accord, hallowed by oaths and the trembling hush of hope. It was here that Elara of Flame and Theron of Bone set aside their swords, not as enemies, but as architects of a gentler age.The world had not kept its promise. They had not survived to see the moon return to fullness even once.Now, the wind roared through the bridge’s empty arches, its voice a dirge too raw for human tongue, its song the language of regret. The stones bore the pitted scars of fire and frost, of banners burned and banners broken. Moss crawled along the northern edge, nature’s patient hand claiming the forgotten—everywhere except the centre, where the bridge refused to surrender. Where memory still bled into stone.And it was there, suspended

There are journeys written in the bones of a world long before footsteps ever touch dust. This march was one of them—a story older than the roads themselves, old as betrayal, older still than the gods who first whispered order into chaos and named it destiny.Hollowspire still smoldered in the distance, a bruise on the world’s memory. Its ashes swirled high on a breathless wind. The dead had not yet cooled when the first word was spoken—not shouted, but seeded in silence:“We march.”No drums. No herald. No glory to wrap around the shoulders of the broken. Only a ripple, subtle as a shadow at dusk, gathering beneath the skin of every soldier, seer, and spell-wrought beast. And so, like a tide drawn by a moon they could not see, the Dustborn turned south.Toward Arkael.Toward the city that didn’t just haunt stories, but starved them—devoured the hope of return, the illusion of mercy. A city so old, it was said the world’s first silence was born in its deepest crypts; a city where flam

No war horns sounded.No drum beat. No banners flew.The day the Ashborn gathered, the world did not cheer. It did not tremble. It simply waited, holding its breath, as if the gods themselves were afraid to draw attention to what was coming.At the rim of the Obsidian Wastes—where the land itself split open, blistered and blackened by the ghosts of a thousand battles—dust swirled in uneasy patterns. The sky was the color of old steel. The sun was a red smear above the horizon, too weary to rise, too stubborn to fall.They came as exiles. As refugees. As survivors. But mostly, they came as mourners.Some came from cities shattered by siege, betrayal in their every step, hope carried in knotted cloth and careful memory. Others drifted in from villages burned for allegiances they’d never sworn, carrying with them nothing but soot, salt, and the ghostly imprint of hands they would never hold again. Some had climbed down from salt-choked cliffs where gods once wept blood, and others who ha

They came at dusk.Three witches robed in flame-silk, their garments tattered by time, their movements soundless. Their faces were half-burned, half-veiled, and their mouths sealed shut with threads of ember-iron, an oath no fire could melt.No one saw them arrive.No footsteps echoed. No scent betrayed their presence. They simply appeared, at the edge of the fire wards that protected the Ashborn camp, standing like memories carved from smoke and sorrow.Their presence was wrong in the way old magic was wrong, like a wound in time that refused to close.Seren met them first.She did not call for guards. Did not raise the Starbrand. Did not speak.She simply stepped toward them, spine unbent, eyes quiet.And waited.The tallest witch bowed, not stiffly, not in deference, but in ritual. An old gesture from before the Accord burned.From within her scorched sleeve, she drew a scroll. It was sealed in wax shaped like a wolf’s fang, bound in a crown of thorns blackened by spellfire.She of

It began with a whisper.Not a scream.Not an alarm.Just the hush of wind that had no place in that place.A flicker of warmth swept through the western ridge, threading between ancient stones where no current should stir. It passed over cold soil, across the ash-crusted bark of twisted trees, through carved wards meant to keep time itself sealed.It reached the vault last.The spiral vault. The sacred one.Where the Eye of Elara had been entombed for over a hundred years.Saphira felt it before any of the wards flinched.She was inside, at the center of the vault, her lone remaining eye glowing dimly in the low light. Her palms rested against the crystal cocoon that held the Eye, a relic whispered to be carved from the starlit bones of a wyrm slain by Elara in her final campaign, and sealed with the last tear the queen had shed.The Eye pulsed now.Slowly.Steadily.A heartbeat she hadn’t felt in a century.And it was calling.Not aloud. Not through vision.Through knowing.Saphira breat