"You've been summoned here today for two reasons—the Veil... and Kairos' ascent to the throne."
The words clanged through the air like a cracked bell.
Kairos flinched. A twitch so small, yet so loud within him.
He had always feared this moment. The subject clawed at his insides like a feral thing in a cage. Lysander was the firstborn—older, stronger, revered. By law, by tradition, by lineage, the crown should have been hers.
And yet, for reasons no soul dared to utter aloud, their father had chosen him. The third-born. The quiet one. The boy who never asked for a kingdom.
No one questioned the king. Not when he ruled without lifting a single hue of color. Not when he commanded more fear than the beasts beyond the regions. Kairos had never seen his father bleed light—yet even the monsters whispered in his shadow.
"You'll be crowned King before the trial begins," the king said without a trace of hesitation.
Lysander's jaw clenched. Her next words were measured, picked with surgical care.
"Father… Kairos is still a child. And the trial—"
"Are you speaking for your own ambition, or for something else?"
The king didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. His words sliced cleaner than any blade.
"He will be crowned today. The trial comes after."
Silence rippled through the room.
Lysander lowered her gaze, knuckles paling as her fists tightened at her sides.
"Now—preparations for the Color Festivals," the king continued, already turning away. "There have been sightings of beasts on the roads to the Valor Region. After the coronation, you four will be dispatched to eradicate them. Discussions of the Veil will resume upon your return, with Valor's representatives in attendance."
They were dismissed.
As the siblings left the hall, Lysander exhaled sharply. "I don't like the sound of this," she muttered under her breath.
"Well, Father's always been like that," Zephyrus said dryly, voice calm but laced with something darker. He, too, chose his words like a man picking stones on a glass path.
After a stretch of silence, he glanced sideways at Kairos. "You did know the coronation was today, right?"
Kairos stopped mid-step.
"How was I supposed to know that!"
The coronation of a new king was meant to be sacred. Myth-bound. It was said their father's crown was forged beneath a blood moon, the sky soaked in crimson light. The next one was still weeks away.
"I missed a submit." Kairos said, incredulous.
Lysander cracked a small smile, trying to ease the tension. "It's just a test. We've faced worse."
Her smile faded into something steadier. Her voice, low and warm.
"If anything goes wrong… I'll be there. It's better to try and fail than to run away and live haunted."
Kairos exhaled through his nose. Deep. Controlled. He knew Lysander's strength, her calm. But he also knew the weight she carried behind it.
She should have been queen.
The entire kingdom knew it.
Trained since infancy. Crowned in every way but name. Her sacrifices, the ceremonies, the late-night lectures and whispered oaths—it had all meant nothing in the end.
"I'll get ready," she said, draping an arm across his shoulders. "We'll probably be deployed right after the coronation."
Then, with a soft chuckle, "Try smiling. It's your day, remember?"
---
Kairos sat still as his maid moved about the room, fetching cloth, stitching final folds, adjusting creases that didn't exist.
His hands were clammy. He wiped them against a silken towel with more force than he meant to.
"Alright," he murmured to himself. "Let's get this over with."
A familiar voice answered, unannounced. "I see you're faring better than expected, my Lord."
Sebastian.
Kairos smirked without lifting his gaze. "If I'm going to be king—which I will—then I should at least look like I have a spine, right?"
"Quite right, my Lord," Sebastian said with a slight bow.
---
The throne room was a cathedral of stone and silence. No banners. No trumpets. Only walls of shadow and the weight of eyes—watching.
The coronation of a king was supposed to be a spectacle, a convergence of every clan, every color, every voice in Al. But this… this was different.
Fewer than fifty had been invited. A ghost of a crowd. A ceremony stripped bare.
And the king? Nowhere to be seen.
Kairos' jaw locked.
'That bastard,' he thought, seething. The least he could do was attend.
The boy walked slowly down the center aisle. Eyes trailed him like specters. Whispered doubts bled into the hush.
On a raised platform before the throne stood a table with two objects. The first—a white alabaster jar, filled to the brim with a dark red liquid that shimmered faintly under the hall's pale light. The second—a dagger forged from obsidian, its blade and hilt molded as one, as if cut from a single night.
Behind them, a mirror as tall as a man. Flawless. Waiting.
This wasn't the trial. Not yet. But it was still a test.
Kairos stepped forward, breath held. He could hear the low murmurs behind him.
"Too young."
"This is wrong."
"He won't survive it."
He closed his eyes and reached for the knife.
The blade kissed his palm with cold fire.
Blood welled up, bright against the black. He held his hand above the jar, letting his blood trickle into the thick liquid inside.
A wind stirred, though no windows were open.
A mist, pale and alive, curled upward from the jar. It reached for him, coiling like a serpent around his head. The air grew heavy. Cold. The mist tried to shape itself—into a crown, translucent and pulsing.
Then pain struck.
Kairos doubled over, a scream tearing from his throat.
Memories—vast, foreign, violent—poured into his mind like a flood through a shattered gate. Faces he had never seen. Deaths he had never died. Worlds he had never lived.
He dropped to his knees, gasping.
The mirror in front of him cracked. Thin fractures spider-webbed outward.
And the liquid in the alabaster jar turned black.
The mist shattered mid-formation. The crown never fully formed.
The throne had rejected him.
---
"It can't be…" Lysander whispered.
Every breath in the hall stopped.
Kairos had been named. Chosen. As long as the king acknowledged him, the coronation should have passed.
But the ritual had judged otherwise.
"KAIROS!"
He heard her voice dimly, like a sound underwater.
"KAIROS, WAKE UP!"
The world tilted. The crystal floor felt like glass beneath his hands. Then—darkness.
He collapsed.
His body fell limp to the ground, the echoes ringing through the throne room. Voices surged. Chaos bloomed. But Kairos heard none of it.
Only the distant roar of something ancient... stirring in the void of his mind.