The moon hung low over Valcarya, a silver coin tarnished by ash. Smoke curled lazily from the temple ruins beyond the city wall—smoke that should not have been there. Not tonight. Not after what Kaelen had seen.
He hadn't spoken of the forgotten twin. Not to Elaine. Not to the masked woman. Not even to himself in thought. But the memory lingered like embers beneath skin: the altar, the slit throat, the Throne that drank.
Now, as he stood atop the east parapet, staring at the bloodstained horizon, Kaelen knew something had changed. Something subtle. Something terrible.
The Throne was stirring.
And so was he.
It began with the dream.
Not the old ones—visions of past lives and burning crowns—but a new dream, one rooted in the present.
He stood before the palace again, but the marble steps were cracked. Ivy strangled the walls. The banners of the noble houses hung in tatters. And the sky... bled.
At the center of the courtyard sat the Throne.
Empty.
Waiting.
The masked woman appeared from shadow. She held a dagger carved from black bone. No words passed between them. She pressed the weapon into his hand and nodded toward the Throne.
Kaelen stepped forward.
And it spoke.
"One must swear."
"One must bleed."
"One must forget."
He woke with a gasp—heart pounding, palms slick, the scent of ash still in his lungs.
By morning, three things had happened.
First, the Raven returned—its feathers wet, as if it had flown through storm instead of sky. This time, there was no ribbon. Only a black feather, tucked beneath Kaelen's pillow.
Second, the palace bell rang twice at dawn. A noble had been found dead in the east wing. No wound. No poison. Just... drained. As if something had been taken.
Third, the crypt door stood open.
No one had entered it in decades. No one alive, at least.
Kaelen didn't hesitate.
He descended the spiral staircase with torch in hand, its flame flickering with unnatural color. Purple. Then blue. Then bone-white.
The deeper he went, the more he remembered.
He remembered how they buried the seventh prince without ceremony. How King Orric had forbidden the court to speak of the "blighted one." How Kaelen himself had grown up in the shadow of a name that had been erased.
At the final landing, the air grew still.
A single coffin stood at the center of the vault.
The stone lid was cracked.
Inside: not a corpse. Not bones.
Just ash.
And atop that ash, a ring.
A signet Kaelen recognized from a forbidden history scroll—the mark of the First Oathbearer. The one who had sworn to guard the Throne's secret, and to pay its price in silence.
Kaelen reached for it.
The moment his fingers touched the ring, pain shot through him. Not physical—but ancestral. Memories not his own. Faces. Names. Screams.
And a voice, colder than death.
"You are late."
Kaelen turned.
The silver-haired boy stood once more at the edge of the chamber, barefoot, eyes alight with violet flame.
"You were not supposed to come yet," the boy said.
"I go where the truth leads," Kaelen answered, his voice low.
The boy nodded. "Then hear it. The Throne is not made of stone, Kaelen. It is made of memory. And memory hungers."
"What do you mean?"
The boy stepped forward, raising a hand.
"The Throne does not grant power. It recycles it. Devours the will of its bearers and reshapes them into echoes."
Images poured into Kaelen's mind—kings crowned and broken, heirs sacrificed, wars started not for land, but to feed the Throne's need for bloodlines.
"Then why do we serve it?" Kaelen asked.
"Because we swore to," the boy whispered. "Long ago. In the First Oath."
"What was it?"
The boy's eyes darkened.
"To protect the blood. Even from itself."
Back above, Elaine paced.
She had noticed the signs—Kaelen's distance, the shadows that followed him, the way he flinched when touched. He was unraveling.
Or transforming.
She didn't know which terrified her more.
That night, Kaelen stood in his chamber before the mirror, clutching the ring in one hand and the bone-dagger in the other.
He carved a symbol into his palm—a sigil from the temple floor, one the boy had shown him.
Blood welled up. The ring drank it.
A whisper filled the room.
"The oath is renewed."
And behind him, reflected only in the mirror:
The boy.
Smiling.
Far away, beneath the palace floor, something opened.
A chamber forgotten even by the dead.
Inside: a figure.
Wrapped in veils. Crowned in shadow.
It stirred.
It listened.
And it whispered:
"Let the other heirs awaken."