Their journey carried them by caravan to Valmira, the Jewel of the Thousand Routes. It rose from the plains in tiers of pale stone, threaded by waterfalls that shone with coins instead of water offerings from merchants who believed the city itself could bless them with fortune.
Eryndor and Seris arrived cloaked, wary of bounty hunters. But Valmira's bustling heart swallowed them easily. Stalls offered everything from enchanted silk that changed hue with a lover's mood, to silver-bottled illusions that replayed perfect memories.
"It's dizzying," Seris whispered.
"Or dangerous. Men spend everything here trying to buy back dreams," Eryndor replied.
They lodged in a high tower inn that overlooked the River of Ledgers a canal so packed with trade barges it seemed you could walk across on gilded decks.
But that night, while Eryndor slept fitfully, Seris stood by the window, her reflection fractured in countless panes of colored glass. In her hand was a letter marked by a seal of two intertwined thrones a message that made her eyes darken with fear.
The next day, under a sun hidden by banners and rooftop gardens, they met Torren Veyl, head of Valmira's Guild of Coin. His robes were a cascade of platinum chains, each link etched with a sigil of a conquered trade house.
"The Astra Mourn makes you interesting," Torren purred, swirling a glass of star-wine.
"We could elevate you. Fund your armies, build you a throne of gold so bright entire worlds bow."
Eryndor's chest burned at the mention of the shard. "And in return?"
Torren smiled. "When the hour comes, our signet over your heart." Seris rested her hand on Eryndor's. It was meant as comfort. He felt it as an anchor. Without her, he might have said yes.
"No deal," Eryndor said. Torren's expression never changed. Only his eyes grew colder, calculating. "Then you will learn why Valmira is called the city that weeps gold. It weeps for those who thought to refuse us."
Later that evening, a celebration was staged in their honor regardless Valmira's tactics were always layered. A thousand lanterns lit the streets, trailing silks like comet tails.
At the feast, dancers painted with molten gold moved around them. Laughter mingled with music so sweet it bordered on sorrow. Eryndor began to relax until Seris stiffened beside him.
She leaned in. "The wine. Smell it."
He realized too late the faint scent of iron. When he turned, the servant girl holding the decanter was already shoving it forward. Reflexes honed by the Astra Mourn saved him he caught her wrist, twisting until the tiny needle hidden beneath her sleeve snapped, dropping droplets of a glistening black venom.
She shrieked. Guards surged forward. Chaos erupted.Eryndor grabbed Seris's hand, dragging her through a hail of arrows toward a hidden archway.
They fled through twisting corridors lined with stained-glass depictions of trade pacts that spanned continents. As they ran, Eryndor glimpsed frescoes of smiling kings and beneath them, paintings of the same kings with slit throats, sprawled over emptied treasuries.
At last, in a dusty gallery, Seris sank to her knees. "They won't stop. Even if we escape, the Guild of Coin never forgets debt."
Eryndor crouched, framing her face in his hands. "Then let them remember us as nightmares they couldn't buy."
She laughed, though tears streaked her face. They pressed foreheads together, breathing as one until their hearts calmed.
Cornered in a vault chamber by armored guards, Eryndor let the Astra Mourn rise within him. It sang a harmony of a thousand echoing voices. Light blazed from his chest, racing down his arms.
He slammed his palms into the marble floor. Power split outward like cracking ice. Columns toppled, molten gold burst from shattered coffers, flooding the room.
Guards screamed, drowning not in water but in searing riches. Eryndor hoisted Seris into his arms, leaping from collapsing ledgers onto a balcony that splintered beneath their feet. They fell two stories into a canal, emerging soaked and coughing, but alive.
They hid that night in the ruins of an old trade chapel. By guttering candlelight, Seris unrolled the letter she'd hidden.
"My family knows we're here. The twin thrones of Erastai. They'll want to control you, Eryndor or kill you."
He stared into her eyes."And you? What do you want?"
"Not power. Just… to not be alone in this. With or without crowns. "He pulled her into him, their lips meeting softly at first, then hungrily. Somewhere outside, distant bells rang, as if the city itself marked a contract written not in ink, but in breath and blood.
In the days following, whispers reached them. The merchant council of Valmira declared a bounty on Eryndor's head that would bankrupt small kingdoms. Worse, rumors spread of Seris's lineage that she was promised by treaty to marry one of Torren Veyl's heirs.
"Lies," Seris growled when Eryndor asked.
But he saw the way her hand trembled at her side.
The Astra Mourn felt it too. The gem's power inside him shivered wary, distrusting, as if it wanted to protect itself from a lover's deception.
While evading bounty hunters in Valmira's undercatacombs, they stumbled upon something unexpected: a chained creature, scales dull like tarnished bronze, eyes dim.
A dragon. Kept starving, its body wasted, in chains forged of contracts and curses.
"This is how they keep power," Seris whispered, voice breaking. "By breaking things that could soar."
Eryndor stepped close. The Astra Mourn pulsed. The dragon's head lifted, nostrils flaring at his scent.
He pressed a hand to its snout. Chains snapped like rotted thread. With a single beat of colossal wings, the dragon soared upward, taking stone and torchlight with it a living storm unleashed.
They escaped the undercity into chaos. Valmira burned not just from their dragon ally, but from rioting peasants emboldened by a glimpse of their overlords vulnerable.
On a rooftop, amid drifting ash and embers, Eryndor and Seris clung to each other.
"What happens now?" she asked, voice raw.
"Now?" He brushed ash from her cheek. "Now we run until we find a kingdom worth fighting for or build one ourselves."
And in that burning glow, they kissed again, desperate, alive, sovereign together even if only for this fragile heartbeat.
At dawn, with the dragon's shadow sweeping over Valmira's gilded wreckage, they rode stolen horses across the eastern bridge. Behind them, the city smoldered a testament to what they'd unleashed.
Seris leaned into him as they galloped.
"Whatever awaits us, Eryndor Kael… promise me we face it together."
"Always," he said, though far inside, the Astra Mourn coiled tight, whispering secrets he couldn't yet translate. Its visions danced across his mind new realms, new thrones, and an uncountable sea of eyes watching, waiting.
They fled east across the plains, the dragon a distant silhouette now, hunting its own vengeance. Days of hard riding left them bruised, sleeping in hedges and under broken archways.
At last they reached Myrrwood, a forest older than memory. Trees here grew twisted, bark veined with luminous green sap. When the wind moved, it sounded almost like thousands whispering at once.
"The locals won't enter," Seris murmured.
"Why?" "They say the forest remembers every oath ever sworn beneath its canopy and punishes lies."
Deep inside, moss-covered stones bore ancient sigils. The Astra Mourn pulsed, making Eryndor's teeth ache. He could almost hear promises breaking — lovers betraying each other, kings betraying nations.
That night, as they camped under a bough that arched like cathedral vaults, Eryndor dreamed of a throne built entirely from broken vows. On it sat a corpse with a crown that bled shadow. It raised a goblet toward him. He woke gasping, Seris's hand on his chest.
"Another dream?"
"More like a warning," he said hoarsely. By the third day in Myrrwood, they were tracked not by men, but by great wolves with maned shoulders, eyes bright as emerald coals.
Surrounded in a clearing, Eryndor drew the Astra Mourn's power to his hands. But before he struck, the largest wolf shifted, bones cracking, fur receding into a tall, scarred figure in rune-marked leather.
"This forest hears your heartbeats," the wolfman rasped. "Then it knows I mean to protect her," Eryndor growled, stepping in front of Seris. The creature sniffed, then threw back his head and laughed, a raw sound.
"Protect? The power inside you hungers for conquest, boy. It would slaughter a thousand brides for a single throne." Yet the wolf-man offered them passage in return for a promise.
"When you sit your throne and you will remember the kin of claw and fang. Leave us our shadows to run free."
Eryndor spat blood into his palm and clasped the wolf-man's clawed hand. A pact made under ancient boughs.
They emerged from Myrrwood days later, changed. Eryndor's dreams grew sharper. Sometimes he woke speaking languages he didn't know, the Astra Mourn burning so hot it left faint scars on his ribs.
Seris began keeping a quiet tally of these new scars, tracing them at night with trembling fingers.
"Your body's becoming a map of what this thing inside you is doing."
"So long as it ends with us ruling, not buried," Eryndor said with a crooked grin.
She tried to smile back but didn't quite reach his eyes.
They arrived at Oras-Thel, a coastal city of pale towers and broad causeways carved from salt-hardened coral. Here, merchants paid priests to witness every contract, believing divine ink made betrayal twice as costly.
They lodged at a house with spiral columns overlooking silver waves. Each evening, bells rang as new deals were sworn on balconies and shadowed parlors.
Seris tried to relax, walking terraces heavy with orchids. But Eryndor spent hours speaking to strangers old dock captains, jewelers, even children playing dice. Always learning how power moved through this city.
"We'll need allies here," he told her. "Or we'll make enemies that last lifetimes," she in
warned.
One dusk, under a pergola dripping with bloodred blossoms, Seris met a courier. When Eryndor joined them, the man fled too quickly. Eryndor grabbed her arm.
"Who was he?"
"No one," Seris lied, too quickly.The Astra Mourn thrummed. His vision doubled and in the echo, he saw Seris accepting a small scroll, sealing it in her bodice.
He released her.
"If you ever truly lie to me, Seris…"
"Don't finish that sentence." Her voice cracked. They stood close, not touching, the air tight with words they feared would become knives.
The next night, they attended a gathering in Oras-Thel's lower vaults an auction rumored to sell not just gems or slaves, but entire futures. Nobles sat in half-masks, bidding in silent gestures.
A small girl with silver tears was led to the dais. The auctioneer claimed she could see the hour of any man's death. A duke offered a sapphire the size of a heart. A countess raised with deeds to six entire villages.
Eryndor stood abruptly, power crackling around him. "She goes free. All of them do."
Gasps. Seris touched his shoulder, half in awe, half in fear. The auctioneer only smiled coldly. "Then the House of Oaths will hunt you to every edge of this world. Are you prepared for that?"
Eryndor bared his teeth. "I think you misunderstand. I'm not offering. I'm telling you."