Every kingdom is built on something buried. Every crown balances on secrets.
The Ravine Sanctuary, Morning
Cerys awoke with her knife already drawn.
It took a heartbeat to remember where she was—the ravine, the rebels' hidden sanctuary, and the soft breath of the prince sleeping mere feet from her, his injured arm wrapped in a cloth she'd bound.
The air was still. Too still.
She moved without sound, rising from the stone floor. Darian shifted but didn't stir. A whisper of guilt stirred in her chest, unwanted and inconvenient.
This place was meant for ghosts like her—forgotten, buried. Yet now it held a boy with a name and a crown.
And her heart was doing something it shouldn't.
She stepped into the entrance passage and triggered the listening rune—Kael's doing again. No intrusions detected. But magic always came second to instinct.
And something in her blood said: You're being hunted.
-
The Palace, Undercrypts
Far beneath the palace's gilded spires and painted ceilings, Queen Ilyana descended alone into the undercrypt.
Two guards stood at the ancient gate carved with three runes: Memory. Silence. Obedience.
She did not slow for them. The Queen of Elserra feared no dead.
The undercrypt was old, older than her lineage. Here, the monarchs of past dynasties whispered in petrified tombs, and the throne's true history slept in runes too dangerous to translate.
She knelt before the sealed archive—a door of bone fused with obsidian—and placed a single drop of her blood into its carved key.
The door hissed open.
Inside were the scrolls. Dozens. Hundreds.
One she took carefully, with gloved hands. The seal was marked with a glyph known to only three living people: Ash Vale.
Her voice barely moved the air. "They thought they buried her in ash. They thought wrong."
-
Sanctuary, Mid-Morning
Darian stirred to the sound of slicing roots.
Cerys sat by the fire pit, using a bone-handled dagger to prepare dried rhil bark—a coagulant. She looked tired. Haunted.
"Morning," he rasped.
She didn't look at him. "Sleep through a storm, but wake up for a whisper. You're consistent."
He sat up slowly. "Is that your version of good morning?"
A faint smirk tugged her lips. "You want sweet words, go back to the palace."
That made him laugh, then wince. His arm throbbed.
She reached for a jar of pale resin. "Let me see it."
He let her peel the cloth away. Her hands were steady, methodical. But her touch, despite everything, was gentle.
"You didn't have to follow me, you know," she said. "The Reclaimers would've stopped chasing you eventually."
"You think I did this for them?"
"I think you're the kind of fool who believes in people," she muttered. "It's not a compliment."
He looked at her—really looked at her.
There was blood under her nails. A scar on her collarbone shaped like a bird's talon. And eyes that had forgotten what it meant to be touched without violence.
"I don't care," he said.
"What?"
"I don't care how many knives you've carried. I'm not leaving."
"That's not noble."
"I didn't say it was. I said it was mine."
For a breath, the tension stilled. Then she pressed the resin into his wound.
He swore loudly.
"That part was on purpose," she said, expression unreadable.
-
Rebellion Camp, Edge of the Broken Woods
Kael Moraine hadn't slept.
He watched the embers from the night's signal fire drift skyward, red and bitter. The message had been sent: Ash Vale lives.
Now every Reclaimer, sympathizer, and spy across the fractured kingdoms would begin to shift.
Beside him, a younger rebel—barely more than a boy—approached with trembling hands.
"We have word from within the city."
"Speak."
"The Queen has opened the Vault of Ash."
Kael's silence was a hammer.
"Then it begins," he murmured.
He moved to the edge of the encampment where the ruins of a chapel still stood—bones of a faith long abandoned.
He touched the base of the altar, pressed a rune, and watched a stone tile shift.
Inside lay a relic: a dagger blacker than night, engraved with two names.
One scratched out.
The other: Cerys.
-
Elserra, Old Market Tunnel
Thorne walked alone beneath the old streets of Elserra, his presence warping the air like heat off stone.
The network of tunnels here predated the palace. Smugglers, sorcerers, rebels—all had carved a path beneath the city's polished veneer.
He arrived at a rusted door marked with a cipher rune. No lock. No guard.
It opened anyway.
Inside, the air shimmered with illusion magic.
A woman waited. Pale skin. Crimson robes. Face veiled.
"Have you found her?" she asked.
"I always know where she is."
The woman smiled. "Then why haven't you brought her back?"
"She's remembering."
"Dangerous."
"I want her dangerous."
-
Sanctuary, Twilight
Darian sat by the low fire, trying not to look at her too often.
Cerys was writing something into a small notebook—sketches, diagrams, old runes. Her fingers moved like weapons, precise and relentless.
"Why don't you burn that?" he asked.
"It's not for me."
"Then who?"
She looked up.
"Someone who might need to become what I was."
He exhaled. "That's bleak."
"That's survival."
He moved closer. The fire cast gold along her throat.
"You don't have to be just survival anymore," he said.
She didn't move away.
"Darian…"
"I know you don't want this. Maybe you never did. But we're here. Alive. And part of me thinks that means something."
She closed her notebook. "Feelings get people killed."
"Maybe. But they're also what keep people from becoming the ones doing the killing."
She stared at him.
Then, just barely, she said, "Don't say my name again."
"Why?"
"Because you say it like you mean it."
He leaned closer. "That's because I do."
Her breath hitched.
And still, she didn't stop him when his hand brushed hers.
-
Palace, Throne Room
Queen Ilyana stood before a mirror carved from obsidian and bone.
In it, her reflection did not smile.
"Your move, Ash Vale," she whispered. "Let's see if you still bleed."
The candle at her side flared—then extinguished.