The coronation hall did not empty in silence.
It emptied in blood.
Waylen ran.
Not toward the exits where guards clashed and nobles screamed but sideways, slipping behind fallen pillars as bodies hit the marble floor.
The crown pulsed again, and another man dropped, lifeless before he even understood why.
Only a few survived.
Waylen was one of them.
He didn't look back.
He didn't need to.
The sound followed him the wet thud of bodies, the crack of bone, the crown's low, mocking hum. It echoed in his skull as he burst through a side corridor and into the lesser halls of the palace.
Alarms rang.
Steel clashed.
"The survivors!" someone shouted. "Kill them now!"
Waylen's breath hitched.
So that was it.
Survival was now a crime.
He turned sharply, boots skidding on stone, and ducked into a servant passage just as a blade slashed through the air where his neck had been.
The guard cursed. Waylen didn't wait. He ran harder.
Torchlight flickered past him as the palace blurred into a maze of corridors and staircases.
His heart hammered, not with fear but with awareness.
The crown had spared him.
And the palace knew it.
He burst through a small door and stumbled into the night. Cold air hit his lungs as he tumbled down stone steps into the outer district. Behind him, shouts grew louder.
"Find him!"
Waylen pushed himself up and vanished into the dark.
He didn't stop running until the city swallowed him.
Vaeloria burned.
Fires flickered in windows. Bells rang.
People screamed as rumors spread faster than flames the coronation failed, the crown killed again, someone survived.
Waylen pressed himself into an alley, chest heaving.
Then he felt it.
That cold pressure.Not pain.Not sound but
Awareness.
The crown was there not in front of him, not behind him,but within reach. Watching and Measuring.
Waylen swallowed hard. "I don't want you," he whispered.
The pressure lingered.
Then, faintly, something like disappointment brushed his thoughts.
Waylen froze.
The crown could feel intent.
That realization chilled him more than the bloodshed.
Footsteps echoed nearby. Waylen moved again, slipping deeper into the city's lower veins, where torchlight dared not linger and secrets rotted in silence.
By dawn, the kingdom would know the truth.
The crown had failed to choose a king.
And instead,It had marked a man who refused to be one.