Dornhal.
Once the black pearl of the Empire.
Now a gaping fortress, swallowed by silence.
As Kaelen crossed its ancient gates, the mist seemed to part before him, revealing the outline of a stronghold half-submerged in vegetation and stone. Its towers rose like clawed fingers, riddled with gaping breaches. The imperial banners, faded to ghostly rags, hung limp, their symbols unrecognizable.
The soldiers murmured prayers, eyes fixed on walls pocked with impact marks.
Kaelen strode ahead alone, the cursed crown heavy on his brow, drawn by an unseen force toward the citadel's heart. He sensed… a memory. Deep, painful echoes vibrating within the stones. The rock had drunk blood—and it remembered.
— This city… he breathed, — it never truly left us.
A sharp sound shattered the silence.
Footsteps. Slow. Deliberate.
A figure emerged beneath the arch of a ruined cloister: an old man in an archivist's cloak, leaning on a gnarled staff, his eyes veiled by opaque gray—but Kaelen felt his gaze pierce the soul.
— Veyr bloodline, he intoned. So you have returned.
Kaelen narrowed his eyes.
— You know me?
— I know your blood. And the curse it bears. I am the Archivist of Dornhal. Guardian of what was… and of what awaits awakening.
Behind him, two young women stepped from the shadows.
One, tall and draped in a blood-red cloak, bore twin sabers at her waist—her golden eyes as sharp as her silence.
The other, smaller, with snow-white hair and rune-tattooed hands, held a black-leather grimoire.
— My apprentices, the Archivist said. They have watched with me.
Kaelen approached, intrigued.
— Watched over what, exactly?
The Archivist raised a knotted hand and laid it on the arch's stone.
— Over what the Empire tried to bury.
Over truths even kings feared.
Over the voices… still alive in these walls.
In that moment, the citadel trembled. A low rumble—like a breath drawn deep and long—rose from the foundations. Torches flared to life on their own in the Great Hall.
Kaelen turned his head. He heard them now, too.
Voices.
Whispering. Pleading. Ancient.
— What is this? he asked.
— The dead, replied the white-haired apprentice. They know the crown has crossed their threshold. And they wish to speak.
Kaelen clenched his teeth.
— Then let them speak. I have come to listen. To understand.
The Archivist smiled—a sad, knowing curve of his lips.
— Then enter, Kaelen Veyr. Enter the Hall of the Black Throne.
And learn the price of a cursed kingdom.
To be continued…