CHAINS OF FIRE AND ROSES 🌹 🌹 🌹🌹
CHAPTER 1
The Day Solenta Fell
The bells of Solenta rang not in celebration—but in warning.
It was the third toll of the morning, low and urgent, shuddering through marble pillars and echoing down the corridors of the golden palace. Servants dropped trays. Nobles froze mid-conversation. Even the wind seemed to still.
Prince Kael Valerius stood at the highest tower, hands clenched on the stone balcony as he watched the black banners of Karnova rise over the hills like a plague. Smoke trailed behind them—villages already burning.
Kael was barely nineteen, but his eyes had long carried the weight of a man twice his age. His father, King Alric, stood behind him in full armor, face pale but set in grim resolve.
"They've breached the lower gates," Kael said, voice quiet.
Alric nodded. "We were never meant for war, son. But we die as Solentans. With honor."
Below, the once-peaceful capital erupted into chaos. Families fled toward the sea gates. Soldiers scrambled to hold the inner walls. Screams rose above the clatter of hooves and swords.
Kael turned to his younger sister, Princess Elira, just sixteen, hiding her trembling hands behind her skirts. Her long braids had fallen loose in the rush to evacuate the palace.
"You'll take the eastern passage," Kael told her. "Follow the river. Go with the healer Mira. If I don't come—"
"I'm not leaving you!" she snapped, eyes blazing. "You're all I have left."
Kael stepped forward, took her face in his hands. "You'll live. For Solenta. For Mother."
She broke then, barely stifling a sob. But she nodded. When Kael turned away, he didn't look back.
By nightfall, the gates of Solenta had been shattered, its people slaughtered or bound in chains. The golden spires crumbled. The royal guards fell one by one. And in the bloodied throne room, King Alric Valerius met his end on his knees.
King Thalos of Karnova stood before him, a towering brute in blackened steel, his blade dripping with Solentan blood. Behind him stood his daughter—Princess Emerald, a vision of beauty in emerald and silver, her expression unreadable.
"I gave you a chance," Thalos said coldly. "I offered tribute. Obedience. You gave me pride."
Alric raised his chin, defiant to the end. "Solenta bows to no tyrant."
And with one swing, his voice was silenced forever.
---
Three Days Later
In the heart of Karnova, the victory parade swept through Valtoria, its capital. Citizens roared from balconies. Drummers pounded war rhythms. Captured nobles were dragged behind iron-wheeled carts, sunburned, bleeding, broken.
Among them walked Princess Elira, her once-pristine gowns now in tatters, her arms shackled and face bruised. Still, she kept her back straight, her eyes forward.
The people shouted insults. One threw a stone—it cut her cheek. A child spat at her skirt. But she did not blink.
Atop the platform, King Thalos raised his arms.
"Solenta has fallen," he announced to thousands. "Its kings are dust. Its prince is broken. Its princess—your entertainment!"
The crowd erupted in laughter. Elira's eyes found his—and behind him, Princess Emerald stood quietly, face painted in ceremony, expression carefully still. Their gazes locked.
Elira swore she saw a flicker of something in Emerald's face—regret, maybe. Pity. But then the moment passed.
Later that night, deep within the dungeons of Karnova, Elira sat against the cold wall, her limbs trembling. Her brother's face haunted her thoughts. The last she had seen of him, he had been struck down outside the throne room—beaten and dragged away.
Was he dead?
Or worse?
---
Elsewhere…
Beneath the mines of Blackreach, in the underbelly of Karnova where the light never reached, a boy coughed blood into his hand. Chains bound his wrists. Scars covered his back. He had not been a boy for years, though only twenty now.
His name had once been Kael Valerius, Crown Prince of Solenta.
Now, they called him "rat," "slave," "ghost."
For three years he had endured the torture, the starvation, the endless weight of hatred and stone. His hands had forgotten the feel of a sword. But his mind remembered everything.
Every scream.
Every humiliation.
Every time they had whipped him in front of laughing soldiers—sometimes while Princess Emerald watched from the balcony, untouched by the pain beneath her.
But he had not broken.
In the dark, he whispered a single promise to himself each night:
"I will return."
To Be Continued