Chapter One: The Demon Queen in Chains
They brought her in at dusk, just as the sky began to bruise. The setting sun painted a tapestry of blue bleeding into pink and then purple, like it was touched by magic.
The capital city of Vireen was rarely quiet, but tonight, the silence was spectral. A thin, humming tension stretched from the palace walls to the crowd pressed along the marble courtyards into the bustling cobblestone streets and green countryside. Nobles and commoners alike had gathered in shimmering capes and dirt-stained tunics, elbowing for a glimpse of the infamous queen dragged in chains. The ceremonial gongs had sounded hours ago, but the execution hall remained still, like Mother Nature herself was holding her breath.
Kaia stood with the apprentice mages on the southern tier, separated from the royal court by an invisible line of hierarchy. She was sweating beneath her silver robes, though the summer sun had long since dipped behind the spires. Around her, murmurs flickered in a cacophony of fear, awe, and curses wrapped in curiosity. But Kaia couldn't speak. Her gaze was fixed on the figure approaching the high dais.
Rhyssa of the Ashen Vale, once Queen of the Thirteenth Flame, the monster mothers used to frighten naughty children with to make them good again, was standing there as a shadow of the legend. Yet somehow, she was more terrifying for it.
Her body, tall and whip-thin, was bound in chains made of star-iron, the only metal known to hold demon blood; it glinted under the torchlight and the fading sun with a sickly purple sheen. Her feet were bare, soles torn and red against the gleaming white marble. Her once-ornate battle gown was shredded at the seams, clinging to her body in bloodstained strips. Even her hair, which was once said to fall in waves of obsidian fire, was matted with sweat, blood, and grime, accented by ugly horns that looked like they should not be there.
But it was her eyes that hollowed Kaia out. Crimson, burning, alive. It still roamed free even though her body was in submission.
Kaia's lungs forgot how to fill. A feeling of euphoria, the sight sent shivers down her spine.
"Is it true?" Thaleia whispered beside her, voice a trembling thread. "They say she made the sky bleed. That she summoned a god once, with only her voice."
Kaia said nothing. Her heart slammed against her ribs. The stories she'd read in the archives didn't do this woman justice. Rhyssa didn't radiate power. She was its final, broken echo. The silence around her wasn't submission. It was mourning. As if even magic itself grieved what she'd become.
Guards flanked Rhyssa on all sides, but none touched her. They walked as if repelled by heat, by the scent of old blood and wrath. When they reached the platform, they shoved her forward. She stumbled, catching herself on her knees. Her chains clinked across the stone.
Still, she didn't speak.
The Emperor sat atop his obsidian throne, swathed in moon-silver robes, his red hair twisted into a crown of thorns. His expression was unreadable. Next to her, Archmagi Halbric stood tall, but his knuckles trembled around the scroll of judgment.
He cleared his throat, voice shaky with something like fear. "Rhyssa of the Ashen Vale. You are charged with the deaths of thirty-six thousand men, the destruction of seven cities, blood craft, god-summoning, and treason against the Eternal Empire of Vireen."
The wind shifted. Somewhere in the crowd, a child whimpered and clung to his father.
"You are offered no trial. Only submission. Or execution."
Kaia's stomach clenched. She knew this was why they'd been summoned. To witness and end, and make sure it was etched in memory. But this didn't feel like justice. It felt like a story ending wrong.
Rhyssa raised her head. Slowly and deliberately. The tiny gesture had the whispers and the low hums turn into a scary silence. She looked up and smiled.
Not a smile of mercy. Not even defiance.
A smile with no future in it.
Kaia felt something cold slip into her spine. The kind of cold on only powerful ancient magic carried.
Rhyssa's voice, when it came, was a rasp, low and intentional. It cracked like wind through ruins. "Submission," she echoed, tasting the word like ash. "Is that what you call this?"
She didn't wait for an answer. She lowered her head, touched her brow to the bloodied floor.
And in that moment, Kaia's body moved against her will.
Her lips parted, dry and trembling. A phrase pushed itself out; unbidden, half-remembered, stolen from a forbidden tome she should never have read.
"Ash'sethr thaaplen kai."
The crowd around her gasped and started moving away. A guard drew his blade and got closer.
The words left Kaia like a word she had been holding in all her life. They curled into the air, silver and sharp. Magic surged from her chest, uncoiling like a storm. The sky outside cracked open. The torches flared white and then red.
Rhyssa screamed.
It wasn't pain. It was something else: a hot, buried, primal rage, yes. Beneath all of it, older than either, was something nameless that made her bones thrum and her breath turn sharp, her tunic smoked, and when she tore it open, she saw it: a glowing sigil unfurling like molten ink across her skin. A symbol older than any written law, spiraling outward like it was being carved from the inside. Twisting lines and forming a sigil.
She dropped, falling to her knees as a matching mark seared itself onto Rhyssa's throat.
The wind turned hot. Magic shrieked through the air, throwing Kaia back to the ground as fire burst from the center of the square. The crowd had already scattered, but the heat followed, wild and sentient, curling around her limbs like it knew her name.
Then, stillness.
The air cleared. Kaia blinked through tears. Her limbs trembled, too light and too heavy at once.
Across from her, Rhyssa panted. Sweat dripped from her collarbone. She looked up slowly, with eyes that wondered.
She smiled again.
Different this time.
A soft, sad smile. Like an instinct inside her had remembered how to hope, and she would rather not.
"Brave," she rasped, breaking the awe-filled silence from everyone around. "Foolish? Oh, undoubtedly. But I've always found a bit of madness pairs well with bad ideas."
She tilted her head. Her sigil still glowed, pulsing faintly in rhythm with Kaia's.
"I know what you've done, little mage." The smile turning into a cold grin. Her eyes glowed. Her voice was a thread between worlds. "You spoke the Bond of Myr."
Kaia couldn't speak under the binding, an ancient, forbidden spell that laced soul to soul, breath to breath. Life echoed through life. Pain mirrored pain. And breaking it meant breaking them both. Killing them both.
The Empress stood. Her voice cut like a razor through the panic. "What is this?"
Halbric stepped forward, face pale, lips bloodless. "A soul bind," he whispered. "Older than the Ninefold Laws. She's... she's bound the apprentice. Killing her would mean killing them both."
There were gasps. Screams. The court broke into chaos.
But Kaia's world had already narrowed to the weight of her breath. To the bond burning under her skin. The way Rhyssa was looking at her. Neither like prey nor like a mistake.
Destiny had sunk its claws deep, too deep to rip out without bleeding. Kaia's voice was a ghost of itself when she whispered, "I didn't mean to." Rhyssa's smile didn't flicker. Didn't soften. "It doesn't matter anymore." The chains slipped from her wrists with a hush, metal surrendering to magic. She was Kaia's now. And Kaia—gods help her—was hers in ways that could never be undone.