The Iron Oath
The Citadel was still burning, in places. Even as dawn broke, there were towers that refused to die quietly — ancient rooms filled with cursed tapestries and bone-white statues that caught fire long after the battle had ended.
Kael stood in the Great Hall, facing the remnants of the Circle.
Not the ones who had ruled — they were dust now. These were new: generals, survivors, the unwilling heirs of war.
Thorne stood at his right. Selene, silent, watched them all from the shadowed arch behind him.
Kael's new crown sat heavy on his brow, unfamiliar, a coil of blackened silver fused with iron. Not royal — forged in haste from the melted hilts of the enemies they'd killed.
"I won't lie to you," Kael began, voice raw from smoke and battle. "This throne will not bring peace. Not yet."
They watched him.
"I don't offer a kingdom. I offer a war. A war against something none of us have ever fought. Something older than kings. Something that remembers our names from a time we've all forgotten."
He drew the Darksword — slow, deliberate.
Its edge shimmered, flickering like it was made of memory and fire.
"If you follow me, you follow fire. If you stand behind me, you stand behind silence, blood, and blades. You will not be remembered. But you may live."
A long silence stretched.
Then, one by one, they knelt.
Not for a king.
For the sword.
The Red Map
Selene laid the new map across the war table. It was still warm from the press, the ink barely dry. Entire sections were scorched black — marked as Unknown, Lost, or Dead Earth.
The western Scar glowed red, inked in crimson veins that pulsed under torchlight.
Kael traced the largest mark with his gloved finger. "This is where the creature came from?"
Selene nodded. "The Rift's edge. Nera's scouts saw it emerge the night before the sky cracked."
He exhaled. "Then it's not the first."
"No," she confirmed. "It was a scout. A herald."
Kael leaned over the table. "What do they want?"
Selene didn't answer.
Because no one knew.
Dream of Bone
That night, Kael dreamed of the Darksword.
It floated before him in the void — not held, not touched. Suspended. Alive.
Beneath it, a battlefield sprawled out, stitched together from every memory he had: the siege of Naril, the caves of the Burned Ones, the cliff where he killed his brother. Every death played in reverse.
Then the Darksword whispered.
"You are a gate."
He reached for it. It receded.
"A throne is not a place. It is a price."
He awoke with blood on his palms.
The Silent Tide
Three days passed in preparation. Every breath felt like a countdown.
Nera's priests reinforced the lower gates with obsidian dust. Thorne drilled the remaining soldiers. Selene disappeared each night, returning with blood on her boots and ash in her hair.
On the fourth day, the tide arrived.
They didn't march.
They didn't ride.
They crawled.
Over the ridge, across the dead fields, through the burnt trees — hundreds of pale, eyeless figures. Their mouths were sewn shut. Their limbs twisted backward. They moved like water: slow, silent, inescapable.
Kael stood atop the wall.
"Sound the bells," he said.
Selene frowned. "Why? They don't hear."
"They don't," Kael agreed. "But we do."
The bells tolled.
And the sky broke open.
Battle Under No Moon
The moon refused to rise that night.
As if the sky itself was holding its breath.
The enemy didn't scream. They made no sound at all. They moved in swarms, climbing stone, flesh, and fire alike. They melted through the gates like rot through bone.
Kael fought in silence.
The Darksword pulsed brighter with every strike. It hissed through flesh and shadow alike, devouring the light from his surroundings and feeding it into his hands.
Thorne was the first to fall.
Not dead — not yet. But he was dragged from the ramparts by three of the eyeless ones, disappearing into the writhing tide.
Selene leapt after them without hesitation.
Kael saw her vanish.
He didn't call her name.
The Black Flame
Kael reached the heart of the Citadel as the outer walls fell.
Alone.
Bloodied. Cursed. Cracked open.
He stood at the shattered throne with the Darksword in his hand and the ghost of every mistake whispering in his ears.
"You are a gate," the sword had said.
Fine.
He opened.
The Darksword ignited — not with fire, but with something deeper. A black flame that swallowed the stars. A soundless detonation of memory and vengeance.
Everything froze.
The pale creatures stopped.
And then — disintegrated. Not killed. Erased.
When Kael collapsed, the fire still burned.
It burned him from within.
A Crown No Longer Worn
When Selene found him, he was barely breathing.
The crown had fallen from his head, split down the center.
She dropped to her knees beside him, blood on her face, her cloak shredded. "Don't you dare die."
Kael opened one eye.
"I'm fine," he croaked.
"You're not," she whispered, furious. "You're bleeding from the soul, Kael."
He smiled faintly. "Sounds poetic."
She pressed her forehead to his.
"You idiot."
They sat there in silence.
The battle was over.
For now.
The Empty Throne
By morning, the Citadel still stood.
Barely.
The tide was gone — dissolved into black mist and memories no one wanted.
Kael refused to wear the crown again.
He left it on the throne — cracked, tarnished, waiting.
"I'll fight," he told the survivors, "but I won't rule. Not until I know what we're fighting."
Selene stood beside him.
Nera walked away without a word.
And in the shadows of the ruined chamber, the Darksword pulsed once.
Slow.
Steady.
Hungry.