Thorns of the Moonlit Throne
Volume 5 — Chapter 1: When Stars Forget Their Names
Writer: Sabbir Ahmed
The bells of Arvandor rang at sunrise—not in warning, but in remembrance.
Lyriana stood upon the highest balcony of the Moonspire, the wind carrying the scent of new stone and reborn gardens. Below her, the empire moved with quiet determination. Walls once raised in fear were being torn down. Roads long abandoned now welcomed travelers from lands once forbidden.
Peace had changed the sound of the world.
Yet the stars above felt… wrong.
Aryn sensed it before she spoke. He always did. "They're drifting," he said softly, eyes fixed on the pale sky. "Not falling. Drifting. As if they've forgotten where they belong."
Lyriana's fingers tightened around the silver rail. Since the Celestial Verse ended, she had felt it too—a subtle absence, like a melody missing a note. Fate no longer whispered. Prophecy no longer burned. Freedom had come… but it had left silence in its wake.
And silence, she had learned, could be dangerous.
The alarm came at midday.
A messenger collapsed at the throne room doors, breath ragged, eyes wide with terror. "Your Majesty," he gasped, "the city of Velmor—north of the frost ridges—it's gone."
Gone meant many things in a world of magic. Burned. Swallowed. Cursed.
But Velmor had not been destroyed.
It had been erased.
Maps rejected its name. Memories slipped when spoken aloud. Even the messenger's thoughts unraveled as he tried to describe it, as though reality itself refused to acknowledge the city had ever existed.
Eryon emerged from the shadows before the court could react, his form darker, sharper than Lyriana remembered. "This is no spell of Arvandor," he said grimly. "Nor the work of gods. This is something left behind."
Aryn felt the ache in his wrist—the Shadowmark, once blazing, now faint yet restless. "A fragment," he murmured. "Of the Verse."
Silence fell.
Lyriana rose from the throne, crown catching the light. "Then the past is not done with us," she said. "And peace must be defended—not by prophecy, but by choice."
She looked to Aryn, to Eryon, and beyond them—to a world finally free, yet terrifyingly unguarded.
"The stars may no longer command us," the Moonlit Queen declared, "but we will not allow their remnants to rule us either."
Above Arvandor, a single star flickered… and went dark.
The journey had begun.