Thorns of the Moonlit Throne
Volume 5 — Chapter 4: The Price Left Unspoken
Writer: Sabbir Ahmed
Velmor breathed again—but it breathed unevenly.
Cracks ran through its streets, buildings leaning as though exhausted from remembering themselves back into existence. The people wandered slowly, touching walls, holding one another, mourning losses they could not yet name. Freedom, Lyriana realized, was never painless. It returned with scars.
Aryn lay beneath a torn pavilion, healers working in tense silence. The Shadowmark on his wrist no longer glowed—it splintered, thin fractures spreading like shattered glass beneath his skin. Each pulse sent a tremor through him, not of pain, but of instability.
"This isn't injury," the healer whispered. "It's transformation."
Lyriana sat beside him, gripping his hand as if the world might pull him away. "The fragment used you," she said softly. "And now the universe is deciding what you become."
Aryn managed a faint smile. "As long as I'm still me."
Eryon watched from the edge of the camp, shadows restless. "The fragments are adapting," he said. "The Warden learned from resistance. The next ones won't rely on obedience alone."
Lyriana stood, heart heavy beneath the crown she had not yet replaced. "Then we must change as well."
That night, the sky spoke—not in prophecy, but warning.
Stars dimmed in deliberate patterns. Not vanishing, but turning away, as if something beyond them was rearranging the heavens. Eryon stiffened, his shadows recoiling.
"They're organizing," he murmured. "The fragments are being called."
Aryn felt it even in his weakened state—a pull, subtle and terrifying. "Something is gathering them," he said. "Not a god. Not a poet."
Lyriana's gaze hardened. "A will."
Far beyond Velmor, beyond Arvandor, in a realm untouched by choice or crown, a figure stood among floating shards of starlight. Cloaked in fractured radiance, it observed the restored city with quiet fascination.
"Interesting," the figure whispered. "They resist entropy."
The shards aligned.
"Then we must refine the design."
Back in Velmor, Lyriana placed her crown upon her head once more—not as a symbol of command, but resolve. "We will not wait for the fragments to come to us," she said. "We will find their source."
Aryn rose unsteadily to his feet, meeting her gaze. "Whatever I'm becoming," he said, "I'll face it with you."
Above them, the stars continued to shift.
The cost had been paid.
But the debt was far from settled.