The night did not end when the sun rose.
Dawn crept across the ruins of Velmora like a coward—slow, pale, uncertain—its light barely strong enough to pierce the smoke that still clung to the shattered city. Ash drifted through the air like dying snowflakes, settling on broken stone, scorched banners, and the bodies that no one had yet found the courage to bury.
Asha stood at the edge of the inner courtyard, unmoving.
Her cloak was torn along the hem, stiff with dried blood that was not entirely hers. Beneath it, her hands trembled—not from exhaustion, not from fear, but from something far worse.
Memory.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw it again.
The crown.
Not as it once was—golden, radiant, revered—but as it had appeared when she touched it.
Blackened.
Cracked.
Alive.
The moment her fingers brushed its surface, the world had screamed.
Not aloud—but inside her bones.
Asha exhaled slowly, watching the breath fog before her lips despite the early summer air. The chill did not come from the weather. It came from within.
"You haven't slept."
Kael's voice came from behind her.
She didn't turn.
"I don't think I can," she replied.
Footsteps approached, cautious, as if he feared she might shatter if he came too close. Kael stopped beside her, his armor dented and darkened, his once-polished blade now dull with soot.
"You passed out after the vault collapsed," he said. "You were calling out names. Ones I didn't recognize."
Asha's jaw tightened.
"They were kings," she said quietly. "All of them."
Kael frowned. "Dead ones?"
"No," she whispered. "Forgotten ones."
She finally turned to face him. Her eyes—once warm, once uncertain—now carried a depth that unsettled him. Not madness. Not corruption.
Weight.
"They were screaming," she continued. "Not in pain. In warning."
Kael searched her face. "Warning of what?"
Asha looked past him—to the distant hills beyond Velmora, where the land dipped unnaturally, as if the world itself had once tried to flee.
"Of me."
Below the city, far beneath the collapsed vault and the stone that no one dared clear, something stirred.
A pulse echoed through the ancient chamber.
Once.
Twice.
The chains carved with royal sigils glowed faintly—then cracked.
A whisper followed.
The bearer has awakened.
By midday, the survivors had gathered.
They were few.
Less than fifty souls remained from the once-proud district guard and refugee line. Some sat in silence. Others wept openly. A few stared into nothing, broken beyond tears.
High Captain Rorren stood among them, his left arm bound in rough linen. When Asha approached, conversation died instantly.
Eyes followed her.
Some with hope.
Others with fear.
Rorren bowed his head. "You should not be standing," he said. "Whatever you touched in that vault—"
"—saved us," someone interrupted.
A young woman stepped forward, her face streaked with ash and grief.
"The beasts fled when she screamed," the woman said. "I saw it. The shadows recoiled."
Murmurs rippled through the crowd.
Asha felt them pressing in on her chest.
Expectation.
Worship.
The very thing her mother had warned her about.
Rorren raised a hand for silence. "Or perhaps they fled because the vault collapsed," he said carefully. "We do not know."
Asha met his gaze. "You're afraid of me."
Rorren didn't deny it.
"I am afraid of anything that awakens powers older than the Covenant," he said. "Especially when history insists those powers destroyed themselves."
The word struck her like a blade.
Destroyed.
Kael stiffened. "What do you mean?"
Rorren hesitated—then gestured toward the ruined city.
"The First Crown was not lost," he said. "It was buried. By its own bearers."
Silence fell hard.
"They learned too late," Rorren continued, "that the crown does not choose rulers. It consumes them. Each king burned brighter than the last… and each fell faster."
Asha swallowed. "Then why did it call to me?"
Rorren's voice dropped. "Because it is dying."
That night, Asha dreamed again.
But this time, she did not stand in the vault.
She stood in a hall of thrones.
Dozens of them—some broken, some melted, some turned to black glass. At the far end rested the First Crown, suspended above a pit of swirling embers.
A figure knelt before it.
A man—or what remained of one.
His body was carved with sigils burned into flesh. His crown had fused to his skull. His eyes were empty hollows leaking fire.
"The last bearer," he rasped.
Asha stepped back. "You're dead."
He laughed, and the sound fractured the hall.
"No king ever truly dies," he said. "We linger. In ash. In memory. In you."
"I didn't ask for this," she said.
"Neither did we."
He rose, chains dragging from his wrists into the pit.
"You think the crown grants power," he said. "It does not. It demands truth."
The embers surged.
"What truth?"
His hollow gaze locked onto her.
"That the world must burn again."
Asha woke screaming.
Kael caught her before she fell from the cot.
She clutched his armor, shaking violently.
"It wants war," she gasped. "Not conquest. Not rule. Ending."
Kael held her tightly. "Then we won't let it."
She looked up at him, eyes wet.
"I don't know if it will give us a choice."
Three days later, they left Velmora.
The city was too broken to defend, too cursed to remain. Even the birds avoided its skies.
Their path led east—toward the Black Meridian.
An ancient border where the old kingdoms once ended.
Where no crown had ever ruled.
As they traveled, Asha felt it more strongly.
The pull.
Like a heartbeat beneath the earth, matching her own.
Each night the ash followed her dreams.
Each morning her shadow stretched longer than it should.
On the fifth day, they encountered the marks.
A village burned in a perfect circle.
No looting.
No bodies.
Just symbols carved into the ground—crowns split in half.
Kael knelt beside one, his face grim. "This wasn't the beasts."
Rorren nodded slowly. "These are Purifiers."
Asha's stomach dropped. "The Covenant's myth?"
"They were real," Rorren said. "And they hunted crown-bearers."
A wind rose suddenly.
Asha felt the crown pulse.
From the treeline, figures emerged—cloaked in pale steel, masks etched with broken halos.
Their leader raised a blade that hummed with light.
"Step aside," he commanded. "The Ash-Bearer belongs to judgment."
Kael drew his sword.
Asha stepped forward instead.
The world seemed to bend.
Ash lifted from the ground and spiraled around her feet.
The Purifier froze.
"…You hear it too," he whispered.
Asha's voice was steady—but not entirely her own.
"I don't know what I am yet," she said. "But I will not kneel."
The crown burned beneath her skin.
And somewhere deep below the world—
Something ancient smiled.