The bell's tolling shattered the fragile dawn, its uneven peals clawing through the castle like a living thing. Seraphina stood rooted in the chapel ruins, the silver hairpin burning a brand into her palm. Each clang of the alarm bell seemed to reverberate through her bones, a sound she remembered from childhood nightmares—the same terrible cadence that had rung when Queen Celine's body was discovered.
Kaelan moved before the third peal faded, his sword flashing free of its scabbard with a hiss of steel. The morning light caught the hard planes of his face, deepening the shadows beneath his cheekbones, turning his scar into a livid streak. He positioned himself between her and the castle, his broad shoulders tensed for battle. "They know," he growled, the words rough as gravel.
Corvin swayed where he stood, his freckles standing out like flecks of rust against his ashen skin. His fingers plucked nervously at the torn edges of his tunic, leaving smears of Lysandra's blood across the fabric. "She warned them," he whispered, his voice cracking like thin ice. "Lysandra."
The hairpin seared Seraphina's palm with sudden, vicious heat. She gasped as visions tore through her mind—
Lysandra dragging herself through the servants' passages, her blood leaving dark trails on the stone like grotesque breadcrumbs. The king's private chambers, where the empty crown stand pulsed with restless shadows. A dagger flashing across a guard's throat, the blade wielded not by Lysandra's delicate fingers, but by the king's own gilded hands.
The images shattered as Kaelan's calloused hands gripped her shoulders. "Seraphina!" His breath was warm against her cheek, his eyes dark with something more than fear.
She blinked up at him, her own breath coming in ragged bursts. The hairpin had melted through her glove, branding her palm with the intricate outline of wings. The pain was sharp, clarifying. "He's killing them," she whispered. "The king. He's slaughtering his own guards."
Corvin made a sound like a wounded animal. "Why would Father—"
"Because the crown knows we tried to destroy it." Seraphina flexed her burned hand, the pain a bright counterpoint to the dread coiling in her stomach. "And it's fighting back."
The castle corridors were a nightmare given form.
They found the first body at the base of the western tower—a young guard barely older than Corvin, his throat slit so deeply his head lolled against his shoulder like a broken doll's. His blood still steamed in the morning chill, pooling around the Valemont crest on his breastplate until the silver lion seemed to swim in a black sea.
Kaelan knelt beside the corpse with battlefield efficiency, his fingers pressing briefly against the still-warm skin. "This happened minutes ago," he murmured, his voice dangerously calm.
The carnage worsened as they advanced. A maid slumped against an ornate tapestry, her starched white apron now a sodden crimson rag. A steward lay face-down, his fingers still curled around a message scroll now dyed red. Even the castle hounds hadn't been spared—their massive bodies strewn about the kennels, muzzles frosted with pink foam.
Corvin stepped over a fallen knight, his boots leaving sticky prints on the marble. "The king's gone mad," he breathed, his voice trembling.
Seraphina pressed her branded palm to the cold stone wall. The vibrations beneath her fingertips weren't imagined—the very castle seemed to hum with the same malevolent energy that had pulsed in the vault. "No," she corrected softly. "The crown is empty. And it's starving."
A scream tore through the corridor, high and desperate and unmistakably Lysandra's.
The throne room was a tableau of nightmares.
King Aldric stood before the obsidian throne, his ceremonial robes drenched in gore that dripped steadily onto the marble. The crown sat upon his brow, but wrong, so wrong. The once-proud silver had blackened entirely, the seven shattered gems weeping thick, tarlike tears down his ravaged face. His golden eyes those—famous Valemont eyes—were gone, replaced by pits of swirling darkness that leaked like ink down his cheeks.
Lysandra knelt at his feet, her ice-blue gown in tatters, the shoulder wound Seraphina had given her now blackened and oozing the same foul substance as the crown. Her perfect hair hung in matted strands, her lips cracked and bleeding as she pleaded, "Father, please—"
The king's hand closed around her throat with unnatural strength.
Corvin surged forward with a wordless cry. Kaelan caught him around the waist, hauling him back just as the king's head swiveled toward them. His mouth opened, but the voice that emerged wasn't human—it was the vault's scream given form, the sound of a thousand dying souls given voice.
"You broke the pact."
The hairpin erupted into flame in Seraphina's hand—not the silver blade from before, but pure, white-hot fire that climbed her arm without burning. The heat spread across her shoulders in a wave, shaping itself into wings—real wings, vast and feathered, sprouting from her back in a burst of searing light that illuminated every corner of the shadowed throne room.
The king recoiled, his shadowy eyes shrinking to pinpricks of hate. "Celine?" he rasped, the name slipping from his blackened lips like a curse.
The sound struck Seraphina like a physical blow. Her mother's memories flooded her—not fragments this time, but the whole terrible truth, rushing in like seawater through a shattered hull.
The crown wasn't just cursed.
It was alive.
And her mother had tried to starve it.
Seraphina spread her wings, the feathers catching the dawn light streaming through the broken windows. "This ends now," she said, and her voice echoed with something not entirely her own.
The battle that followed shook the castle to its very foundations.
The king moved with unnatural speed, his gore-slicked robes flaring as he lashed out with claws that hadn't been there moments before. Seraphina met him midair, their collision sending a shockwave that shattered the remaining stained glass, raining colored shards like deadly confetti.
Lysandra crawled toward Corvin, her fingers leaving smears of black blood on the marble. "The heart," she gasped, her voice raw. "The seventh gem—it's the heart!"
Kaelan understood first. While the king was distracted, he lunged for the throne itself, where the seventh gem from the crown lay embedded in the obsidian like a malignant growth. His sword came down in a silver arc, the blade singing through the air.
The king's howl of rage shook the remaining windows in their frames as the steel struck true. The gem shattered with a sound like breaking bones, releasing a torrent of shadows that writhed and shrieked as the dawn light touched them.
With a crack like thunder, the crown split down the middle.
King Aldric collapsed, his body ageing centuries in seconds—skin withering, bones protruding, until only a desiccated husk remained, the false crown crumbling to dust on his brow.
Silence fell, heavy and absolute.
Then—
A soft clatter echoed through the throne room as the real crown tumbled from the throne's hidden compartment, rolling to a stop at Seraphina's feet.
Pure silver. Unbroken.
Waiting.