The mirror no longer showed a boy.
Kaelen stared at the reflection with quiet calculation, his fingers brushing the frame. Youth stared back—silver-black hair untamed, violet eyes too large for the face—but behind them lived something older. Something burned. A soul once betrayed, now reborn.
The palace had grown quiet since his return, but Kaelen knew better than to mistake silence for peace.
In Valcarya, silence was strategy.
He had begun to move. Not with noise, but with intention.
First: the servants' paths. He mapped every hidden corridor and disused tunnel, memorizing shifts and shadows. He marked where guards lingered too long and where none bothered to pass. Behind crumbling walls, he stashed tools: maps, lockpicks, scrolls. A quiet kingdom beneath the gilded one.
Second: the whispers. Rot always started with secrets. House Nerel's heir stole wine from the cellars. House Vren's matriarch stockpiled black powder in perfume crates. House Elvran's debts whispered of mercenaries who made people vanish. Kaelen collected each like chess pieces. He didn't act—yet. But information aged like wine: stronger, darker.
Third: the weaknesses. He studied the princes with the eyes of a predator. Alric still glowed in court, all charisma and command—but Kaelen saw the stiffness in his neck, the faint tremor in his sword arm. Injuries hidden behind royal pride. He knew how they had been earned. And how to reopen them.
By the sixth day, Kaelen had mapped not just the castle—but its fears.
Elaine found him in the archives, her presence soft as snowfall.
"You're playing a dangerous game," she said.
He didn't look up from the tome. "So is everyone. I just remember the rules."
"You didn't used to sound like this." Her voice caught. "You sound like them."
He turned a page. "Maybe that's the only way to win."
She stepped closer. "What happened to you?"
Kaelen looked up. Candlelight danced in his eyes—bright, violet, and not entirely human.
"I died."
The silence that followed was deep and loaded with memory.
Elaine backed away. "Whatever you're planning… you can't do it alone."
He almost told her about the voice, the blood, the crypt.
But not yet.
In the dead hours of night, Kaelen crept into the Chamber of Veins, sealed beneath the palace's north wing. It opened to his blood—cut from his palm, spilled in defiance.
Inside, rows of glass coffins stretched into shadow. Ashes. Bone. Echoes of princes who had failed.
A voice stirred.
"You step where kings once fell."
Kaelen's grip tightened. "I intend to walk where they could not."
Stone groaned. Air moved without breath.
"Everything costs."
"I've already paid."
His torch flared violet.
One coffin cracked.
A scroll lay on the chest of a long-dead heir. As Kaelen reached inside, it screamed—not with sound, but with memory.
Visions pierced him like knives:
—Alric's throat torn by a sword, only to heal.
—King Orric kneeling before a dark altar beneath the throne.
—Elaine, bound in chains in a dungeon not yet built.
—The Throne… opening.
He collapsed. When he rose, the scroll was gone. But its truths lingered.
The Throne chose through blood. The Throne fed on heirs. The Throne remembered.
The next morning, Alric took center stage in the training yard. A performance of strength.
Kaelen watched from shadowed corridors, posing as a page.
As Alric raised his blade, Kaelen whispered a name—an ancient name from the scroll, a secret carved into Alric's soul.
The prince flinched.
Just for a breath. But the court noticed.
Whispers spread like fire.
Kaelen smiled.
That night, she returned.
The masked woman, standing amid the darkened archives, where no footstep had fallen.
"You've begun," she said.
"I have."
"Do you know the price?"
"No."
She touched his chest. His Throneblood mark seared in violet fire.
"You will."
Darkness swallowed him.
He landed before a throne of bone and shadow. No king sat atop it—only a shape. Eyes like burning runes. Teeth like broken crowns.
"Prince," it said.
"Monster," Kaelen answered.
"Pawn."
"Not anymore."
Chains snapped from the shadows, wrapping his limbs. Testing. Judging.
Kaelen pulled back.
Chains cracked.
The throne laughed—until it didn't.
He awoke bleeding from the nose. Alone. The candles gone cold.
On the floor, words written in blood:
"Round One Ends.""You Are Not Alone."