The scent of ash clung to the stones of Caerthus like a memory too bitter to be forgotten. It was not the ash of recent fire but old, ancient, the kind that seeps into the walls and never leaves.
Eryndor stood before the Throne of Wounds, the great seat of kings, carved from obsidian cracked by time and shaped by the weight of vows. The hall around him was vast, cavernous, and silent. Too silent.
There were no drums. No hymns. No acclamation from the gathered lords. Just breath held in distrust and eyes that saw not a king, but a disruption.
He could feel their hatred.
He was not born in gold sheets, nor to a crowned mother. His mother had died nameless in the ash-washed servants' quarters. They said she died coughing up salt.
He had no sigil. No house. Only the old burn scar at his shoulder the Mark of the Unnamed, carved by fire when he was just a child. It identified him not as noble, but as royal-blooded without blessing. The kind of child kings silence with coin or knives.
Yet now, he stood at the foot of the throne.
Not because they wanted him. But because the Oath Charter demanded it. When a king died without naming a successor, the bloodline no matter how tarnished must rise.
And King Maerion had died without a name on his lips.
"M'lord," came the voice of the High Scribe, frail and trembling. "The time has come."
The man held out the Crown of Salt, its crystalline points catching the dying light from the fractured windows. It shimmered faintly, as if sweating.
Eryndor stared at it. A thing forged not of gold, but of condensed sea-salt, ash, and bone. A symbol of unity once soaked in betrayal. The First Burning had ended with that crown. A peace carved in vows that could never be broken. A legacy soaked in pain.
He had dreamed of it once when he was younger, bleeding from wounds earned in back alleys. He remembered waking up screaming. The crown, in his dream, had teeth.
---
He stepped forward. The nobles parted like wounded dogs. Lord Aelion of Halcrest narrowed his eyes, a sneer crawling at his lips. The man had once called him "salt-scum." Now he bowed, if only to obey the law. Others followed. Begrudgingly.
Eryndor felt no pride.
He knelt.
The stone beneath him was cold and rough. Etched into the dais were words he couldn't yet read Vel'Kaerin, the old tongue of oaths. The sacred language only the Scribes of Binding spoke aloud, and only when death was expected.
The High Scribe raised the crown.
"Let it be known, by the Salt and the Blood, by the Flame and the Name,
that this child of ash is now bound.
Not by love. Not by will. But by the wound."
The crown descended.
It touched his brow.
He bit his tongue.
He felt it not pain, not quite but pressure. Like hundreds of voices screaming just beyond the veil of hearing. His bones trembled. The throne behind him whispered his name not "Eryndor," but something older, something torn.
He opened his eyes.
The hall flickered.
Just for a moment, the torches blew out without wind. The nobles leaned back. One clutched his chest. Another whispered, "The curse stirs."
Eryndor rose. The crown did not sit it gripped. Its weight wasn't physical. It was spiritual. Like memory embedded into his blood, memories not his own. He felt cold rain. Fire. A blade cutting through silk. A scream that echoed without throat.
Behind his eyes, he saw shadows. Men in robes. Women burned for words. A child buried beneath a stone throne. All of it flooding into him, fast and merciless.
He staggered.
The Throne of Wounds called.
And Eryndor sat.
The throne accepted him.
The stone runes lit faint red, as if recognizing old blood.
Silence followed. A silence that pulsed with weight.
Then the Sun That Weeps broke through the clouds. Outside the ruined windows, the sky turned the color of flame. The symbol of omen. The black disc. The burning eclipse that signified war.
None spoke.
The kingdom had a king.
A king it did not want.
—
The throne was colder than stone had any right to be.
Beneath Eryndor's body, he felt something alive, yet ancient. A pulsing in the obsidian. Not like a heartbeat. More like... echo. Echo of something buried.
He didn't know whether it came from the throne or from inside him.
The High Scribe had finished his chant. The nobles had withdrawn to their corners, whispering among themselves with coiled tension. The ceremonial rite was over. On parchment, he was king.
But the throne hadn't accepted him.
Not yet.
And he could feel it.
The runes etched along the armrests flickered dimly. Then, they hummed barely audible. Just enough to make the hairs along his neck rise. He ran his fingers along the carvings, feeling each groove like a scar.
One of them was warm.
He pressed down.
A voice entered his mind.
"You are not him."
It wasn't spoken aloud. It didn't sound like a human voice. It was dry and crumbling, like dust being poured through cracked hands. It came from beneath the seat from something older than language.
"You wear his crown. But not his soul."
Eryndor's jaw clenched. He looked around the hall. No one else reacted. Whatever he heard it was meant for him alone.
The voice continued.
"The blood remembers. The wound rejects. Break the vow... and be broken."
He let go of the rune.
The voice vanished like a breath into frost.
He sat in silence, hands clenched on the throne, muscles taut. He did not understand what had just happened but the throne was alive. Not literally. But with memory. With curse. With something that watched, judged, waited.
"Majesty."
A voice snapped him back.
It was Lysael, the Oath-Priest.
Robes the color of dying parchment, bald scalp marked with runic burns, eyes blind yet unblinking. He moved like he walked through memory instead of space.
"The people await your first words."
Eryndor blinked. "What?"
"Your Benediction, my king. The Oath of Flame and Salt."
He looked around. Every noble eye was fixed on him now. The scribes ready to etch his first words. The banners trembling faintly in the dusk wind. It was all ritual. All law.
But his lips were dry.
He had no blessing to give. No kingdom in his heart. Only weight. And fire.
Still, he stood.
And he spoke.
"The crown is made of ash.
The throne, of wounds.
I take this burden not with pride,
but because none else will bleed to bear it."
A gasp. Several scribes paused, uncertain if they should write that down.
"I will not promise peace," Eryndor continued, voice growing firmer. "Nor glory. Nor gods. What I promise is this: I will break what broke us."
Lord Aelion stepped forward. "And what, Your Majesty, do you believe broke us?"
Eryndor looked at him.
"Your names."
The room fell into sharp, brittle silence.
No one had ever dared blame the noble houses. Not aloud. Not on the throne.
The old sun shone red through broken glass.
And far beneath the throne, the runes flared once more.
Not in warning.
In recognition.
---
That night, the moon was absent. As if it, too, refused to witness his reign.
Eryndor stood alone at the balcony of the Hall of Hollow Names, a place where every ruler's final words were carved into obsidian tablets. Behind him lay the throne room, now quiet, but never at peace. Ahead of him, the broken skyline of Caerthus stretched far, lit by the dying embers of braziers and the flickering cries of unrest.
The city did not sing for him.
He had not expected it to.
But silence, somehow, still wounded.
He closed his eyes.
And memory returned sudden, sharp, and unkind.
---
The alley had smelled of rot and soot.
He was eight, small for his age, ribs pressing against skin. The winter had gnawed through the city walls like a hungry dog. A noble's carriage had splashed him with black slush in the gutter.
"Bastard!" the guards had yelled. "Keep your ash-blood off the road!"
That was the day he asked his mother why they called him that.
Her answer had not come with words.
It came with flame.
She had knelt beside the small, forbidden altar they kept hidden beneath floorboards where the broken half of a sword lay. She took his hand, placed it over the hilt.
"This is your name," she whispered. "They will never give you one. So you must carve it yourself."
He remembered the heat.
The burn.
And how she cried after it was done.
Not from the pain.
But from fear.
Because now, the world could no longer pretend he was nothing.
---
He opened his eyes.
Below him, in the lower districts, fires had started.
Not rebellions. Not yet. But tensions.
The lords thought they could contain it. Feed the poor their own hopes and demand gratitude. But the people had no more hope. Only hunger.
A faint sound metal boots on stone drew his attention.
"Majesty."
It was Thorne, cloaked in shadow. He didn't wear a sigil either. Just worn steel and a blade with no heraldry.
Eryndor turned. "I didn't summon you."
"No, you didn't," Thorne replied, stepping forward. "But the streets did."
Eryndor said nothing. He had known of Thorne long before this moment. A name whispered in dungeons. A ghost among the folk. A soldier who had once refused to execute a starving mother and then vanished from the ranks.
Now he led whispers. And sometimes, he bled for them.
"You're their king now," Thorne said. "That means their misery is your inheritance."
"I never asked for any of this."
"Neither did they."
They stood in silence, both watching the glow of the streets. The flickers of grief and unrest mingling in the smoke.
Finally, Thorne spoke again.
"You can put on the crown and be another ghost in that throne… or you can break the chains holding it together."
Eryndor looked at him. "And if breaking it brings the kingdom down with me?"
Thorne's eyes were calm. Too calm.
"Then maybe it deserved to fall."
—
The wind had shifted.
It came not from the east, nor west, but from the Vault of Silence a place that should have remained sealed.
Eryndor felt it before he saw her.
As the guards parted, silent and uneasy, she was brought into the Hall beneath torchlight. No chains. No words. Just her presence: calm, proud, and burning.
Aelira.
The enemy princess. The lioness of Olyrra. The one they called the Fire-Threaded. Her people had surrendered after a long siege, and she had been taken not as a prize but as leverage.
She wore no crown now. No flame-gold armor. Just gray linen and dust.
But her eyes still burned.
They met his.
No bow. No curtsey. No fear.
Only calculation. And something older like recognition.
Eryndor stepped down from the dais. The chamber emptied with a single gesture. Even the scribes withdrew.
The two stood alone, beneath the remnants of the banners, surrounded by cracked stone and vows turned to dust.
"You've made quite the entrance," he said.
Aelira tilted her head. "So have you. I heard your Benediction."
"Did you approve?"
"No," she said. "But I felt it."
He looked at her carefully. She had once led battalions. He remembered seeing her from the ramparts her hair like wildfire, her sword curved like a question no man could answer.
"What did you feel?" he asked.
"That your kingdom has crowned its first gravedigger."
A pause. He almost laughed.
"Then I hope," he replied, "I have the strength to dig deep enough."
She walked past him slowly, her fingers grazing the edge of the Oathstone, the ancient relic mounted behind the throne. Its veins pulsed when she touched it. She noticed.
"You shouldn't have sat," she murmured.
"I had no choice."
"There's always a choice. Especially for kings."
A silence fell between them, one not born of awkwardness but of shared understanding. Two lives formed by fire, shaped by duty, and crushed beneath names they did not choose.
Then, softly, she said:
"You don't know what lives beneath that throne."
"No one ever truly sits on it. They're just... borrowed."
"Until it feeds again."
He stared at her. "How do you know this?"
She met his gaze.
"My mother once told me a story," she said. "Of a child born during the Eclipse of Thorns, whose name was carved from ash, and whose blood would unbind the Seven Thrones."
His throat dried.
"Was it a prophecy?"
"No," she said. "A warning."
---
Later that night, alone in his chamber, Eryndor removed the Crown of Salt and set it upon the stone basin. It hissed, even cold, as if the salt still boiled.
He looked at himself in the mirror.
The line of the crown had left pale marks on his skin. Like scars. But they hadn't been there before.
He touched them.
They burned.
He didn't cry out.
Outside, thunder rolled. Rain began to fall, heavy and fast washing the ash from the palace walls.
He turned to the empty chamber.
And the final words of the voice beneath the throne returned:
"Break the vow… and be broken."