Thirty-four years ago. Before the Binding Cracked.The air in the ruins of Vel Sorein always tasted like lightning — dry, scorched, and heavy with waiting. The city had fallen centuries ago, swallowed by sandstorms and shame, but in its heart stood one tower that never crumbled.The Thornspire.And inside it, a girl sat cross-legged before a stone basin of still water. She was seven. Pale. Silent. Her hair was white not with age, but with the weight of inheritance. Her name was Orien Valceir.Her mother knelt behind her, whispering the same words again and again:"Not all bloodlines fade. Some become rivers. And rivers, when dammed, do not die — they break through."The girl didn't speak. Her eyes were on the water. Below its surface, shadows twisted — not reflections, but memories left in the leyline below."What do you see?" her mother asked.The girl's answer was quiet."A crown. Floating. Broken. Bleeding light."Years Later – Exile and FireOrien was twelve when the seal failed.Not in Vel Sorein — in Lyethra, far to the east. A ley-prison ruptured during a failed summoning, and the wave of unfiltered magic reached her halfway across the continent.It struck her in her sleep.She woke screaming. Frost covering her breath, fire in her veins, shadows curled like smoke around her bed.They tried to contain her. Study her.She vanished instead.The last thing her mother said before the doors burned away:"Find the pieces. They're drawn to your line. You're the anchor now."The Turning Point – The First FragmentOrien found the first fragment in the drowned crypt of Kal Inareth.She was seventeen, barefoot, thin, unafraid. The Crown shard — a ring of gold etched with pre-Binding glyphs — sang when she entered.Not in music. In memories.It showed her the truth: the original Crown of Binding wasn't made to dominate magic. It was made to seal it — to force the leylines to kneel after the Godswar fractured the arcane web.The Crown was never a weapon. It was a wound. A chain forged by fear.Orien took the fragment. Not with greed, but with something closer to sorrow.She didn't seek power.She sought unbinding.The MaskShe began wearing the mask after the third piece.Not to hide her face.But to honor those who gave her their secrets — spirits, echoes, dream-fragments — all of them drawn to her blood, her name, her aura.The gold bone-mask was shaped like a crown half-sundered.A reminder:She was not collecting the Hollow Crown to rule the leylines.She was collecting it to dismantle the last lie of the old world.Now – Watching the Map BurnThe map she uses is not made of paper. It's a tangle of ley-silk threads suspended over bone and blood. Each thread connects to a fragment. Each flicker signals movement — a flare. A pulse.She watches it now, seated beneath a canopy of ash trees where no birds sing.One thread glows red. The Sable Mire. The second fragment—retrieved.A third is pulsing faintly — moving, not yet anchored. Somewhere north of the Cindermarch.And a fourth has gone dark. Buried so deep even the leylines forget.She lifts a gloved hand and touches the map."Four remain."Her voice is calm. Controlled.But inside, the ache of the leyline still pulses — like a scar that never closed."When they are gathered," she whispers, "I will not wear the Crown. I will end it."The mask glints in the dying light.A promise of ruin.
A promise of freedom.