Zyren sat alone in the Chamber of Memories.
Once, this room had been filled with sunlight, soft laughter, and the comforting rustle of pages turning beneath his mother's hand. Now, it lay still, the warmth long since drained from the walls. Dust motes drifted lazily through the early morning light, floating like tiny ghosts.
The only sounds were the ticking of the sun clock and the faint hum of enchantments that kept the room warm, even in sorrow.
In his hand, Zyren held the pendant.
A silver circle etched with fine Elraven runes. At its center, a moonstone pulsed gently, glowing in response to his touch—brighter in moments of fear, warmer when he longed for her.
This pendant had been his mother's.
Lady Arlin had given it to him just before she passed, a year ago now.
The loss still felt unreal. There were mornings when he half-expected her voice in the hall, soft and melodic, laughing at something he'd said. But as the seasons turned, he'd learned that grief didn't vanish.
It changed shape—became quieter, but never smaller.
He knelt beneath her portrait, lighting a single beeswax candle from the hearth and setting it before the painting. It was a quiet ritual, one he repeated on difficult mornings—no words, no tears. Just the silence between them, still sacred.
---
The Night She Died lingered in his mind like a dream too vivid to forget.
The fever had come quietly—no storm, no warning. A cough. A faint chill. Within days, her strength bled away, her laughter grew thin. The palace healers came and went, their hands full of useless potions and veiled assurances. His father had retreated behind council doors, masked in duty.
But Zyren remembered that final night with aching clarity.
Her breath had been shallow. Her skin far too cold.
Still, her eyes, dim but full of love, found his.
"Zyren," she'd whispered. "Come here."
He was on his knees, trembling.
"Don't leave me, Mother. Please. I don't understand."
With fading strength, she had unclasped the pendant from her neck and pressed it into his plam.
"You will understand," she said, her voice as fragile as starlight. "You're strong, Zyren. Stronger than you know. Listen to the dreams. Even when they frighten you."
Then, as the first blush of dawn touched the windowpane, her fingers slipped from his.
She was gone.
---
Zyren had not wept. Not then.
The grief had been too big for tears—more silence than sound, more ache than outcry. His father had become a ghost of discipline, hiding loss behind orders and protocol. No one spoke of the soft places in their hearts anymore. There had been no time. No space for softness. Only crowns. Only thrones.
The pendant warmed in his hand again, dragging him back to the present.
His eyes drifted to the bookshelf, and there, as always, sat her journal. Thick. Leather-bound. A lavender ribbon tucked into the middle like a breath waiting to be exhaled.
He hadn't opened it.
Not yet.
---
Lady Arlin had always spoken in riddles:
"We Elravens are dreamers. But some dreams are more than wanderings. This stone remembers. It listens."
At sixteen, Zyren had dismissed those words as poetry—grief-wrapped nonsense. But now, after the vision, after the fire, after her—he knew better.
There was something inside the moonstone. Not just memory. Not just legacy. Presence. More than once, he'd felt the flicker of thoughts that weren't his. Emotions that surged like they had come from elsewhere. Once—just once—he could've sworn he saw a mountain wreathed in stormlight flash across the mirror's reflection. A place he'd never seen. And yet, it felt known.
That's when the old word echo through his thoughts:
Moonwake.
The dreaming sight. Rare. Prophetic. Said to follow certain bloodlines like a shadow with a voice.
Zyren stepped toward the mirror and studied his reflection. Tall. Too lean for armor. Storm-gray eyes like hers. The ceremonial robes still hung wrong on him—too long in the sleeve, too stiff at the collar.
He didn't feel like a prince. Not yet.
But the dream had changed something.
He remembered the words he'd once shouted at his mother in frustration:
"I don't want the throne. I want to see the world. Write music. Learn real magic."
She had only smiled.
"You can do all those things, Zyren. But never forget—power isn't just duty. It's protection. And the world may need protecting… sooner than we'd like."
He brushed his thumb over the moonstone, held it to his chest.
"Is this what you meant?" he whispered. "Did you know what was coming?"
The stone pulsed—once. Subtle, but certain.
And then, the mirror shimmered.
A flicker.
An image.
A field of scorched black earth. A bone-white archway rising from the ruin. Crimson clouds churning behind it, a stormed tower on the horizon.
And in the foreground—himself.
Older. Hardened. Cloaked in ash and wind.
Zyren staggered back. The vision vanished.
---
A knock broke the silence.
"Prince Zyren," came the steward's voice. "The High King awaits you in the Hall of Crowns."
Zyren exhaled. The moment of stillness dissolved.
As he passed the shelves, his fingers brushed the edge of the journal once more.
It pulsed faintly with the memory of her hand.
One day, he thought. Soon.
But not yet.
—
The air outside was colder. Cleaner. Less forgiving.
As he passed the guards, they bowed. He barely noticed.
His attention was elsewhere—on the pendant's quiet pulse, and the memory that still whispered in his blood.
---
The Hall of Crowns was carved from midnightstone. Silver names lined the walls—every Elraven ruler since the Eastern Kingdoms' founding. At the far end sat the Highblood Throne—and the man who had raised him.
King Thalen Elraven.
A soldier first. A king always. Broad-shouldered, steel-eyed, with gray streaks at his temples and callused hands that war hadn't worn smooth. The crown sat on his brow like a burden, not a prize.
"You're late," Thalen said, his voice a blade sharpened on silence.
"I needed time," Zyren replied. "To think."
"Thinking doesn't save kingdoms. Action does. The council waits."
"She taught me to think. And to feel. That matters too."
Thalen's expression flickered—brief, brittle—but passed.
"You dreamed again."
"You knew?"
"She had the gift. And her father before her. I hoped it would spare you."
"It didn't," Zyren said, firmer now. "I saw a city in flames. A figure raising the sky to war. A girl with silver eyes who knew me before I knew her."
He let it hang. Heavy. Real.
Thalen was silent for a long while.
When he spoke, it was quieter.
"When I was your age, I dreamed of peace. I carved it out with twenty years of blood and fire. Dreams don't win wars."
"But they warn us," Zyren said. "If we listen."
Thalen looked away, toward the names on the wall. His hand brushed the moonstone at Zyren's neck—just for a moment. Then dropped, as if the weight of memory were too much.
"You want to protect this realm?'' he said. ''Then be present in it."
"I am present," Zyren said. "Just not the way you want. I won't sit idle while fire rises on the horizon."
Thalen gestured toward the map stretched across the back wall.
"Then look. Duskmere's rivers run backward. The Barrow-dead don't stay buried. Last night, a southern tower lit red before vanishing into smoke."
Zyren's chest tightened.
The dream wasn't a prophecy anymore. It was already beginning.
He touched the pendant, anchoring himself in its heat.
"She believed in me'', he said. ''You did, too."
"I still do," Thalen said, quiet now. "But belief without discipline leads to ruin."
Zyren met his father's gaze—and for the first time, he saw not a king carved of stone, but a man worn hollow by grief. And fear.
Fear of losing again.
---
That evening, back in the Chamber of Memories, Zyren stood before his mother's portrait.
He let the pendant rest against his heart.
"I promise, Mother," he whispered. "I'll listen. I'll protect what needs protecting."
The moonstone's warmth deepened. One beat. Then another.
His eyes fell to the journal.
His hand hovered above it.
Not yet.
But soon.
The dreams weren't just echoes.
They were callings.
Beyond Rithaleon's glittering towers, the world stirred—dark omens, unseen forces rising. It would need more than a prince.
It would need a dreamer with the courage to follow the stars into shadow.
And Zyren was ready.
Even if it led him straight into the fire.
---
*End of Chapter Two*