"When the Crown shattered, the world forgot its shape—but fire remembers."
—From the Chronicles of Lysaria
...
The capital of Terenhold smelled of copper, smoke, and broken promises.
Ash crouched on the rooftop of a crumbling bathhouse, wrapped in a threadbare cloak, his breath steaming in the winter dusk. Below, the market square buzzed—merchants shouting inflated prices, pickpockets weaving like rats, guards stamping in the slush. Farther off, above the palisade of rooftops, the shattered towers of the Obsidian Keep clawed at the sky like burnt fingers.
His mark had just emerged from the tea house. A minor noble. Red sash, gold rings, too many bodyguards for someone who pretended to be discreet.
Ash's stomach growled.
He didn't want coin tonight.
He wanted answers.
The noble's name was Lord Renn Marrix, and he'd once served Queen Lysaria—Ash's mother. Long ago, before the crown fell, before the city learned to forget her name.
Renn knew something. Ash had paid in blood to confirm it.
He dropped silently from the roof, boots kissing stone. The slush swallowed the sound. His shard pulsed at his chest, a dull warmth under his skin. It had awakened three nights ago—right after his fever dream and the burning of the orphan tower.
Ash hadn't told anyone. Not even Lira.
Especially not Lira.
He followed Renn through winding alleys toward the old war district. Strange place for a noble to walk alone.
Except he wasn't alone.
Three figures peeled from the shadows—city guards, but not in uniform. Ash ducked behind a splintered barrel and listened.
"You sure he's alone?" one of them asked.
Renn grunted. "You saw the sign. The shard's in him. Lysaria's brat lives."
Ash tensed.
"I want him taken alive. The Queen of Sorrow will pay more for breathing meat."
Ash's blood ran cold. He gripped the hilt of his curved blade, mind racing.
So it was true.
She was hunting him.
The Queen of Sorrow—Lysaria's betrayer, now empress in all but name. Her reach had always been long, but if she knew he was alive… she wouldn't stop.
He slipped from the barrel, moving fast.
The first guard didn't hear him coming. A single strike to the neck, a twist, a muffled collapse.
Ash's shard flared—heat spread through his veins, licking the edges of his vision in amber light.
The second turned, blade drawn, but too slow.
Ash didn't think. He burned.
A ripple of fire licked from his hand. Not a blaze—more like coals peeling from a furnace. It hissed across the air, curling through the man's chest, branding his flesh with glowing marks before dropping him in a scream of smoke.
The third ran.
Ash didn't follow. Not yet.
He turned to Renn, blade drawn.
"You knew my mother," he said coldly.
Renn's eyes widened. "You—Ashkarion—no, no, it can't be—"
"Tell me what she gave you. Tell me why you kept her name hidden."
But before Renn could speak, something shifted behind him.
A ripple in the air.
Ash's eyes snapped up.
A woman stepped from the shadows. Skin like cracked ivory, eyes like still water, and a crown of jagged bone fragments encircling her head.
Not a woman.
A Mirror Wight.
One of the Queen's spies.
Ash barely moved in time. Her claws sliced through air where his neck had been. Renn screamed as the wight's second hand plunged through his chest like paper.
Ash leapt back, drawing fire into his palms.
The Mirror Wight tilted her head, then dissolved into smoke—gone before the flame could reach her.
Renn gurgled and fell.
Ash ran.
---
He didn't stop until he reached the Bonespire District—Terenhold's oldest quarter, where witches, beggars, and shardless lived like ghosts. Narrow stairways and rope-bridges connected crumbling towers. This was where Lira waited.
She stood in the doorway of a collapsed cathedral, her mirrored shard glowing faintly in the dark.
"You're late," she said without looking at him.
"I was being hunted," he snapped. "The Queen's sent wights."
"She already knows who you are."
"How?" Ash demanded.
"Because the Crown remembers," Lira said, eyes meeting his. "And you're not the only one it whispers to."
Ash's skin prickled. "What does that mean?"
Lira stepped aside, revealing another figure within the cathedral's broken nave.
An old man in rags sat before a rusted altar, hands blackened from ink and ash. His eyes were blind, milky white. But when Ash stepped closer, the man smiled.
"I felt the flame awaken," the stranger rasped. "And I followed it here."
"Who are you?"
"I was called many things. Wyrm-Priest. Liar. Scribe of the Deep."
He raised a hand—and in it was a shard. Hollow. Pulsing with a void that bent the light.
Ash stared.
"Why would you come here?" he asked.
The man's grin widened.
"To teach you what your mother died protecting."
The room grew colder. Lira tensed.
"Teach me what?"
The man leaned forward.
> "The Crown is not just broken," he whispered. "It's waking up."