The kneeling wraiths dissolved with the dawn.
As the first pale light broke over the treetops, the shadows that had haunted the forest slipped back into the ground, as if fearing what Kael had become. But they left behind their silence. a heavy, haunted stillness that wrapped the clearing in tension.
Kael stood unmoving, the Crown of Thorns in his hands once more. Its pulse had changed. No longer hostile. No longer fighting him. It waited, as if testing his resolve.
Arin broke the silence. "They obeyed you."
Kael didn't meet his eyes. "They didn't obey me… they obeyed the bloodline."
Arin's face darkened. "The one you swore you'd never claim."
Kael's fingers tightened around the crown. "I didn't choose this path. But turning from it won't stop what's coming."
Behind them, the ancient tomb closed with a soft rumble, the entrance sealing itself as though it had served its purpose. The forest, too, seemed to settle. But it wasn't peace—it was the hush before a storm.
"We should leave," Arin said. "The others will be waiting."
Kael nodded slowly. "Yes. But not as we were."
They descended the hill, shadows trailing behind them like cloaks. At the edge of the forest, a strange sight awaited: Isla, bloodied but standing, flanked by a group of survivors from the siege, the fox-eyed girl, the blacksmith's son, and even an old general Kael thought long dead.
She ran to him.
The moment she saw the crown, her steps faltered. Her eyes narrowed. "You wore it."
He didn't deny it. "I had to."
She stepped closer, gaze locked on the faint scars across his brow. "And did it change you?"
Kael's answer was quiet. "It remembered me. And I remembered what I am."
Silence settled between them, heavy with things left unsaid. Then Isla reached for his hand—not to pull him close, but to steady herself.
"There's something you need to see," she said.
They followed her to the edge of a ruined overlook, where the world dropped into a vast valley.
Smoke rose from dozens of burning villages.
Banners Kael didn't recognize fluttered among the wreckage-black crowned with serpents. At the center of the valley stood a fortress he had only seen in dreams: Vareth Draal, the Citadel of the Drowned Kings.
Arin cursed under his breath. "That place is a myth."
Kael stared, cold spreading through his limbs. "Not anymore."
Above the citadel, the clouds churned with crimson light. Lightning flickered. And for a moment, just a breath, Kael saw him.
A figure in golden armor.
Watching.
Smiling.
The King Who Never Died.
The vision faded.
Kael turned to his people, voice raw but steady. "We march to Vareth Draal."
Isla looked at him. "To make war?"
"No." His gaze never left the horizon. "To end one."
The wind howled.
And behind them, the forest whispered of thrones long forgotten and of a boy who had become something more than cursed.
He had become a reckoning.