The rain fell on the kingdom of Caelthorne not as water, but as nails.
It hammered the lead-lined coffin of King Osric Caelthorne, each drop a final, dismissive stamp on a reign cut short by a fever that burned too fast and too fierce. In the torch-lit crypt, the air was thick with the smell of wet stone, damp earth, and the cloying sweetness of funeral lilies.
Princess Elaris Caelthorne stood alone at the precipice. Before her, the darkness of the royal crypt waited. Behind her, the living world held its breath. The crown on her head was a cold, dead weight, a circlet of iron and regret.
Her youngest brother, Finn, offered a hand she didn't take. His touch was like a spider's skitter. "Steady, sister," he murmured, his voice all false sympathy. "The weight of a kingdom is a heavy thing. Especially for… fragile shoulders."
She ignored him, her gaze fixed on the coffin. Her father was in there. The man with a laugh that could fill a throne room. The man who, in his final, delirious hours, had gripped her wrist with a skeletal hand, his eyes wide with a terror that no fever could conjure.
"The throne," he had rasped, his breath a ghost of decay. "It doesn't guide you, Elaris. It consumes you. It's not a seat. It's a digestive organ. And she… she is the oldest hunger. She makes you love the taste of your own soul. Promise me… promise me you will not sit—"
A fit of coughing had stolen the rest of the warning, leaving only the echo of madness.
Now, as the priests chanted their final rites, Elaris felt the promise wither on her tongue. She had no choice. To not sit was to surrender Caelthorne to the vultures circling behind her—to Darius's cold entitlement, to Rylan's revolutionary fire, to Finn's venomous whispers.
The ceremony ended. The court retreated, a river of black silk and murmured condolences flowing back to the palace. But Elaris remained, rooted to the spot until the last courtier was gone, until the only sound was the relentless drumming of the rain and the frantic beating of her own heart.
She turned from her father's grave and ascended the steps to the one place she dreaded more than any other.
The Great Hall was empty, a vast cavern of shadows. And at its heart, it waited.
The Throne of Echoes.
It was a monstrous, beautiful thing, carved from a single block of obsidian that seemed to drink the torchlight. Silver veins, like frozen lightning, ran through it, tracing the outlines of screaming faces and forgotten battles. It was the history of her bloodline, written in stone and agony.
Her footsteps echoed like gunshots in the silence. This was the seat of her power. The source of her curse.
She had to sit. It was the law.
Gathering the shreds of her courage, she lowered herself onto the cold, unforgiving stone.
For a single, blissful moment, there was nothing. Only the chill seeping through her dress.
Then, the world ended.
It was not a sound. It was a physical force—a tsunami of consciousness that slammed into her mind. A roar of a thousand battlefields, the sibilant whisper of a hundred poisons being poured, the crack of bone, the last wet gasp of a strangled king, and beneath it all, a low, resonant hum of pure, ancient madness.
"—the Caelthorne blood must tell—" "—hang the dissidents, hang them all—" "—the western trade route is the key, you fool—" "—she's too weak, just like her grandfather—"
Voices. Dozens of them. Hundreds. Overlapping, arguing, screaming inside her skull. She clutched her head, a scream trapped in her own throat.
Then, two voices cut through the chaos, clear and terrible.
One was cold, sharp, and imperial, a voice of rusted iron and absolute law: "The Caelthorne line continues. The vessel is… acceptable. You will obey."
It was answered by another. A voice of silk and shadow, gentle as a mother's lullaby and just as suffocating. It whispered directly into the core of her terror, an intimate caress against the storm.
"Hush, now, my darling child. Do not fear their noise. Their time is past. Mine is yet to come. I have been waiting for you for so, so long."
Elaris recoiled, throwing herself from the throne. She landed hard on the cold marble floor, scrambling backward like a cornered animal, her breath coming in ragged, sobbing gasps.
The hall was silent.
The throne sat, inert and ominous.
But the voices… the voices were still there. A faint, persistent echo at the edge of her hearing. A permanent audience to her reign.
She was not alone.
She was haunted.
And the most terrifying voice of all had sounded like home.