CHAPTER 1: THE ASHES OF CROWN
The bells of Krenus tolled through the fog-draped dawn, slow and sonorous, as though each peal were a hammer blow upon the hearts of the living. Their mournful sound rolled down the marble avenues, across the stone bridges spanning the River Viliya, and into the cramped alleys where bakers and cobblers stood silently outside their shuttered shops. From the highest gilded towers to the humblest hovels, the kingdom of Vlemour was wrapped in black.
King Romuleus II Valarius was dead.
For months, whispers had haunted the taverns, markets, and palace corridors: the king no longer rises from his bed, the healers have failed him, the disease gnawed at his body like a worm through fruit. Yet no one dared speak these things loudly. The lion of Vlemour, they said, was too strong to fall. But the lion had withered, and at the age of forty-six, Romuleus II, victor of campaigns, builder of roads and cities, the king known for his bravery and kindness, had surrendered his last breath.
The banners above Krenus sagged in mourning, crimson replaced by cloth the color of ash. The marketplaces, once loud with barter and laughter, were drowned in the sound of weeping. Women clutched their children, men bowed their heads, and even the stern soldiers who lined the citadel steps stood motionless, their spears pointed skyward like frozen pillars of grief.
The king's body lay in state within the Great Hall of the Citadel, where incense drifted like pale ghosts between towering columns. Lords and courtiers gathered in heavy silence, some with reddened eyes, others masking their sorrow behind rigid expressions. Yet beneath the mourning, beneath the prayers, a current of unease rippled. With Romuleus gone, who would steady the empire's hand?
At the head of the hall, upon a bier draped in black velvet, rested the coffin of the king. Beside it lay the crown, wrought of heavy gold and set with rubies that caught the light like drops of blood. It gleamed coldly, uncaring, as though mocking the mortal who could no longer bear its weight.
Before the coffin stood Queen Valentina.
Her veil was black, but no fabric could hide the rawness etched into her face. Her cheeks bore the glistening trace of tears, her lips pressed into a trembling line as if to hold back the storm inside her chest. Vlemour knew her as strong, proud, and unyielding—a queen who rode beside her husband in war councils, who walked the markets unguarded, who defied ambassadors with a tongue as sharp as steel. Yet today, even she seemed broken.
Clinging to her side was six-year-old Princess Lucia, who buried her face in the folds of her mother's gown, her small fingers knotted in desperation. Her sobs were not restrained or courtly but wild and honest, filling the vaulted chamber with a child's unfiltered grief. Her shoulders shook, her breath hitched, her voice cracked as she whimpered for a father who would never answer again.
On the queen's left stood Princess Lucilia, twenty-two and undone by anguish. She reached toward the coffin with trembling hands, her cries untempered by ceremony. "Father," she called, her voice breaking against the vaulted ceiling, "come back… please, come back…" Tears streaked down her face in rivers, and in that moment, she was no princess of Vlemour, no noble daughter of a king—only a grieving child robbed of her anchor. Her cries reverberated through the hall, a sharp contrast to the murmured prayers of lords who dared not weep so loudly.
And on the right side of the bier, apart from the wailing and trembling, stood a boy of fourteen, his face was pale, his body rigid as stone. He made no sound, shed no tear. His dark eyes were fixed on the coffin, locked in a silence too deep for words. He was not calm—he was frozen, as if time itself had stopped. Around him, grief washed like a flood, but he remained unmoving, drowning in silence.
The courtiers whispered behind their sleeves. "The boy will be the king...." "The boy must wear the crown his father has left behind..."
But the boy heard none of it. His sisters' wails, his mother's trembling breaths, the prayers of the priests—all of it faded into a blur. There was only the coffin. Only the face that had once laughed, once commanded, once embraced him with warmth and strength. Now that face was carved in stillness, distant, unreachable.
The boy felt the gaze of the crown beside the coffin, its weight pressing on him from across the chamber though it had not yet touched his brow. He knew, even in his silence, that it would never rest lightly.
The people mourned their king. The queen wept for her husband. The daughters grieved for their father. But Prince Lucius… Lucius had lost more than all of them. He had lost his father—his role model and his childhood.
The weight of the crown had already found him.