The trees thinned as dusk fell, giving way to jagged stone that jutted from the earth like broken teeth. The path wound upward, frost clinging to every step, until the boys stood at the ridge.
Below them, half-buried in snow and shadow, sprawled the ruins. Shattered spires clawed at the sky. Walls leaned at impossible angles. Archways yawned open like the jaws of beasts long dead. And between the stones, the air itself seemed wrong—heavier, thicker, as if time itself had congealed here.
Lyon tightened his grip on his staff. "Feels like walking into a grave."
Aiden's violet eyes flickered faintly in the dim light. "It is a grave. A kingdom's, if the whispers are true."
They descended slowly, boots crunching against shards of stone. The ruins swallowed them whole. Every wall bore faint etchings of runes, worn smooth by centuries, yet still glowing faintly beneath the frost. Faces carved into pillars stared with hollow eyes, and as the wind threaded through them, it sounded like voices.
At first, it was murmurs. Then it grew clearer.
Welcome…
Stay…
Become…
Lyon flinched, his storm-grey eyes darting around. "You hear that?"
"Yes," Aiden murmured, his hand brushing the air. Shadows bent around his fingertips, curling like smoke. "Don't answer them."
They pressed deeper into the ruins, until they reached what might have once been a hall. Its roof had long since collapsed, leaving a sky of ash-grey above. In the center, a stone throne sat shattered, split down the middle. Upon it lay a figure—skeletal, yet clothed in fragments of royal garb, crown rusted but still gleaming faintly.
The air grew colder. The whispers became a chorus.
Lyon took a step back. "I don't like this."
"You're not supposed to." Aiden's voice was steady, but his violet gaze lingered on the throne too long. "This place remembers us. Or… thinks it does."
The skeletal figure twitched.
Both boys froze.
The corpse's jaw shifted, brittle bone grinding. From its hollow mouth came a sound that was not its own—a thousand voices speaking as one:
"The chosen return… but the kingdom does not forgive."
The runes on the walls blazed. The ground trembled. From the shadows of the hall, shapes began to form—half-human, half-wraith, their bodies little more than black smoke stitched with bone and frost.
Lyon lifted his staff, the iron rings rattling violently as sparks of stormlight crackled along its length. "You said not to answer them. Does blasting them count?"
Aiden stepped forward, the cloak around him unfurling as darkness bled from his hands, coiling like serpents. His voice dropped, low and sharp as steel.
"Blasting them is the only answer they'll understand."
The wraiths surged, their screeches echoing like broken glass. Shadows clawed the floor. Lightning hissed in Lyon's staff, storm meeting darkness in a violent hum.
The ruins, once silent, now lived again—haunted by the ghosts of the dead, and hostile with the hunger of something that had waited too long.
And the boys, flame and storm in their own right, stood against it.
______