The path curved downward like a wound splitting the spine of the world.
No birds here. No wind. Even the snow had stopped falling—as if it refused to touch the place ahead.
Lyra said the ruins were ancient.
Kael said they were cursed.
Seris said nothing.
But I knew what waited below.
Because the air was humming.
Not sound. Not magic.
It was my name.
Buried. Echoing.
Not the name I wear now, but one I'd worn long before this life. Before even the first Rift opened. A name heavy enough to make gods bow.
I didn't tell the others.
How could I?
How do you explain that your bones remember ruling a kingdom that no longer exists?
That the stones themselves grieve for you?
The descent narrowed into a maw of broken stone and silence. Forgotten stairwells slanted downward, fracturing into spirals of obsidian and ancient quartz-veined blackrock.
We lit no torches. Didn't need them.
The walls themselves glowed.
Faint runes pulsed across the stone—familiar to me in the way a childhood scar might feel familiar: not remembered, but owned.
Aeris hissed as we passed an archway of serpentine bone. His wings tucked tighter. His tail coiled.
"This place stinks," he muttered. "Of old oaths and older regrets."
He wasn't wrong.
The further we walked, the colder it became—but not frost-cold. Memory cold. Like walking through the aftermath of a dream you hadn't finished having.
And then… we stepped into the throne room.
Or what was left of it.
The chamber was circular. Colossal. Vaulted higher than any cathedral, its ceiling carved with constellations that didn't exist in this timeline.
Pillars wrapped in serpent-glyphs reached like frozen gods toward the heavens. The floor was glass etched with starlines—and in the center…
…a throne.
Shattered.
Caved in as if struck by a celestial fist.
But still humming.
Still alive.
Kael tensed. Lyra took a step closer to me. Seris stood very still. Eirin, who had followed us quietly all this way, lowered her gaze in mourning.
They could feel it.
This was mine.
Even in ruin, the throne knew me.
Even in death, this kingdom had not forgotten its last king.
I moved without knowing why.
My steps echoed like promises in a crypt. Aeris didn't follow. Lyra didn't speak. The others didn't breathe.
When I reached the broken dais, my fingers hovered above the stone.
The moment I touched it—
The world shattered.
Stone bled light.
My vision split.
I saw the chamber whole. Unbroken. Alive.
Gold banners hung from the ceiling, embroidered with a mark—a symbol I didn't remember but felt in my bones.
It was the sigil of my house.
Guards in celestial armor stood at attention. Astral clerics chanted beneath floating moons. A crowd of thousands stood in reverent silence.
All watching me.
Me, dressed in robes of night and fire. Crowned not with metal, but with a ring of stardust and oath-iron. Eyes aglow with nebular flame.
I sat on the throne.
And I was smiling.
But the smile was wrong. Cold. Controlled.
And in that version of myself… something had begun to unravel.
He—the past me—turned to a figure cloaked in black beside the throne.
Seris.
Her eyes were younger. Softer.
But her hand twitched near a dagger.
And I—the past me—saw it. And I let her.
The vision cracked again.
Flashed forward.
Seris, on her knees. Blood everywhere. Screaming.
Me—still crowned—face unreadable. Speaking a command I couldn't hear.
The kingdom burning.
Not from siege. Not from war.
From within.
Something had awakened in me. Something divine—and monstrous.
Something that was never meant to be reborn.
And as the sky split open, and the throne cracked, and Seris drove a blade into her own gut to stop herself from killing me—
I whispered a name.
The same name that had echoed up the stairwells.
My name.
The one this place remembered.
Vireon.
The vision snapped.
I collapsed.
Blood trickled from my nose. My fingers trembled against the broken throne. My knees hit the starlit glass.
Aeris screeched.
Eirin rushed to me, touching my temples, whispering in tongues not meant for waking ears.
Lyra grabbed my shoulders. "Aetherion—what happened?"
I looked up.
Kael drew his sword. Seris stood behind him.
Silent.
Pale.
Tears on her cheeks.
Because she remembered too.
She'd been there.
She'd killed for me. Died for me. Cried for me.
And failed to stop me.
I rose, slowly.
Not from strength.
From obligation.
The ruins were still vibrating. Still singing that forbidden name. Still calling me home.
I turned to them all.
"I ruled this place once," I said. My voice was hoarse. Hollow.
Kael nodded, as if he'd known all along.
Lyra looked away.
Eirin stared at the throne.
Seris… knelt.
Not from worship.
From guilt.
And that told me more than words ever could.
As I moved to leave, a sound echoed through the chamber.
Not a word.
A heartbeat.
Loud.
Cosmic.
The throne pulsed once.
A crack stitched through the air like lightning—
And something beneath the ruins… stirred.
Not dead.
Just waiting.