Chapter 49 – Shadows That Speak
The night after Ella's coronation brought no celebration. There was no feasting, no laughter. The castle, though secure, throbbed with tension. Something in the wind had shifted. Liam felt it in his bones the moment he woke up, the glyph on his chest faintly humming, as if it too could sense the oncoming storm.
Ella sensed it too. She stood by the obsidian mirror in the royal chamber, her reflection fractured by ancient cracks running down the glass, gazing into its depths as if the answers would appear from within.
"They're testing the boundaries," she whispered.
Liam turned from the balcony. "Who?"
"There are whispers from the Black Ridge. Movements where none should be. A reek of old magic, buried magic. The kind that walks with a name but no soul."
"The Council?" he asked, fastening his tunic.
Ella shook her head. "Worse. Spirits that predate the Council. Names even Neretha feared. I felt them stir when the Echo Crown answered your blood. They heard us... and now they remember."
Before Liam could respond, the door flew open. Althaea entered, disheveled and pale, her breath ragged from running. "My Queen, my Lord," she panted, "one of the ancient vaults has been desecrated. Lord Severen's tomb is empty."
Ella's face lost color. "Severen the Binder? The one buried beneath three silver coffins?"
"Yes. And the silver melted like wax. There were runes clawed into the crypt stone... in blood that hasn't dried."
Liam felt the room spin. "Severen was locked away during the War of Fangs. That was over a thousand years ago. No magic should've been able to break that seal."
Ella looked to the mirror again. "Unless it wasn't magic. Unless it was something older. A will that never died."
Throughout the day, troubling reports flooded in. Dead forests walking. Entire villages swallowed by red mist. Scouts returned with haunted eyes and cryptic warnings. Some couldn't speak at all. One carried a sealed scroll, its wax unfamiliar, humming with heat.
Liam broke the seal. The parchment was warm to the touch and pulsed like a heartbeat. The glyph on it burned his eyes.
We remember the old blood. And we want it back.
No signature. No emblem. Just a glyph he recognized from the Crimson Archives—tied to the Cult of the Night Reborn, a fanatical order believed long-extinct, exterminated during the Purge.
"Impossible," Althaea murmured. "The Night Reborn were wiped out."
"Apparently not," Liam replied. "They were waiting. Watching. And now that the crown has changed hands, they see an opening."
Ella summoned the council. War preparations were immediate. Glyph-forgers were recalled from every province. The wards etched into the castle walls were strengthened with blood rites. The Echo Crown pulsed with unease every time Liam touched it.
In the forbidden depths of the Bloodstone Library, Liam and Althaea pored through cursed tomes and seers' journals. He found mention of a prophecy: "He who alters the throne will summon its shadow."
It was accompanied by a drawing—an uncanny figure sitting on a throne of bone, a glyph carved into his chest. The same glyph Liam now bore.
That night, Liam's dreams grew darker.
He stood in a skyless void. Ash rained down like snow. Before him, a throne built from skulls and shadows. On it sat a man—his own mirror image, aged, cruel, with void-black eyes and claws instead of hands.
"You wear the glyph," the doppelgänger said. "But you do not command it. You are the gate."
Liam's mouth felt full of ash. "Gate to what?"
The double smiled. "To the end."
Liam woke screaming, the glyph on his chest glowing red-hot. Ella was already at his side, sword drawn, eyes glowing.
"They came into my dreams too," she said. "They showed me rivers of blood. Our realm burning. You... sitting on their throne."
The castle shook violently. Books fell. Candles flickered. From the highest tower, a light beam shot into the clouds, followed by the roar of the wards engaging. The walls were under strain. Not from attack—but from within.
From the sky, a storm rolled down. Not wind. Not rain. A mist of red that hissed against the barriers.
Then a voice echoed through every corridor, every soul.
"You wear the crown of false peace. You changed what was written. Surrender the glyph, or we take it in fire."
Ella turned to Liam. "This isn't war. This is reckoning."
He took her hand. "Then we fight it together. No more ancient rules. No more inherited chains."
"Then prepare the blood forge," she said. "We craft a new glyph. One that belongs to us."
As the castle blazed with alarm and energy, Liam whispered under his breath, feeling the glyph shift like something alive:
Let them come. I've bled for this throne. I won't bow to shadows.
End of Chapter 49 – Shadows That Speak