The crown didn't sleep.
Neither did I.
It pulsed from the depths of my pack, faint warmth threading through the worn canvas like a fever leaking into my bones. Every time I closed my eyes, fragments bled through—the king's memories sharp, searing, like embers caught in my skull.
Smoke-choked battlements.
Steel banners burning.
A name whispered through ash, over and over.
Varros.
My name. His name. Our name.
I didn't know which terrified me more.
And now… the horizon was calling.
Not softly. Not like some old wanderer's tale about greener pastures beyond the rubble.
No, this call had teeth. It scraped down my spine, a pressure building behind the eyes, thrumming through the bones like an itch I couldn't claw out.
The ruins behind me stretched in every direction, a graveyard of empire smothered in ash and silence.
Draal's melted spires clawed at the rotting sky, jagged silhouettes veiled in drifting cinders.
But past them… faint light shimmered on the horizon, distorted and broken through the heat-haze, as if the world beyond the Dead Zones still breathed—barely.
I'd seen other scavengers head that way, seeking rumored settlements, never to return.
The whispers weren't just from the crown anymore.
The world itself was pulling me forward.
It always does that when it's ready to kill you.
I adjusted my pack, the weight of the relic pressing sharp into the base of my spine, and set one foot over the fractured ridgeline of slagglass dunes.
The crown, a sudden surge of heat, made me stumble, a phantom ache in my bones.
Behind me, the empire's corpse.
Ahead, nothing promised but the unknown.
It felt right.
Felt suicidal.
Same thing these days.
The ash thinned the farther I walked, dunes giving way to crumbled stone roads half-buried under soot and creeping vines.
The trees came next—skeletal at first, charred stumps clawing skyward like brittle hands frozen mid-prayer.
But the farther I pushed from the blast zone, life bled back into the edges of the world.
If you could call it life.
The forest looming ahead was old. Twisted. Roots thicker than a man's torso writhed across the cracked earth, bark rough as charred bone, leaves sparse and sharp as glass shards.
The mist drifted low along the ground, curling around twisted trunks, swallowing sound.
Locals called it the Gravenreach.
I'd heard enough campfire stories to know two things about Gravenreach.
First—the woods didn't care if you bled.
Second—things that were supposed to be dead… weren't.
Still, my options were simple:
Face the ash-golems trailing through the Dead Zones behind me…
Or gamble with the haunted woods ahead.
"Brilliant," I muttered, tightening the scarf across my face.
The further I went, the thicker the trees.
Sound warped—distant, muffled, as if the air itself was holding its breath.
Birds didn't sing here.
Nothing rustled except the slow, shifting creak of wood too old to fall.
The crown throbbed, a dull pulse that made my teeth ache.
I kept moving.
The pulse of the crown guiding me like a second heartbeat I didn't ask for.
Hours bled by.
My boots tore through damp undergrowth, crunching bones buried beneath moss, half-rotted symbols etched into fallen stones.
Old wards. Forgotten emblems of a kingdom long drowned under ash and lies.
I wasn't alone.
A crackle ran down my neck, instincts screaming.
Through the mist, a silhouette shifted—too tall, too still, its embered eyes flickering.
An ash-golem, closer than I'd thought.
I crouched, heart pounding, the crown burning hotter in my pack.
It was there, then gone—a trick of the mist, or my mind.
But the scent of burning ash lingered.
I peered through the mist.
That's when I saw him.
A creature collapsed near the tree line—half-hidden in undergrowth and tangleweed.
For a second, my pulse jolted, thinking it was another scavenger, or worse, something ash-born trailing me from Draal.
But as I crept closer, I made out the battered frame of a horse.
Or… what was left of one.
Ribs stark under blood-matted fur, flank torn with ragged gashes, dried mud and soot caking its sides.
The beast's legs twitched faintly, hooves cracked and splintered from running gods-knew-how far.
Its eyes met mine.
Sharp. Defiant. Still burning with that animal refusal to die.
I should've walked away.
But something clawed at my gut—the same pull that led me to the crown, to the ruins, to this cursed path.
The same pull that kept me scavenging after Lila died, her face pale as this horse's, begging me to keep going.
The world didn't give gifts.
But it offered tests.
I approached slow, palms up, boots crunching glass-thin leaves underfoot.
The horse flinched, breath rasping, one hind leg kicking weakly at the dirt.
Blood oozed from a jagged wound across its flank—claw marks, wide and deep, blackened with a faint shimmer, as if the ash itself had clawed through.
I'd seen that shimmer before, in the golems' embered sockets.
"You're either lucky… or damned," I muttered, sinking to one knee beside him.
The beast huffed, eyes narrowing, head sagging against the forest floor.
The crown pulsed in my pack, a sudden, jarring vision of a king's silhouette, crowned and burning, making me wince.
The horse nudged my arm, as if pulling me back to the present.
I unpacked what little supplies I had—cloth strips, a battered flask of brackish water, half a tin of salve that probably expired when the gods still cared.
The crown pulsed in my pack, faint but insistent, as if amused.
"Shut up," I muttered.
It pulsed again—hotter.
Not angry. Not warning.
Mocking.
I ignored it, pressing the cloth to the horse's wounds, working fast.
The beast tensed under my hands, muscles shivering, but it didn't kick again.
Smart. Tired. Desperate. Like me.
By dusk, I had the worst of the bleeding slowed, crude bandages wrapped tight.
I scavenged edible roots from the undergrowth, rationed water between us.
We sat in the clearing, mist curling around our ankles, the sun bleeding out behind the treetops.
The horse's eyes stayed fixed on me—tired, but defiant—as if daring me to finish what the forest started.
I tilted my head, the faintest smile cracking through the ash and fatigue.
"Looks like we're both too stupid to die."
The beast snorted softly, one ear flicking.
I leaned back, watching the shadows stretch long across the clearing.
The horizon still called.
The road still waited.
But maybe for the first time in years…
I wouldn't walk it alone.
As the horse snorted, its ears pricked at a low, grinding moan from the forest's depths.
The crown pulsed hotter, and in my mind, a shadowed figure flickered—crowned, burning, watching.
Gods help us both.