Chapter 8
She dreams of ash.
It drifts like snow through a dead sky, weightless but heavy, covering everything in silence. The stone beneath her bare feet is cracked, pulsing faintly with a dull, embered glow—like a heartbeat buried too deep to rise.
There’s screaming in the distance. Or maybe they’re memories. Or maybe they’re her own screams, tearing from her throat until it’s raw.
Something sharp glints near the foot of a blackened throne—half-melted, twisted into something that once meant power and now only whispers ruin.
A crown. Or what’s left of one. She reaches for it—her fingers blistered and trembling, skin blooming with smoke. There is no pain, there never is. Just the unbearable weight in her chest, pressing down like grief carved into stone.
She cannot move.
She cannot run.
The air thickens.
“You were warned.”
The voice comes from everywhere and nowhere. It’s not cruel, but it carries no mercy either.
The ash begins to swirl faster, like it’s being pulled by something unseen—spiralling in on her, around her, into her.
She opens her mouth to speak, but her tongue is thick with soot and flame. She tastes betrayal.
A figure rises from the smoke. No face. No name. Just shadow.
“She will return.”
Her knees buckle. The throne burns brighter behind her. The stone at her feet cracks wider, light pushing up from below—hellfire or memory, or something worse.
She falls—