Chapter 21 Crown of Ashes
Chapter twenty-one
Crown of Ashes
-Alarik-
The war room of Calanthe was carved from bone and stone.
Not metaphorically. Black stone fused with the remnants of beasts long extinct, their rib-like arches coiling high above the table where maps bled ink and ancient runes pulsed softly from the stone like old scars refusing to heal.
Alarik stood at its center, a ghost in light silk.
He wore light like a weapon. Not radiant, reflective. Untouchable.
To the kingdom, he was a lightless sun. To his enemies, a king of impossible stillness, lethal grace, and sharpened edges. But only one in the room knew the weight behind the mask.
Zairon leaned nearby, polishing a blade he didn’t need to sharpen. He was all contrast: warm bronze skin, tight braids twisted back at the nape of his neck, and eyes like golden honey. His voice had calmed rebellions, but his fists had ended far more.
“They’ve seen movement along the borders,” he said, gesturing to a silver-tipped map. "Kael knows you're up to something Alarik."
“Let him piece it together, he will be too late.” Alarik murmured, eyes fixed on the runes.
Zairon’s brow lifted. “You’ve been playing this game for too long. Tell me it’s more than a whim now.”
Alarik didn’t look up. “It was never a whim.”
He unrolled a scroll beside the map. Not a battle plan. A page from a tome, copied in his own hand.
Scrawled across the aged parchment was a note, the next note he planned to leave in a certain mortal girl’s reading chamber, slipped between the spine of an irrelevant history text.
The one chosen will not always shine. Her light may be hidden in flesh and grief. But when the hour comes, the dreaming shall stir.
Zairon read it, his mouth flattening.
“You’ve been planting notes,” he said flatly.
“I needed to know if she could be stirred,” Alarik replied, finally glancing up. “If her magic would shift. If she even had it.”
“And?”
“Clearly, its having an effect. The spies' reports mention a rising number of incidents involving her — unusual magic.” He smiled without humor. Eyes glowing a deep violet, “Confusion. Doubt. That was enough to set her on the path.”
Zairon crossed his arms. “You could get caught.”
“I haven't ben yet.” He said with a cocky shrug.
Zairon gave a dry laugh. “So you just — use your mirror to waltz into Nythra. Disguised. Into Kael’s court. Just to leave cryptic messages like a cursed suitor with a poetry addiction?”
Alarik’s smile turned cold. “Not a suitor. A scientist. A scholar. A desperate king.”
He turned toward the window.
“After the first prophecy, I knew I’d have to see her for myself. Something about her blood hums. Old magic. Stifled, but breathing.”
Zairon said nothing.
“She reads the tomes,” Alarik went on. “She finds my notes. I shape the spells so Kael’s little lorekeeper doesn’t notice. I even used blood ink from my own veins to bind it to her vision.”
“Does she know?” Zairon asked carefully.
“No. Not yet. She just knows she’s changing. Questioning herself.” Alarik looked over his shoulder. “And now Kael knows something’s not right too. Her slips of magic. His silence even as our forces move toward the border forts, his fear is keeping him frozen.”
He stepped closer to the map, laying a palm on the stretch of borderland between Nythra and Calanthe.
“She is the storm of the dreamer’s heart,” he whispered. “The seer warned me.”
Zairon tensed. “So it’s true.”
“I can’t prove it,” Alarik admitted. “But I feel it. In my blood. In the land itself. The Veil shudders with her presence.”
“And you think she’s the one?” Zairon asked quietly.
“I think,” Alarik said, “she’s either the salvation of us all —or the match that will ignite a war that we won’t survive.”
Zairon’s hand fell to the hilt of his sword. “So what now?”
"I go into her dreams, I'll continue to plant the seeds of doubt, and guide her into what she could become."
Alarik’s eyes burned like glass under lightning.
The king stood in the shadows of his sanctum, a tall and narrow room walled in glass etched with constellations no longer seen. A wind stirred beyond the highest spires of Calanthe, carrying the scent of saltwater.
Alarik’s hands moved slowly over a shallow silver basin.
Water shimmered within, laced with powdered dreamroot, ash, and slivers of fae crystal , each piece humming faintly with latent power.
A strand of her night black hair floated across the surface, taken from a garment she had worn once while walking Nythra’s library halls.
“If only there was another way,” he said aloud to the empty air.
But the Veil was thinning and the gods’ hands were not yet done mending in their world.
And he could not sit idly by and wait to see what new horrors would continue to eat away at his kingdom.
His reflection shimmered in the basin —not the gilded king the world knew, but something rawer. Older. His soul.
The gods wanted destruction.
He would give them hesitation instead.
Dreamwalking would come at a price, he would need to forfeit parts of his soul in order to enter hers. But he was willing, this served as a cleaner solution than open war and chaos to obtain her. Saving the lives of his people in tow.
He would haunt her dreams, he'd twist the narrative, redirect her loyalty. It wouldn't happen overnight — Alarik would guide her gently, until she turned from Kael on her own and chose him instead.
He exhaled, and whispered a word in the lost tongue of dreamwalkers.
The water flared silver. His body went still.
And Alarik slipped between the seams of the world.
The dream was soft at first.
A ripple of white sheets. A flicker of candlelight.
Maris lay beneath layers of velvet, one arm thrown above her head, hair spilling across the pillow like ink.
The room twisted in fragments, her memory filling in what she knew: the stone walls of Nythra, the soft coals in the hearth, a book fallen open beside her.
She did not know he was there. Not yet.
Alarik stood in the shadows beyond the hearth, cloaked in his own woven illusion. The dream twisted around his presence, letting him in.
She looked the same as he remembered, more perhaps. Luminous even in sleep. Fragile and unknowingly dangerous.
He stepped forward slowly.
Maris stirred.
In the dream, her eyes opened.
But this was not like waking. Not truly. Her gaze was hazed.
Alarik’s voice was gentle.
“You’ve felt it, haven’t you?”
She blinked. “Who — who are you?”
“You’ve read the words. In the books. The ones not meant to be there.”
Maris sat up, dream-fabric shifting around her form like smoke. Her breathing changed.
“Am I dreaming?” she whispered.
He gave a sad smile. “You are.”
“Then you’re not real.”
Alarik tilted his head. “ I’m something real enough.”
Maris shook her head. “I don’t —understand.”
“You will,” he said.
He stepped closer, and the fire did not cast a shadow behind him.
She should have been afraid, but dreams stole fear, and planted wonder in its place.
“Why me?” she asked.
Alarik’s voice was velvet and regret. “Because the gods made a mistake.”
Her lips parted. “What mistake?”
He brushed his fingers along the edge of the dream not quite touching her.
“They tried to curse us. To divide us. But in doing so, they left a wound in the world. And something — someone is bleeding through it.”
It came to him then. Her magic, her faint nightbound and ancient blood. What her potential could be.
Maris’ brow creased.
“You’re talking about the Veil.”
Alarik met her eyes. “And you. Veil Breaker.”
The dream flickered.
Outside the palace, thunder cracked across the mountains of Nythra.
Maris startled reached toward him without thinking and the moment her fingertips passed into the hollow space where his were, the dream fractured.
Silver light burst from the seams of the vision. Reality rebelled.
She gasped.
Alarik was torn backward, the dream unraveling like brittle cloth. Before it collasped, he saw her once more.
She was staring straight at him — not startled. A flicker of something far worse bloomed in her eyes. Understanding and resolve.
And as the dream snapped shut behind him like a slammed door, he felt it — some tether still clinging. Some fragile, burning shard of himslef left behind, lodged deep within her like a buried blade.
Alarik slammed back into himself with a violent jolt — lungs locking, vision white-hot, the taste of copper thick on his tongue. The ward-sigils cut into the floor flared once, then guttered out. He laid there a breath longer than his pride should have allowed, palms flat, heart misfiring.
The door opened before he could sit up.
Zairon filled the threshold, arms folded, sword at his side —golden eyes taking in the scene before him. "You look like you lost a fight with the human," he said mildly. "Or with your own ego. Hard to tell at this distance."
Alarik pushed to his feet, wiped the blood from beneath his nose with the back of his hand, he gave a sly smile that didn't meet his eyes. "You waited."
"I usually do when my king abandons his body to trespass in other’s minds." Zairon stepped inside, gaze flicking to the dimmed sigils. "Well? Did you reach her?"
Alarik let out a ragged laugh. "I did, but she reached me too."
Zairon rised a brow. "Meaning what?"
He reached for the table, fingers bracing on cold stone as the ache of travel tore through him. "She saw me. Not the projection. Me. And when the dream snapped, I … didnt come back whole."
Alarik met his friends gaze, "Enough to miss. She kept more of me than I meant to leave behind."
Zairon exhaled slowly raking a hand down his face. "You expected to plant doubt. But instead you gave over your soul."
"Call it leverage. Call it a bond. Call it divine spite.
" Alarik straightened, shoulders squaring despite the tremor in his hands.
"Either way — she's stronger than Kael realizes.
And now she has a hold I didn't intend to give.
" A dangerous smile curved his mouth. "Which means I have one too. . if I'm careful."
Zarion shook his head. "Try not to let 'careful' become 'dead' old friend. She knows exactly what you look like — if she shares that information with Kael he will know exact what transpired and you'll have the war you wish to avoid on your hands."