Crown of Shattered Veils

'Celestia'

I sighed, the sound swallowed by the oppressive silence of the royal infirmary. My fingers traced the edge of the linen bandages wrapped around my chest, the wound beneath them a dull, persistent ache. Almost healed. Almost. But the memory of Umbra's fist splitting my ribs still lingered like a phantom blade.

The room was too pristine—white stone walls carved with ivy motifs, sunlight filtering through arched windows stained with the crest of Sentria's royal family. Beyond the glass, houses and beyond the houses, the Vesper Forest stretched endlessly, its ancient pines swaying like sentinels. Aurorath, the capital, was a jewel cradled in their emerald grasp. A fortress. Five centuries ago, those towering walls had been raised to keep Hunters at bay. Now, they felt as fragile as parchment.

Rhys.

His name scraped against my thoughts. We'd been found together in that crater, the valley around us reduced to a smoldering wasteland. What did you do? The question gnawed at me. Umbra had probably been a tempest of shadows, a force beyond Tier 1. And yet, we'd survived. We haven't been spared, as soon as he met us we were announced dead. Rhys? Just who or what are you?

The door groaned open, pulling me from the spiral. A subordinate stood framed in the threshold, his crisp black uniform at odds with the infirmary's sterile calm.

"General Celestia," he intoned, bowing stiffly. "Princess Elysia awaits. The council is convened."

I rose, muscles protesting, and followed him through corridors hewn from quartz so pale it glowed. The ceiling soared above us, held aloft by pillars carved to resemble trees—roots twisting into the floor, branches fanning into vaulted arches. Aurorath's obsession with nature, even in its stone.

The meeting chamber loomed ahead, its double doors guarded by two Sentinels in ivory armor. Their spears crossed at my approach, blades humming with embedded Force crystals. A heartbeat later, the barriers parted.

The chamber was a cold marvel. A semicircular table of frosted moonstone. Around it sat Sentria's most lethal minds: generals with eyes like flint, advisors whose magic had sculpted battlefields. And at the apex, her.

Princess Elysia.

She leaned forward, the light catching the molten gold of her eyes—a trait as royal as the crown she refused to wear. Her hair, a cascade of autumn fire, spilled over shoulders draped in a mantle stitched with silver thread. Beautiful. At nineteen, she wielded power like a dagger, precise and unflinching.

"Celestia," she said, my name a command and a relief.

I took my place at the table's heart, the eyes of Sentria's elite pricking my skin. To my left, a figure shifted—Isolde, Sentinel Tier 1. Her armor was obsidian veined with crimson, the mark of a warrior who'd slaughtered armies. She didn't speak. She didn't need to. Her presence alone was a verdict: Explain. Or perish.

Elysia's gaze never wavered. "Report."

The word hung in the air, brittle. They knew already. Knew about the crater, the whispers of an Intelligent Hunter, the boy who shouldn't exist. But they wanted the story tainted—by doubt, by fear, by whatever cracks they could exploit.

I straightened, ignoring the pull of scar tissue. "We engaged a Hunter beyond classification. It spoke. It strategized. It… enjoyed the fight."

A murmur slithered through the council. Isolde's fingers drummed her blade's hilt.

Elysia's voice cut through the noise. "And the amnesiac? Rhys?"

What did he do? The memory surged—Umbra's hand buried in his chest, Rhys's eyes flickering with something older than fear.

"He survived," I said flatly.

"How?"

The question came from everywhere and nowhere. The truth coiled in my throat, venomous. I don't know. But in this room of wolves, ignorance was weakness.

So I lied.

"Luck."

The princess's voice cut through the chamber, precise and cold as a scalpel.

"That human boy named Rhys." She paused, letting the syllables hang like a executioner's blade. "We found ashes in his blood."

The silence that followed was a living thing—taut, suffocating. Then the room erupted.

General Varyn, his face a roadmap of old battle scars, slammed a gauntleted fist onto the moonstone table. "Ashes?" The word was a snarl. "You speak of children's tales, Princess. Superstitions."

But others were already rising, voices overlapping in a cacophony of dread:

"The Ashen Prophecy—"

"—abomination of flesh and shadow—"

"—burn him before the rot spreads!"

Elysia's eyes flared, a flicker of gold igniting into wildfire. The air itself seemed to thicken, pressing down until the dissenters choked on their own fear.

"Enough."

The command wasn't loud. It didn't need to be.

She rose, her crimson hair catching the light like spilled blood. "The myth," she began, each word measured, "states that when ash blooms in the veins of the living, the Veil trembles. The Hunters tremble. It marks one who walks the line between our world and theirs. A hybrid. A key."

Isolde, silent until now, tilted her head. Her obsidian armor whispered as she leaned forward. "A key to what, Your Radiance? Victory? Or annihilation?"

Elysia didn't blink. "That depends on who holds him."

A young general with a serpent's smile—Lirael, known for her poison-tipped diplomacy—rose. "Hybrids are forbidden. By your father's decree. Or have you forgotten the Purge of Emberfall?"

The name sent a shiver through the room. A decade ago, an entire village had been reduced to cinders for harboring a half-Hunter child.

Elysia's expression didn't waver. "My father is dead. The throne sees… differently now."

"Then the throne is blind!" Varyn barked. "You'd let this thing live? Let it fester in our midst?"

Celestia's nails bit into her palms. Thing. The word coiled in her gut, hot and sour. She'd seen Rhys's face when he thought no one was looking—the way he stared at his hands as if they might dissolve, the nightmares that left him gasping in the infirmary's dark. Monsters don't fear themselves.

But before she could speak, Elysia's gaze locked onto her. "General Dawnveil. You've fought beside him. Is he a threat?"

The question was a trap.

Celestia chose truth. "He doesn't even know what he is."

The princess smiled, sharp as a stiletto. "Precisely. Which is why he remains under my protection. For now."

Chaos erupted again, but Elysia silenced it with a raised hand. "The Ashen Prophecy is not our enemy. Fear is. And Sentria has cowered in these walls long enough."

She turned, her mantle sweeping behind her like a comet's tail. "We will study him. Train him. And when the time comes…"

Her gold eyes met Celestia's.

"…we will wield him."

"As soon as the boy recovers," Elysia said, her voice carving the air like a decree etched in stone, "you, Isolde, will teach him to fight. He may be the key to unraveling the Hunters' truth—and ending this war."

Isolde's eyebrow arched, a sliver of ice in her otherwise impassive mask. Her gauntleted fingers flexed, the obsidian plates of her armor whispering like a blade unsheathed.

"Princess," she began, the title laced with barely veiled disdain, "reconsider. He is human. A flicker in a century-long storm. Sentria's halls are no place for his kind."

The princess didn't flinch. "Sentria's halls are mine to command. And I do not reconsider."

For a heartbeat, the chamber held its breath. Isolde's gaze flicked to the crescent-shaped scar above Elysia's brow—a relic of the coup that had crowned her at sixteen. The unspoken threat hung between them: You rule because we allow it.

Then the Sentinel Tier 1 inclined her head, a predator's concession. "As you will. I'll… tolerate him in my tower." 

The four spires of Aurorath loomed in the council's silence, their silhouettes clawing at the twilight sky through the chamber's high windows. Each a monument to Sentria's might. The four towers. Each of them stands in the capital city, and each is possessed by one of the Tier 1's. One in the north, Insoldes domain, "the thunder tower". One in the south, a spiral of living crystal. One in the west, the tower of water and one in the east, empty, awaiting a fourth Tier 1.

Elysia's smile was a sickle moon. "See that you do."

Isolde's lips curled as she followed Elysia's gaze to the North Tower. "You send him to me. How poetic."

"Poetry," the princess replied, "is for bards. This is strategy."

"This council is adjourned." Elysia's words rang final, a gavel strike. "Celestia. Attend me in your chambers."

I nodded, the motion stiff. Around me, generals dispersed like shadows retreating from dawn, their whispers trailing behind:

"—playing with cursed fire—"

"—the Ashen Boy will doom us all—"

Isolde paused at the door, her silhouette framed by the dying light. "A word, General Dawnveil."

Her tone left no room for refusal.

"The training will be hard, I don't think he will able to survive it..." she said, her voice low enough to freeze blood. "If your pet human dies within its walls… let him."

Then she was gone, leaving only the echo of her warning—and the metallic tang of ozone in her wake.