Echoes of a Forgotten King

The air inside the ruined chamber was heavy with dust and silence.

It pressed against Ophelia's skin, curling into her lungs with each unsteady breath.

She could still hear the faint echo of stone shifting, of the past pulling itself back into the present. The glow of the runes along the walls had begun to fade, their flickering light sinking back into the cracks of time.

But the throne remained.

Dark. Silent. Waiting.

Zoriel stood before it, unmoving.

His golden eyes burned in the dim light, locked onto the half-buried crest carved into the black stone. The emblem of Vordane, once a symbol of power, now reduced to little more than a whisper in the ruins beneath Seraphis.

A lost kingdom. A forgotten name.

And the man who had once ruled it standing in its shadow.

Ophelia swallowed, carefully stepping forward.

"Zoriel?"

Her voice was barely above a whisper, but it echoed.

He did not turn.

Instead, his fingers curled slightly, the tension in his posture shifting. The air around him crackled, a faint pulse of something unseen rippling outward.

A pressure. A memory.

Something was waking inside him.

Something buried deep.

Ophelia's pulse quickened.

This wasn't just a discovery.

This was recognition.

He knew this place.

He knew this throne.

And as he stared at it, something within him was beginning to remember.

⸻

A Throne Carved from Shadows

The silence stretched between them, thick and suffocating.

Then—Zoriel moved.

Slowly, he reached out, brushing the dust away from the throne's surface. His fingers traced the edges of the crest, following the curves and sharp lines like someone recalling an old map burned into their mind.

"This is real," he murmured, more to himself than to her.

Ophelia exhaled. "You thought it wouldn't be?"

Zoriel's gaze flickered, finally meeting hers.

"I thought it was gone."

His voice was low, edged with something heavy, something raw.

She stepped closer, watching his face carefully. "Do you remember it?"

Another pause.

Then—a breath.

"Yes."

The word hung between them like a weight, pressing into the space they shared.

Ophelia's heartbeat stuttered.

This was it.

The first piece of who he was.

The first piece of what had been taken from him.

She watched as Zoriel straightened slightly, his fingers still resting against the cold stone. His expression was unreadable, but there was something new in his eyes—something far away.

A memory pulling itself from the darkness.

⸻

The Ghost of a Kingdom

For a long moment, he said nothing.

Then, quietly—

"I sat here once."

Ophelia's breath hitched.

Zoriel's gaze didn't move from the throne.

"I remember the weight of the crown," he murmured. "The way the hall stretched before me. The torches lining the pillars. The banners above. The people standing in rows—my people."

His fingers pressed slightly against the stone, as if he could feel the past beneath his touch.

Ophelia could see it now.

Not just the ruins.

The kingdom beneath them, alive.

The throne no longer cracked and buried, but standing in a vast chamber of black marble and gold. The banners of Vordane hanging above, moving with the distant breath of a great and ancient place.

A city carved into the bones of the earth.

Not dead. Not erased.

Waiting.

She swallowed hard. "Zoriel…"

He exhaled, breaking from the memory, blinking as if surfacing from deep water. His hand fell away from the stone.

"They took it," he said softly.

The way he said it sent a chill through her.

Not "it was lost."

Not "it fell."

"They took it."

Ophelia's grip tightened around the book she still held.

"You mean the Forgotten?" she asked.

Zoriel's jaw tensed. "Them."

His gaze lifted to the ceiling, toward the cracks in the stone, toward the kingdom that had been built over the ruins of his own.

"But not just them."

A new kind of tension settled between them.

Ophelia frowned. "Who else?"

Zoriel didn't answer immediately. He took a slow breath, then turned to face her fully.

"Ophelia."

She stilled.

There was something in the way he said her name—a warning. A weight.

"The past is not just buried beneath us," he said, voice quiet but certain. "It's above us, too."

Her mind caught up a second too late.

And then she understood.

The people of Seraphis.

The royal family. The palace.

Everything that stood above these ruins.

Everything that had been built on top of them.

Ophelia's stomach turned.

"You're saying Seraphis—"

"—was not meant to exist," Zoriel finished.

The words sent a shudder through the air.

A truth spoken aloud.

A truth the stars had tried to bury.

⸻

The Shifting Walls

Ophelia couldn't breathe.

Her entire life—the palace, the city, the history she had been raised to believe—

It had been built over the bones of another.

A stolen kingdom.

A kingdom that was never supposed to fall.

Her fingers tightened around the book, her heart hammering. "Then that means—"

A sound cut her off.

A deep, distant rumbling.

The stone beneath them shifted.

Zoriel's head snapped up, his golden gaze sharpening.

Then—a whisper.

Not from the walls.

Not from the ruins.

From the book.

Ophelia's pulse spiked.

The pages trembled beneath her hands, the ink moving, bleeding into new words—

"The throne was never empty."

The moment the words appeared—the ruins shuddered.

The lantern flickered violently.

A crack splintered through the ceiling.

Zoriel's voice was sharp. "Ophelia—"

But before he could finish—

The world broke open.