The Crown's Teeth

Kael stood at the heart of Varellion's inner sanctum, a place few mortals had seen and even fewer had left alive. The shattered resonance of the Threnody still hung in the air like smoke, wrapping the glasssteel spires in silent dissonance. Every street was now a battlefield. The city, once pristine and untouchable, was being slowly consumed by its own lies.

The palace loomed ahead—a monolith of pale gold and memory, carved from the bones of titans and veiled in prayers that had long since lost meaning.

Selan moved beside Kael like a drawn blade. Her face was streaked with soot and blood, her eyes sharper than ever.

"We're beyond the city walls. What's left between us and the throne?"

Kael turned his gaze upward. "The Crown's Teeth."

Selan scowled. "Of course they would name their strongest line of defense after something that devours."

From the towers around them, a low chant began. A rhythm, not unlike the Threnody—but colder. Inhuman.

The Teeth were not soldiers.

They were war-saints.

Forged by relic blood and bound to the Crown's divine code, the Teeth were each chosen from childhood, trained in silence, and broken until they sang only the hymns of obedience. Wrapped in living armor, they stood not as men or women, but as pillars of death incarnate.

There were thirteen.

They descended without fanfare, landing in perfect formation upon the plaza ahead—each one wielding a weapon so saturated in divinity, it hummed with the hunger of forgotten gods.

Kael stepped forward.

The scythe in his hands bled light. The Threnody pulsed behind his ribs.

One of the Teeth moved.

He blinked—and found himself already on the defensive.

The war-saint struck like lightning: a chain-blade that coiled through the air with serpentine elegance. Kael spun, parrying with the scythe's shaft, then slashed low to sever the chain. But it regrew mid-strike, singing with celestial fire.

Selan threw a dagger, laced in void. It met the Teeth's aura—and disintegrated.

Kael hissed through his teeth. "They're absorbing the Threnody's echo."

Selan grit her jaw. "Then we go louder."

Kael lifted the Shard above his head and screamed a command in the ancient tongue of endings.

The sky broke open.

Thunder poured downward like judgment. Every sound amplified—the shattering of cobblestones beneath their feet, the song of blades, the very breath of the city. The Teeth faltered for a heartbeat.

Kael lunged.

He met two at once—one with a flanged mace heavy enough to crack the earth, the other wielding a spear tipped with crystallized time.

He ducked low beneath the mace, brought the scythe upward in a vicious arc, and caught the spearman across the chest.

The armor cracked—but didn't break.

The mace slammed into Kael's side, sending him skidding across the ground, bones protesting.

Selan was already above him, hurling hexed knives in all directions. Each blade found its mark, erupting in arcs of midnight flame. Two of the Teeth staggered. One fell—his soul unraveling with a cry of silence.

"Keep moving!" she shouted.

They weaved through the plaza like dancers on the edge of annihilation. Kael swung with abandon now—each blow fueled by pain, purpose, and prophecy. The Threnody sang louder in his veins, lending speed where there was none, granting strength that burned.

One of the Teeth—the eldest, draped in a tabard of godbone and thorns—spoke for the first time.

"Kael of Ash. You carry the Eye, the Scythe, the Song. You defy the Order. You must die."

Kael spat blood. "Get in line."

The saint raised his hand.

The ground tore open.

From it emerged a construct of pure judgment—dozens of chained spirits bound together into a single writhing mass. It lunged at Kael with the fury of centuries.

Selan roared and leapt between them, daggers spinning. "I've got this one!"

"No—" Kael began, but she was already gone, vanishing into a storm of steel and screaming souls.

He turned his focus back to the war-saints.

Ten remained.

He raised the scythe.

And ran straight into them.

Each movement was death narrowly avoided. Each breath came with a price. But Kael was not the boy who had watched his father die. He was the echo of rebellion. The child of prophecy. The bearer of Threnody.

One by one, the Teeth fell.

Not cleanly. Not with grace.

But with the weight of justice crashing down like a collapsing cathedral.

Selan returned, bloodied but alive. "The chain-wraith's gone."

Kael fell to one knee, gasping.

Selan knelt beside him. "We have to move."

"They're coming," he whispered.

Indeed—they were.

More Teeth, drawn from the palace itself.

But the world had already shifted.

The people of Varellion had seen the sky crack.

They had felt the music change.

And from the shadows of the city, the whispers began.

The Crown bleeds.

The Eye returns.

The scythe swings.

They came in ones and twos at first—cloaked figures, former rebels, fallen mages, gutter prophets. Then hundreds. Then thousands.

A tide of fury long held back.

The final march had begun.

Kael stood, scythe in hand.

"I'm done hiding," he said. "Let them see me."

He turned to the palace steps.

"Let them all see who ends the throne."