The Path of Thorns

Kaelen Aurelian Perspective

The wilds were not meant for princes.

They did not yield to fine boots or court-trained posture. They did not bend to crowns, nor pause for aching legs. The trees whispered of older laws, written in claw marks and broken antlers. Here, there was no rank, only those who survived, and those who didn't.

Kaelen Aurelian, heir to the throne of Solara, was beginning to suspect he belonged to the latter.

Mud clung to his boots like curses, and every vine seemed to reach for him on purpose. His once-pristine traveling cloak, embroidered with sun-thread and pearl-stitch, was now mottled with leaf-stains, burrs, and blood from a shallow scrape across his cheek.

This was supposed to be a simple journey.

A week's ride. A question answered. A curse lifted.

But the rune carved into his palm said otherwise. It had begun to throb again, low and dull at first, like the warning beat of a drum before a battle. But as they pressed deeper into the Verdan Weald, it had grown... louder.

It's like it wants something, he thought.

He clenched his hand tighter and kept walking.

The Blade at His Side

"Stop grumbling, princeling," said Lys Valebright, striding ahead of him with casual ease. "The forest can hear you sulking."

Kaelen grunted. "I'm not sulking."

"You are. Loudly. Like a kicked squirrel."

He glared at her back. "Do squirrels sulk?"

"Only the noble ones."

Lys ducked under a moss-draped branch, her auburn braid swaying behind her like a banner of copper. She was all edges and motion, half-rogue, half-mercenary, and wholly unafraid. Where Kaelen slipped, she danced. Where he hesitated, she laughed and leapt.

She was not supposed to come with him.

But when the rune first appeared, burned into his skin with no warning and no pain, Lys had been the only one not to flinch. She'd simply looked at him with her storm-colored eyes and said, "Well, shit. You're cursed. Better fix it."

Now she was his only tether to sanity.

And maybe something else.

The Rune Burns

By nightfall, they reached a clearing where silver ferns curled like sleeping hands and the stars pierced the canopy in faint, shivering beams. A stream whispered nearby, its banks veiled with fog.

Kaelen sank to the mossy ground, breathing heavily. Lys was already stringing her bow, setting simple wards with powdered ash and hollowed bone, warding signs taught to her by her mother, a hedge-witch who'd vanished in the mountain wars.

Kaelen flexed his hand.

The rune blazed to life.

Not visibly, no glow, no sparks, but inwardly, like a coal pressed behind his skin. It wasn't pain, exactly. It was weight. Expectation.

It's getting stronger.

Lys noticed.

"Show me," she said.

Kaelen hesitated, then pulled off his glove. The mark sat in the center of his palm, etched like old stone: a spiral flanked by four arcs, and at its center, a tiny eye shape, always watching. Always aware.

Lys frowned. "That center piece… it's changed."

He blinked. "What do you mean?"

"It's deeper. The edges weren't that sharp before." She leaned in, her fingers grazing the outer lines. "It's not just carved into you anymore. It's... sinking."

Kaelen swallowed hard.

"I thought the rune-smith would know how to stop it," he said quietly.

Lys sat back on her heels. "Maybe. Or maybe he'll just tell you what you already suspect."

"What's that?"

"That it's not just a mark. It's a door."

The Forest Watches

The Weald grew stranger by the third day.

The trees leaned closer together, branches warping unnaturally, some split open like ribs, others twisted into patterns that looked almost intentional. The animals had grown silent. Not gone, but watching. Kaelen caught glimpses of eyes in the underbrush; too high to be wolves, too intelligent to be deer.

Even the wind had changed.

It no longer blew from any one direction, but circled them, like breath around a candle.

"The forest's waking," Lys murmured, hand on her dagger. "It knows we're close."

"To what?" Kaelen asked, voice tight.

She nodded to a break in the trees.

There, half-swallowed by ivy and fog, stood a narrow, crumbling spire of stone.

The tower.

The Rune-Smith's Tower

It wasn't much to look at. Cracked stone. Shattered windows. A roof half-caved in and a door that hung crooked from its rusted hinges.

But the closer they got, the heavier the air became.

Not with scent or temperature, but with presence.

Like the world was holding its breath.

Kaelen stepped inside first.

The tower's interior was cloaked in shadows, the floor coated in layers of dust and dried leaves. The air buzzed faintly, not with sound, but with magic, old and bitter, like burned ink and blood.

On the far wall, something was carved; a dragon's eye, stylized and ancient, nearly identical to the one on Kaelen's hand.

Lys touched his shoulder.

"He's here," she whispered.

Kaelen nodded, trying to still the thunder in his chest.

"Let's find him."

They didn't have to look far.

The Exile Appears

A staircase twisted upward like a broken spine, leading to what remained of the upper floor. The wood creaked beneath their steps, threatening collapse with every footfall.

At the top, the room was bare save for a table, an iron-banded trunk, and a single figure seated in a high-backed chair.

He looked like part of the ruin, hair wild and silver, eyes rimmed with violet rings of sleeplessness. His robes were patched, his hands ink-stained and scarred with burnt runes. Around his neck hung a pendant carved from dragon bone.

He did not move when they entered.

He simply spoke.

"I've been waiting for you."

Kaelen stiffened. "You know who I am?"

The man's lips curled into a thin, tired smile.

"I know what you are."

He stood, moving toward them with slow, deliberate steps.

"And I know what's coming."

He lifted Kaelen's marked hand gently, reverently, as if touching a living prophecy.

His eyes darkened.

"The world has made a mistake," he whispered.

"You were never meant to carry this rune."

"And if we don't act soon… she will burn everything to reach you."

Kaelen's voice caught in his throat.

He stared at the man, this half-mad, half-legendary rune-smith, and then at his own hand, the mark now pulsing with slow heat.

"What do you mean I wasn't meant to carry it?"

"The mark chose me. It burned into me on its own."

The rune-smith's eyes narrowed with something between pity and alarm.

"It didn't choose you," he said. "It found you."

He turned away and opened the iron-banded chest near the window. Inside were scrolls and fragments of bone, each marked with old dragon script and runes that shimmered faintly in the gloom. He pulled out a parchment, unfurling it across the dusty table.

Kaelen and Lys leaned in.

It was a map, faded and brittle, drawn not in ink, but in dried blood. At its center was a symbol.

The same spiral-eye.

"This is the Primarch Sigil," the rune-smith said. "A mark of binding and calling. Once, only dragons could bear it. Now…" He trailed off, gaze falling on Kaelen's palm. "Now it's bonded to a human. That's not fate. That's... a rupture."

"A rupture of what?" Lys asked, hand still on her dagger.

"Of balance. Of law." The rune-smith tapped the spiral with a crooked finger. "This sigil is part of an ancient pact between the Old Flame and the Mortal Kingdoms. It was forged in the First Age, when the dragons agreed to sleep, and the world was divided. Only an Ancient Dragon or their chosen vessel could bear it without unraveling."

He looked up sharply.

"You, Prince Kaelen, are neither."

A Dangerous Inheritance

Kaelen stepped back, breath shallow. His mind raced.

"But I've had no visions. No voices. No commands-"

"Not yet," the rune-smith cut in. "But you will."

He reached again into the chest and retrieved a shard of obsidian carved with draconic runes. It hummed in his hands. As he brought it closer to Kaelen, the rune on Kaelen's palm flared in answer, its heat surging up his arm in a burst of white fire.

Kaelen gasped.

The room swam.

And then-

A Flicker of Flame

The vision was brief.

A flash of gold-edged black wings, spread across a twilight sky.

A voice like a thousand bells whispering in smoke.

"He is mine."

"Bring him to me."

"Or I will come through fire and ruin."

He collapsed to the ground, eyes wide.

Lys was at his side in an instant, catching him before he hit the stone. "Kaelen! What did you see?"

He didn't answer right away. He could still feel her, the Queen in the Dream, her presence a storm behind the veil.

"Her," he said hoarsely. "I saw her."

"The Obsidian Queen?" the rune-smith asked quietly.

Kaelen nodded, trembling. "She said… I belong to her."

The rune-smith let out a long, bitter breath. "Then it's worse than I feared."

The Bargain Offered

He turned to Lys now, voice grim. "You need to decide how far you're willing to go."

She straightened. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," he said, "if he doesn't learn to channel the rune, he'll be consumed by it or claimed by her."

Kaelen stood shakily, his heart thudding. "So teach me."

"I can't," the rune-smith replied. "Not here. Not now. I don't have the strength to bind it, not without awakening the Dragonstone itself. And that... will bring every eye in the sky upon you."

"Then let them look," Kaelen growled. "I won't be hunted in the dark while some ancient queen plays games with my soul."

Lys nodded once, sharp and sure. "Tell us what to do."

The rune-smith studied them both, the prince with a cursed rune, and the rogue with a blade and a stubborn heart. And then, slowly, he smiled.

"Very well. We leave at dawn."

"Leave for where?" Kaelen asked.

The rune-smith pointed east, beyond the hills and into the mists.

"To the Sanctum of the First Flame. The last place where mortal and dragon magic touched the same sky."

He leaned close, voice low and cold.

"But know this: if she finds you before you reach it… not even the gods will save you."