The crown was warm in her hand.
Not hot. Not burning. Alive.
Amara stared at it, breath hitching. The bone was pale but veined with gold, not forged but grown—shaped by something older than time. It pulsed, faintly, to the rhythm of her heartbeat. Like it knew her. Like it had waited.
The smoke-cloaked figure didn’t move. No face, no voice, just presence—thick and suffocating. It watched her the way prey watches fire. Awed. Terrified.
She rose slowly, never taking her eyes off it. “What are you?”
It tilted its head.
Then the whisper came—not through the air, but inside her skull.
“You are ready.”
Her knees almost gave. The crown trembled in her hand.
“I didn’t ask for this.”
“You were never meant to ask.”
The room around her flickered like a dying flame. The walls bled shadow. T
