Chapter 9 – The Shadow Queen Watches
437 Words
Far from the warmth of fire and the chill of ice, the Shadow Kingdom slumbered under an eternal twilight. The air was thick, like velvet soaked in smoke, and the land itself seemed to whisper secrets no one dared repeat.
In the tallest spire of the Onyx Citadel, Queen Elsyra stood draped in midnight silk, her fingers dripping with rings carved from bones of fallen seers.
She watched.
From her throne of thorns, she watched the scrying mirror pulse with shifting light.
“The heart stirs...” she murmured. “At last.”
A slave girl nearby flinched at the sound of her voice. Too slow.
Crack.
Without turning, Elsyra raised a hand, and a shadow tendril lashed out. The girl screamed, collapsing under the weight of invisible chains.
“Silence,” the queen hissed. “Your fear disrupts the magic.”
Her pet slithered beside her—a creature of smoke and shadow with glowing violet eyes and a whispering voice only Elsyra could truly hear.
“Elsyra…” it rasped. “A divine power awakens. I feel it… far from here.”
She stilled.
“Divine?” Her tongue curled around the word like a curse.
The shadow beast nodded. “It is old. Buried. Untamed. And it grows…”
Elsyra turned from the mirror and walked toward her inner chamber, black veils parting as she passed. The walls pulsed with dark spells. Her magic room was forbidden to all—lined with shelves of forbidden texts and jars containing souls she had bound.
She waved her hand.
Candles lit with green-black flame.
At the center, a cauldron began to boil without heat. The air shimmered. Elsyra closed her eyes and placed her palms on the obsidian surface.
Show me the source.
For a moment, there was only smoke.
Then… *fire*. *Ice*. And…
A girl.
A heartbeat of earth.
Zira.
Elsyra’s eyes snapped open.
“So… the prophecy lives.”
The Shadow Queen laughed—low, cruel, and filled with hunger. “And I was beginning to grow bored.”
She paced, her long nails trailing across a crystal that began to crackle.
“If she awakens fully, the balance will tilt. Either toward salvation… or *ruin*.”
The beast slithered around her feet.
“She could destroy you.”
“No,” Elsyra hissed. “Not if I find her first.”
Her eyes burned like black stars.
“I will not let a child rewrite fate. She will bow… or she will burn.”
And somewhere deep beneath the castle,
a hundred chained souls wept as the queen began to prepare for war.
- Writer
