The Forgotten crown

Episode 2: Erased into being

Erased into being

The guards didn't say where they were taking her.

Ariel followed them through corridors she'd never seen, down stairs that seemed to go nowhere. When they stopped at a door, one of them shoved her inside and locked it behind her.

She was alone.

The room was small. Bed. Shelf. Nothing else. No window. One door that wouldn't budge when she tested it.

She sat on the bed and waited.

Hours passed. She wasn't sure how many. No one brought food. No one came to check on her. Just silence and the sound of her own breathing.

When the door finally opened, it was Uncle Thane.

"What you did in the training yard," he said, not bothering with greetings. "Do it again."

"I don't know how I did it the first time."

His eyes narrowed. "The ground cracked. The student went down. Show me."

Ariel shook her head. "I can't control it."

Thane stepped closer. "Then we have a problem."

He raised his hand and pain shot through her shoulder sudden, sharp, deliberate. Not enough to break anything. Just enough to hurt.

"Show me."

The pressure inside her surged. For a second, Ariel felt it push outward, felt the power respond to the threat. Then Thane dropped his hand, the pain stopped, and he was watching her with something like fear in his eyes.

"You felt that," he said. It wasn't a question.

"Yes."

"And you didn't attack."

"No." He left without another word.

That night, the door opened again.

It was Eryx. The student from the training yard.

"We have maybe five minutes," he said. "Come with me."

"Where?"

"Somewhere the Academy can't watch."

Ariel didn't move. "Why would you help me?"

"Because what you did that wasn't normal power." He glanced back at the hallway. "And because I need to make sure you don't accidentally kill someone before you figure out what you are."

She followed him.

They moved through corridors that seemed to shift the deeper they went. Torches lit as they passed not because anyone lit them, but because the stone itself was responding to something.

Eryx didn't seem surprised by it.

The chamber was circular, covered in symbols. Some were fresh. Some looked centuries old. Some were burned black.

"This is where bloodline magic lives," Eryx said. "The real kind. Not the controlled stuff they teach upstairs."

"How do you know about this?"

"Because I've spent a year watching people like you." He moved to the center of the room. "Power that doesn't obey rules. Power that the Academy tries to suppress but can't actually control."

Ariel stepped into the center next to him.

"What's happening to me?" she asked.

"You're waking up." Eryx looked at her directly. "

And they're going to try to stop it."