The Ashen Child
372 Words
Years passed over Varethorne, but the kingdom never forgot the knight who wore silence like armor—and the queen who dared to shatter it.
Queen Seren ruled alone now, her crown heavy with both grief and iron will. Yet at night, in the quiet of her chambers, the memory of Sir Edran Blackhart lingered like a shadow too large to escape.
Until the night the sky cracked open.
It was no ordinary storm.
A crimson flare danced across the horizon, as if the stars themselves bled fire.
And in the royal garden—the place where Edran’s sealed armor lay buried beneath weeping willows—the earth stirred.
Beneath the iron helm, the sealed gauntlets, and the breastplate etched with faded runes… no body remained. Only ashes. Pale and cold as forgotten dreams.
Far to the north, beyond the jagged peaks of the Cragshard Mountains, a girl was born beneath a bleeding red moon.
No midwife's cry filled the air. No songs celebrated her arrival.
Wrapped not in cloth but chains wrought from blackened steel, she was named Ashryn—the Ashen Child.
From the start, Ashryn was different.
The animals around her whispered secrets. The cold bowed to her warmth, and when she walked, the blades at the smith’s forge trembled.
By the time she was sixteen, a scar appeared across her chest—dark and jagged, mirroring the wound that Sir Edran once bore beneath his armor.
News of the girl spread swiftly, carried by wind and whispers.
A young woman who claimed she could hear the voice of a knight who never truly died.
Queen Seren, compelled by a mixture of hope and fear, rode alone to the northern cliffs where Ashryn awaited.
Their meeting was silent but electric.
Ashryn turned, eyes bright with a strange, ancient light.
“You came,” she said.
“I promised I would,” Seren replied.
Ashryn’s gaze held a sorrow that seemed centuries old.
“He waits,” Ashryn whispered. “Not dead. Not gone. Just… waiting for the war that will finally end his vow.”
Beneath the surface of Varethorne, shadows lengthened.
And somewhere deep in the silence, the heartbeat of a broken vow stirred to life once more.
- Writer
