The Swordless War
202 Words
The queen returned to Varethorne with Ashryn cloaked at her side.
Whispers spread like wildfire. The lords saw a girl. Seren saw a ghost. The people saw something more—hope or heresy, depending on who you asked.
Ashryn walked the castle as if she had lived there a hundred lives. She knew halls she’d never seen, spoke names she shouldn’t know, and stood for hours beneath the statue of Sir Edran, unmoving.
“My blood hums in these walls,” she said once. “But it doesn’t belong to me.”
Seren summoned the royal seers. The girl was tested, watched, doubted, feared.
And then—proven.
The black steel of Edran’s armor, sealed for two decades, cracked when she placed her hand on it.
The runes flared crimson. The helm fell open.
And inside… there was no body. Only ashes.
Ashes—and a shard of something ancient.
A broken crown, not of gold, but of black stone… etched with a symbol even the oldest scholars could not name.
Seren recognized it.
It was carved into the dagger she’d nearly used the night Edran saved her.
The dagger she'd thrown away.
The dagger that had… disappeared
Disappeared into thin air.....
- Writer
