Chapter 9: The Scholar's Warning
1131 Words
The night was breathless. Not just still, but unnatural—as though the wind itself had drawn back in anticipation of something that had not happened for centuries.
Vivienne stood before the western gates of the Keep, her royal cloak replaced by a plain riding coat, the seal of her station wrapped in black silk at her side. Lucien stood just behind her, silent, watchful, already sensing that tonight would alter everything they thought they knew.
The message had been brief and coded, written in a dialect only used by exiled scholars of the Lower Court. A meeting. No guards. No magic. Just truth.
They rode without escort, their horses cutting through the fog like arrows through cloth.
The meeting place lay in the ruins of the old observatory on the cliffs of Elnith—a forgotten shell of curved stone domes and star-etched marble, cracked and moss-eaten. Once, it had been a seat of prophecy. The first kings had come here to read the sky.
Now, it was where Vivienne came to see beyond it.
The woman was already waiting.
She stood beneath the broken arch, her form wreathed in a long ash-colored cloak, hood low. The stars above shimmered dully, veiled behind clouds that didn’t move.
“You are her,” the woman said without turning. “The girl with blood no one dares test.”
“I am Vivienne,” she replied calmly. “Who are you?”
“Isolde. Of the Circle.”
Lucien’s hand tensed subtly, but Vivienne motioned him down. The Circle was a loose federation of thinkers, radicals, and defectors from the ruined southern cities. They were growing. Faster than reports admitted.
“I’m not here to assassinate you,” Isolde said, finally turning. Her eyes, sharp and amber, met Vivienne’s with unflinching calm. “I’m here because you might be the only one left who’s not a puppet.”
They moved into the remnants of the observatory’s central hall. A shattered orrery loomed above them, its brass arms rusted and bent, like a sun trying to rebuild itself from memory.
Isolde produced a case wrapped in oiled leather and placed it on a stone slab.
“What I am about to show you,” she said, “was buried by every ruler for the last seven centuries. Because it rewrites everything you believe power is.”
She unwrapped it: scrolls older than the Throne, drawings inked in blooded rust, glyphs that shimmered slightly, as though resisting exposure.
Lucien leaned in, frowning. “What is this?”
“The Dylaxis Fragment,” Isolde answered. “The unbinding text. The precursor to the Accord of Kings.”
Vivienne stared at her. “Impossible. That’s a myth.”
“No. The Accord of Kings is the myth. This is the truth.”
According to Isolde, the Fragment was not a grant of power—it was the origin of structure. Before bloodlines. Before prophecy. Before Throne.
“The Fragment,” she said, tracing one sigil reverently, “was made to bind chaos. To allow civilization to agree on power, not inherit it. The Throne distorted that. It locked the chaos—but also kept the chains.”
Vivienne narrowed her eyes. “And Caius has it?”
Isolde nodded. “He’s crossed into Thornewell. He intends to reawaken the Fragment.”
Lucien’s voice was sharp. “That citadel is cursed.”
“All sacred things are.”
Vivienne felt something tremble in her chest—not fear. Recognition. Her connection to the Throne vibrated faintly. The same energy. Ancient. Ambivalent.
“What does he want to do with it?” Vivienne asked.
“Sever the chain,” Isolde said simply. “Erase all claims. Nullify all lineages. Start over.”
Vivienne exhaled slowly. “That’s not reform. That’s annihilation.”
“He believes destruction is cleaner.”
Lucien bristled. “And you?”
Isolde met his gaze evenly. “I believe power must answer to people, not blood. But I do not believe you unmake the wheel—you reshape it.”
She turned back to Vivienne.
“You have a chance none of them had. You’re not of pure blood. You rose without legacy. You could offer a new Accord—one built on merit. Choice. Not birth.”
Vivienne felt her stomach tighten. “And why would the people trust me with that?”
“Because they’re watching,” Isolde said. “And because if you don’t move first, Caius will move last.”
They rode back in silence, the stars still hidden. But Vivienne’s mind churned.
Every principle she had inherited from Seraphine was cracking. She’d believed the throne could be earned through pain, loyalty, leadership. But what if the very act of ruling on it continued the harm?
Back at the Keep, she summoned Malric.
The strategist arrived with field maps, a restless look in his eyes.
“We need to reach Thornewell before he unbinds that Fragment,” she said.
Malric frowned. “We don’t have the numbers for another campaign. You barely hold the central territories.”
“This isn’t a campaign,” she said. “It’s an interception.”
He shook his head. “You’re risking yourself on the edge of myth.”
“I’ve already lived through myth,” she said. “Now I want to shape reality.”
Before leaving, Vivienne returned to the Throne.
The sigils were silent, but aware. The walls hummed faintly, like breath caught between truths.
She knelt—not to ask—but to declare.
“I will not be a daughter of Seraphine. I will not be your keeper. I will not be the last link in a broken chain.”
She rose.
“I will be the key.”
The Throne pulsed once beneath her fingertips.
Acceptance? Warning?
She didn’t know.
Lucien found her at the stables.
“I’m going with you.”
“I assumed.”
He hesitated. “If we don’t return—”
“We will.”
“But if we don’t, promise me something.”
She met his eyes.
“If they try to rewrite the world without you, I’ll remind them who bled to preserve it,” he said.
Vivienne smiled faintly. “And if I become the thing they fear?”
Lucien’s voice was quiet. “Then I’ll stop you.”
At dawn, they rode.
Vivienne. Lucien. Malric. Twenty loyalists.
Toward Thornewell. Toward the citadel buried in stone and shadow.
But as they crossed the Greyward Hills, a shiver passed through Vivienne’s spine.
She wasn’t heading toward a battlefield.
She was heading toward a rewrite. A reckoning.
And deep in her bones, the Throne whispered:
If you touch the Fragment...
...you won’t return the same.
To be continued
- Writer
