Chapter 12 — The Queen’s Whisper
1531 Words
The world was too quiet.
Eirena felt the silence before she heard it a slow, unnatural hush settling over the ruins of the shattered palace hall. Dust floated in the air like suspended stars, frozen in the beams of failing starlight that poured through the cracked ceiling. Every breath felt thick, waiting, expectant.
Kael stepped closer, sword angled downward but ready. “Something’s coming.”
Eirena already knew.
The air trembled a soft vibration against her bones, as though an unseen hand dragged a nail along the edge of reality. She pressed her palm over her sternum. The ember of cosmic power, the thing that had lodged inside her since the Hollow Throne fell, flickered violently.
It recognized the presence approaching.
The silence fractured.
A low hum rose from the far end of the hall. Not a voice. Not footsteps. Something older. Something wrong. The shadows began to pull away from the broken pillars, stretching like black silk unraveling in the wind.
Then, they gathered.
A figure emerged not walking, not floating, but coalescing like night being woven into a humanoid shape. Tall, elegant, impossibly thin, like a sculpture carved from star-shadow. Its eyes glowed with pale violet light that pulsed like a heartbeat.
Kael swore under his breath. “An envoy.”
But Eirena shook her head.
“No,” she whispered. “This one is different.”
The creature tilted its head, as though studying her. Then it bowed not to her, but toward the hollow air behind her, as if acknowledging something she couldn’t see.
A flicker of cold slid down her spine.
The envoy raised a hand.
The whisper arrived not spoken aloud but pressed directly into her thoughts, cold as frost.
Child of the fallen star…
Eirena flinched.
Kael instantly stepped in front of her, sword raised. “Out of her mind.”
The envoy didn’t move, but the whisper seeped deeper.
You carry what does not belong to you.
Eirena’s knees weakened. The cosmic ember inside her surged and twisted as if trying to escape. She gritted her teeth to keep from gasping.
“I don’t want it,” she hissed aloud.
The shadow-being’s light intensified.
Yet it has chosen you.
Kael tightened his grip. “Eirena, focus. Don’t listen.”
But listening wasn’t the danger. Feeling was.
The ember pulsed stronger, reaching out almost eagerly.
The envoy lifted its second hand. Stars began forming around its fingers specks of pale fire swirling into a crown-shaped arc. The light was wrong, hollow, hungry.
Kael lunged, swinging at its midsection. His blade passed through its body like slicing through fog but the fog fought back.
The envoy’s form rippled. A shockwave of shadow burst outward, throwing Kael across the hall. He slammed into a cracked column, grunting in pain but already pushing himself up.
“Kael!” Eirena cried, reaching toward him.
The envoy stepped between them, blocking her view.
The whisper returned:
The Queen seeks you. The Queen sees you. The Queen descends.
Eirena’s breath stuttered. “I destroyed her throne. She shouldn’t even...”
You destroyed only its shape, the whisper said.
Not its purpose.
Her blood chilled.
The envoy extended its hand toward her chest. The cosmic ember inside her reacted violently, flaring, reaching, pulling. She stumbled backwards, pressing her palm harder against her sternum, as though she could hold the power down through sheer force.
“No, no, stay with me,” she whispered to herself, fighting the rising burn in her veins.
Kael staggered to his feet. “You stay away from her!” He sprinted toward them again, blade raised high.
This time, when he struck, the envoy turned.
It caught his sword with two fingers.
Metal met shadow and stopped.
Kael’s eyes widened. He tried to pull back, but the envoy twisted, effortlessly, sending him stumbling sideways.
Eirena felt the ember flare again. It wanted to defend him. It wanted to lash out.
But she knew the cost. Every time she used the power, it sank deeper into her. She felt it growing, stretching into her thoughts, her instincts, her pulse.
What if one day she reached for it and couldn’t let go?
The envoy took a step toward her. Its voice was silent yet deafening, echoed in her mind:
The Queen remembers her heir.
Eirena froze.
“What did you say?”
Born of starlight. Bound by fate.
She calls you home.
A ringing grew in her ears. The air grew colder. Her heart beat harder, faster, like it wanted to crack open.
“I am not her heir,” she said through clenched teeth.
The envoy raised its hand again, and this time, its fingers glowed with a sharp, obsidian light.
Then you will be her vessel.
Kael roared in anger, launching himself at the envoy with renewed fury. The envoy dodged, rippling like liquid night, but Kael managed to slice off a portion of its form. The severed shadow hissed and evaporated.
Kael didn’t stop. He drove forward, pushing the creature back step by step.
“Eirena! Run!”
She didn’t.
She couldn’t.
The envoy’s gaze snapped back toward her, even as Kael pressed it. Its whisper slithered down her spine:
She is almost here.
The palace trembled.
Dust cascaded from the cracked ceiling. A deep pulse, like a heartbeat the size of mountains, reverberated through the floor. Eirena stumbled, gripping a collapsed pillar to stay upright.
This wasn’t the envoy.
This was something greater.
The Queen’s presence.
Kael noticed it too. He looked toward the ceiling, eyes wide. “Eirena…?”
Eirena felt it like the sky itself was bending, stretching thin, reaching down.
“She’s breaking through,” Eirena whispered. “The Queen is descending.”
The envoy twisted suddenly, striking Kael with a wave of shadow. He fell hard, his blade skidding across the stone floor.
The envoy turned fully toward Eirena now.
Eirena braced herself.
But instead of attacking, it knelt.
A deep, unnatural reverence.
Bearer of the Starlit Ember…
The Queen awaits your surrender.
Eirena’s hands shook. Her pulse thundered. The ember inside her flickered violently, the heat overwhelming.
“I will never surrender to her.”
The envoy rose.
Then she will take you.
It plunged but Eirena was faster.
The power inside her surged upward, bursting through her hands as a star-bright flare. A beam of celestial light exploded from her palms, striking the envoy square in the chest.
The creature shrieked soundlessly, its form twisting violently as cracks of white light split through it.
Kael shielded his face from the brilliance. “Eirena stop! You’ll burn yourself!”
She couldn’t. The power had already taken over.
The envoy staggered backwards, its body fracturing like broken glass.
You cannot resist her…
You are already hers…
Eirena screamed—not from pain, but from the force of the light surging through her, tearing through her like a second heartbeat. The hall filled with blinding radiance.
The envoy’s form shattered.
Shadow burst outward, then dissolved into nothing.
Silence returned.
The cosmic light faded from her hands, leaving them trembling uncontrollably. Eirena collapsed to her knees, gasping for air. Kael sprinted to her side, dropping to the floor and pulling her into his arms.
“Eirena, Eirena, look at me. Are you hurt?”
She shook her head weakly. “I didn’t… I didn’t mean to use that much.”
Kael’s jaw tightened. “That’s the point. It’s using you.”
She looked up at him, eyes shining with fear she couldn’t disguise.
“She’s coming, Kael.”
He held her tighter. “Then we keep moving. We find a way to cut her off before she fully breaks through.”
Eirena nodded, though her body still trembled from the power’s aftermath.
Above them, the ceiling groaned. A long, jagged crack ripped across the sky-facing stone as if something enormous pressed against the other side.
A pulse echoed through the air.
Closer.
Kael grabbed his sword. “On your feet. We’re leaving now.”
Eirena let him pull her up, steadying herself. The ember inside her simmered, restless, whispering back to the void.
Kael looked toward the ceiling one more time.
“She’s almost here,” he murmured.
“No,” Eirena corrected quietly, gripping his hand.
“She’s already arrived.”
They ran.
The throne room behind them trembled. Dust fell like snowfall. And far above, through fractured stone and broken sky…
A single violet eye opened.
Watching.
Waiting.
Claiming.
The Queen had found her.
And the real descent had only just begun.
The atrium’s wind died. The stars above flickered ominously. Eirena felt her pulse echo not in her chest, but across the sky, as though every heartbeat was being listened to.
The Hollow Queen was now fully awake.
And she knew exactly where Eirena was.
Kael drew her closer, steadying her. “Then we keep moving. We find allies. We learn to control this. And when the Queen comes?”
Eirena looked up at him.
“We fight,” he finished quietly.
A cold certainty settled in Eirena’s spine.
Because the envoy had not been a threat.
It had been a warning.
A whisper of the storm to come.
- Writer
