Chapter 3: The Fractured Song
292 Words
Kaelia stared at Valen’s outstretched hand. To her sapphire eye, his palm was a map of healed scars; to her amber eye, it was stained with the fresh, dark blood of a kingdom already lost. She didn't take it. Instead, she knelt and grabbed the silver crown.
The moment her skin touched the cold metal, a jolt of static surged through her. The "Glow-Silk" on her tunic didn't just pulse—it roared into a blinding white light. The landscape around them began to fold like paper. The dunes of Orizon blurred into the charred remains of the prince's fortress.
"Kae, let go!" Kalu yelled, but his voice sounded miles away, distorted as if he were shouting underwater.
"I can't!" she cried out. The melody in her head had turned into a frantic, dissonant choral arrangement. The crown was a bridge, and she was the keystone. "The Altar... Valen, where is the Altar?"
"Under the feet of your Priestess," Valen spat, drawing his broken sword. He looked toward the horizon, where the pristine white towers of the Orizon Palace were beginning to flicker, replaced by jagged obsidian spires. "In my time, she used the crown to siphon the sun. In yours, she uses it to keep the people blind. Either way, she is the weaver of this rot."
The ground gave a violent lurch. The straight c***k in the glass widened, and the purple mist billowed upward, forming shadowy shapes that mimicked the silhouettes of soldiers. They were Echoes—hollow remnants of people caught between the two realities.
"Run," Valen commanded, his voice regaining the authority of a king. "If the Echoes touch you, your soul will be split across a thousand dying minutes."
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