The door didn't creak.
It breathed.
As Raizel pressed his palm against the black stone, a pulse ran through the temple—slow and deliberate, like the heart of a beast long thought dead. The air changed. Warped. Thickened.
Behind him, Elyssia stood still, her expression unreadable.
Behind her, Silas lay encased in a coffin of frost, pale and barely alive.
Raizel didn't hesitate.
He stepped inside.
The walls closed around him.
No torches. No runes. Just darkness—and something older than light. The temperature dropped with every step, but Raizel's blood ran hot. His fingers twitched, instinctively weaving wards that fizzled the moment they formed.
No magic held here but one.
The temple's.
Symbols in the stone shimmered as he passed—ancient Valthorr sigils, bastardized versions of imperial crests, and something else… jagged, circular glyphs that moved when he looked away.
And deeper in the corridor, voices whispered.
Low. Layered. Not one language—but all of them.
"You wear his name, but not his chains."
"You bled royalty, now bleed purpose."
"You have come for what was stolen. Take it."
Raizel reached the heart of the temple.
The chamber was circular, hollow, and alive.
At the center: an altar of obsidian, veins of red light pulsing across its surface like blood beneath skin. Suspended above it—a crown of thorns and bone, levitating, spinning, humming softly.
Raizel approached.
The closer he got, the harder it became to breathe. The air pressed against him, testing him, judging him. Shadows moved where there was no light. Hands rose from the stone, reached for him, then withdrew—satisfied.
"This was meant for you," the voice said, "long before Kael Valthorr played king."
"What is it?" Raizel asked aloud.
"Memory. Power. Proof."
He reached out—slow, steady.
The moment his fingers brushed the crown, everything snapped.
He wasn't in the temple anymore.
He stood in a throne room—black marble, red banners, corpses strewn across the floor. His hands were soaked in blood, but it wasn't his. It dripped from a crownless head at his feet.
Kael Valthorr.
Dead.
Before him, nobles knelt—some weeping, some trembling, others silent. Behind them, the empire burned. Screams echoed through the broken windows. Above it all, a voice whispered:
"The throne was never the goal."
Raizel turned.
At the end of the hall, himself—older, eyes hollow, smile sharp—stood holding the same crown he now touched.
"This is what's coming," the older Raizel said. "Unless you change the script."
Then darkness again.
He gasped awake.
Back in the temple.
The crown hovered before him.
Now cracked. Dripping blood.
And the altar beneath it pulsed with a new shape:
A map—drawn in veins and sigils, tracing not geography but bloodlines.
Raizel stepped forward.
Names etched in crimson glow: Kael. Raizel. Elyssia. Darius. The Emperor.
And connecting them, like a web: thin black threads. Curses. Contracts. Secrets.
"The Valthorrs were never meant to rule," the voice said. "They were bred to burn the corruption."
Raizel clenched his fist.
"Then why did Kael become a monster?"
"Because the Empire twisted the purpose. Made him the cage instead of the fire."
Raizel reached for the map.
New threads formed.
His next path appeared—not in lines of land, but of blood owed.
There was someone still alive from Kael's old council. Someone who knew the truth about House Valthorr's fall.
Raizel spoke the name aloud.
"Thorne Evermire."
Outside the temple, Elyssia waited.
She felt the shift the moment Raizel stepped back into the light. His eyes were darker. Not dead—but knowing. A weight rested on his shoulders that wasn't there before.
"It showed you something," she said.
"A name," he replied. "One of the old ones."
"Alive?"
"For now."
She nodded.
"Then we hunt."
They didn't return to the road. Roads were watched.
Instead, they traveled by shadow.
Through hidden runes, dried wells, underground tunnels abandoned since the era of the Bone Reign. Elyssia led with precision, never asking Raizel about the crown, the vision, or the voices.
But every night, when Raizel closed his eyes, he saw the same thing:
The throne room. The blood. His father's body.
And himself—older, emptier, ruling over ash.
After seven days, they reached the Ashen Bluffs, where wind screamed louder than any human voice. There, hidden in the ruins of a watchtower, they found a man old enough to forget his own name but still sharp enough to recognize Raizel's eyes.
"You've got Kael's fury," Thorne Evermire croaked. "But your mother's silence."
Raizel froze.
He hadn't spoken his mother's name in years.
Didn't even know if she had one.
"You knew her?"
"I served her," Thorne rasped. "Before she disappeared… before they made her disappear."
He turned to a rusted chest. Pulled out a box wrapped in old skin.
Inside: documents. Seals. Names. Contracts.
"They called it a rebellion," Thorne said. "But it was a cleansing. Anyone who questioned the Emperor's bloodline… vanished. Your mother saw it coming. Tried to run. Kael stayed and made himself a monster to keep their eyes off you."
Raizel scanned the scrolls.
Each detailed assassination orders, bribes, rituals. Many signed with the imperial seal. Some with another mark—
A hound's head.
His blood ran cold.
"They sent the Hounds."
Thorne nodded.
"They always do. Once the name 'Valthorr' gets too loud, the collars come off."
A howl split the sky.
It wasn't a wolf.
It was too human to be beast, too feral to be man.
Elyssia stood instantly.
"They found us."
Raizel stood, tightening his coat, blood magic already pulsing under his skin.
"How?"
"They don't track steps," she whispered.
"They track names."
The walls burst inward.
Three figures entered.
Not soldiers.
Hounds.
Twisted half-mages bound in imperial runes, blindfolded, their mouths sewn shut, magic stitched into their flesh like branding. They didn't speak. They trembled with anticipation.
One leapt forward.
Raizel dodged, slashing with a sigil that peeled skin from bone. The creature didn't slow. It grabbed his arm—tried to drain his blood through skin contact.
He reversed the spell.
The Hound exploded from the inside, bones snapping through muscle like jagged knives.
Another went for Elyssia.
She was faster.
She turned her shadow into a blade and sliced through the creature's throat. Black blood sprayed across the walls. The stench was memory-warping.
The last Hound stood between them and Thorne.
It didn't move.
It laughed—a wet, gurgling sound that didn't come from its throat but from deep within Raizel's mind.
"You can't rewrite the blood," it said.
"You're just the next cage."
Raizel clenched his fist—and answered it with fire.
After the battle, silence returned.
But not peace.
Thorne Evermire was dead.
His chest had been carved open, sigils drawn into his ribcage—a warning and a seal.
Whatever truth he hadn't told Raizel, he'd taken it with him.
Raizel stared at the wound, silent.
Elyssia stepped beside him.
"They're going to escalate."
"Let them," he said.
He turned, eyes burning.
"I'm done surviving. It's time we answer in kind."
Far away, in a temple deep beneath the imperial capital, the Emperor knelt before a throne made of swords.
A voice from the dark responded:
"You said the Valthorr bloodline was broken."
"It is," the Emperor whispered. "We broke it."
"Then why do the mirrors scream his name?"