Not every throne dies when its queen is buried.
Some thrones become tombs.
And some queens... become something else entirely.
The Sanctuary was sleepless. Whispers twisted between silk drapes like unseen fingers tugging at secrets, and even the candles in the Hall of Nomen burned with an unnatural flicker. There was something different in the air—sharp and brined, like metal left too long beneath rain.
Naomi stood before the Mirror of Auctoris, where every Sovereign was once crowned and cursed. She wasn't alone. Her reflection was fractured—not by the mirror, but by what stood behind her. Alacria. Always Alacria.
"You've felt it too," Naomi murmured, her voice thin but lethal, like a dagger disguised in lace.
Alacria's silence answered louder than words. Her eyes hadn't left the mirror—not Naomi's reflection, but the space beside it. The emptiness that hadn't been there yesterday.
"There's an echo walking the halls," Alacria said at last. "And it wears your name like a veil."
Naomi turned away, brushing the edge of the mirror with her fingertips. "No," she whispered. "It wears her name."
---
She had been called Queen Azarelle of the Velvet Crescent.
A sovereign before Naomi.
A tyrant. A legend. A woman who carved scripture into the flesh of her own council when they defied her.
They had buried her twenty-two years ago beneath the Obsidian Crypt.
And yet, across the eastern rim of the Ashrose Forest, riders dressed in velvet and glass had begun appearing—chanting an ancient war hymn last heard in the year of the great purge. They bore no sigils.
Only the symbol of a queen's silhouette with her throat open and smiling.
The whispers began first.
Then the bodies.
Then the missive.
Delivered in a silver sheath, sealed with bone wax and crimson ink:
To the Usurper Naomi of the Diadem,
The soil has given me back my breath.
The crown you wear was stolen, not earned.
You were never chosen.
Return to the ground what you took from it… or be buried again in my name.
—Azarelle
Naomi read the letter once. Then again. And then she burned it without a word.
---
"She's supposed to be dead," Alacria said, pacing the circular chamber where war plans were laid out like open veins. "Her body was sealed under seven flame glyphs. You saw it. I saw it."
Naomi sat perfectly still, her fingers steepled beneath her chin. Her eyes were distant—not in confusion, but in recognition. In memory.
"Not all bodies stay dead in our world," she said softly. "Some sleep. Some wait."
Alacria narrowed her eyes. "Did you know she could return?"
Naomi hesitated.
Then spoke. "No. But I knew… I never truly killed her."
It wasn't confession. It was recollection.
Azarelle had once been her mentor.
Her tormentor.
Her first love.
And her first betrayal.
The night Naomi took the Diadem, it was Azarelle's blood on the altar. But even as Naomi raised the blade, Azarelle had smiled—welcomed it, even. As though death was not an end, but an exit through another door.
Naomi never told anyone what Azarelle whispered with her dying breath.
But now, she remembered every word:
"We do not die in the soil, my little star.
We root.
And one day, when you sit where I once sat, I will return…
To water you in blood."
---
The first attack came at dusk.
The Sanctuary's east wing was torn open by invisible flames—no fire, no smoke, but everything disintegrated, from armor to stone to bone.
A single woman walked through the wreckage.
Hair the color of dying roses, eyes glazed with an unnatural sheen, her gown dragging remnants of crypt soil and ash.
Azarelle had returned.
But not alone.
Behind her walked dozens of women in translucent garments—former high priestesses who had long disappeared under suspicious circumstances, now reanimated not as corpses, but as something darker. Their eyes shimmered with silver rot, their limbs moving with reverence and rage.
The Velvet Ghosts.
They did not speak.
They only followed.
Naomi stood on the balcony of the Hall of Reprieve, watching the chaos unfold below. Her guards shouted, women screamed, bells rang. But she only looked forward.
Until she saw her.
Azarelle.
Alive.
Or worse.
Alacria joined her, covered in blood from another corridor. "She's here," she said breathlessly, chest heaving. "She wants to speak."
Naomi didn't hesitate. "Then open the hall. We end this now."
---
The confrontation took place in the Throne Nave, a place too sacred for bloodshed—until tonight.
Naomi walked in alone.
Azarelle stood before the obsidian throne as if she never left it. Her presence was surreal, like a nightmare stitched into reality.
"I gave you the crown," Azarelle said, her voice like broken crystal. "And you gave me betrayal."
Naomi's voice was steel.
"I gave you freedom. You chose death."
Azarelle's lips curled. "And now I choose return. The Diadem answers to me."
Naomi stepped closer, eyes unflinching. "Then come and take it."
Azarelle smiled wider.
And the ghosts moved.
But so did Naomi.
And in the tension that followed—between queen and revenant, between lover and traitor—there sparked the beginning of a second war. One not just for power…
…but for memory itself.
——