Prologue — The Sound Beneath Silence
They say the Second Sun never rose again after the massacre.
No one talks about the screams.
No one dares mention the night the sky cracked—not from thunder, but from a sound so deep and ancient it gnawed at the bones of the world. A sound without voice. Without echo. As if silence itself had turned hostile.
The capital awoke to a kingdom without its bloodline. Doors remained locked. Curtains stayed drawn. The wind, once gentle, now howled through streets as if trying to speak the names of the dead.
But no name was ever spoken.
No bodies were ever buried.
The palace gates remained sealed for three days. On the fourth, they swung open on their own. Inside, there was no sign of a battle. No ash. No blood. Just a throne split down the center, as though struck by something that had never existed before it landed.
They called it a betrayal. A coup. A curse.
They were wrong.
In a town far from the ruin, a boy walks through the market each morning with his hood low and eyes colder than winter. He says little. He buys nothing. He watches everything. Beside him, a girl with gentle hands and soft laughter speaks kindly to the vendors, unaware that the wind still bends when he breathes.
She doesn't know what he hides.
She doesn't know what he buried.
She doesn't know what's waking.
But she will.
And when she does, the world will remember the sound beneath silence