## CHAPTER 87: _"The Crown of Silence"_
The world was still.
Not in peace—but in fear.
Magic, once bound to bloodlines and rituals, now wandered free. It whispered to trees. It lingered in puddles. It bloomed in the veins of children who didn't understand why they could hear their ancestors screaming from shadows.
Elira was changing. The cost of breaking the curse was balance—but balance was never quiet. It demanded everything.
And Arien and Lysia, reborn as vessels of the world's will, felt the pull of that cost every second.
They sat in the ruins of the old palace, now overtaken by wild roses with petals like rubies. The throne room no longer existed—only a wide circle of stone, scorched and sacred, watched over by a ring of ethereal statues. Each statue bore the face of a past ruler of Elira, weeping silver tears.
Lysia placed her palm on the stone. "The ground is restless."
"I know," Arien said. His voice had changed. Deeper. Softer. Full of echoes.
They were no longer man and woman. They were bond and blade. Curse and cure. They were Balance.
But balance didn't mean peace.
Across the sea, in a land untouched by Elira's curses, a council of immortals gathered. Nine in total. They watched Elira with unease.
"She has awakened it," said one.
"They broke the throne. They bled into the future," said another.
"What do we do?" asked the youngest.
The eldest, a figure wrapped in moonlight, answered, "We seal the wound."
And so, across the lands, a new magic spread. A **mute magic**. It stole voices. It turned songs to dust. It silenced love.
Arien and Lysia felt it instantly.
When they kissed that night beneath the broken moon, no spark ignited. No pain. No warmth. Just silence.
Lysia touched her lips. "Do you feel it?"
Arien nodded. "Love… is disappearing."
"It's being hunted."
"By what?"
Before she could answer, the roses in the palace exploded into ash. And from that ash rose a creature unlike any other. Made of sorrow. Shaped like a crown.
Its voice was wind through graves: **"Love is the root. Remove the root, and war cannot grow."**
It lunged.
Arien raised a hand and caught it midair. But the creature didn't fight. It whispered into his skin:
**"You are the last. Do not bloom."**
And then it vanished.
They stood in stunned silence. The world no longer roared. It *watched*.
And far away, in a forest where time had forgotten to pass, a child opened her eyes. She was born from no mother. Named by no one.
But carved into her skin were the same symbols Arien and Lysia now bore.
She was Balance's heir.
And the silence that hunted love would soon hunt her, too.