## CHAPTER 97: _"The Boy With the Broken Voice"_
Before Arien was a prince, before he was cursed—he was just a boy with a broken voice.
Not from silence, but from screaming.
Screaming for a mother who never looked back. For a father who ruled but never loved. For gods who watched but never spoke. The kind of voice that cracked before it ever learned to sing.
He remembered the first time he touched magic. It wasn't lightning, or fire, or ancient blood. It was grief.
He was seven.
And he had just learned what it meant to be royal.
—
The halls of Elira's moon-castle were built from stone soaked in memory. When Arien walked them, they echoed not with footsteps—but with accusations.
"He is the one who will break us," the nobles whispered.
"He's the cursed one—the hollow prince."
They said it like he wasn't there. Like his ears weren't real. Like his soul hadn't heard them all.
But he had. And one day, the silence would answer.
—
Now, years later, Arien stood in the same halls. Taller. Colder. But still hollow.
Still listening.
Until Lysia.
Until the curse he carried became the chain he shared.
But how did it begin? What was the true cost of the throne, and what was stolen before it was ever his?
We go back now—deep into the buried memories that shaped him.
—
It began the day of the Blood Eclipse.
Seven-year-old Arien was led into the Starfall Chamber by four silent guards. His feet were bare. His hands trembling. He had never seen so many nobles gathered in one place—smiling without warmth, watching without blinking.
A boy dressed in silver was placed at the center of a circle of runes.
"He is ready," said the High Seer, her voice low like a knife in silk.
Arien's heartbeat was wrong—too slow, too heavy.
Then came the question that would shape his life.
"Do you bleed for this kingdom?"
He did not understand.
But he said yes.
They cut his palm.
They pressed it to a blade of obsidian.
And the curse—quiet for centuries—whispered awake.
The next morning, the queen vanished.
The sky turned violet.
And Arien could no longer hear birdsong.
He had been traded.
Not born to rule—but built for sacrifice.
—
They never told him what had happened that night.
But Arien saw things.
Dreams carved into his sleep with fire.
Visions of a woman with eyes like storms.
And a girl—always just out of reach—whose smile turned the world to ash.
Years passed. The silence grew thicker.
He learned to fight. To lead. To pretend.
But inside, he still screamed.
Until he met her.
Lysia.
—
In the present, Arien stares at the sky above the ruined courtyard of Elira.
Ash falls like snow.
Lysia stands beside him—scarred, but unbroken.
"Do you remember who you were before they broke you?" she asks.
"No," Arien says. "But I remember who I became."
He touches her hand.
And for the first time in years, he is not afraid of breaking.
—
The curse had stolen his voice.
But now?
Now he speaks.
To kings.
To gods.
To fate itself.
And his voice is no longer broken.
It is fire.