Location: UnrecordedDate: Two weeks before Thaleon's deathCondition: Unstable containment — body intact, soul unclear
There is too much light.
Not brightness. Not warmth.Just raw illumination — truth without mercy, thought without rest.
It coils beneath Thaleon's skin now. Behind his eyes. Every breath tastes like thunderclouds and saltstone.
He has not slept in nine days.
He no longer requires sleep.That, too, was taken.
His Chamber of Silence
They built him a room without corners, so the echoes wouldn't gather.But they gather anyway. In the bones. In the floor.
He walks the perimeter again. Each step rings like a bell no one hears.
"I asked to save the world," he whispers to the empty walls."I did not ask to carry its shape."
Memory: The First Binding
He remembers placing the Crown on his head.
No ceremony. No audience. Just wind, blood, and the voices of the Seven — already fading, their bodies too small to hold what they'd made.
The moment it touched his brow, the world went quiet.
And then it screamed.
The leyline roared through him like a star collapsing — past every defense, every story of what magic should be.
He became not a man, not a king, but a junction. A tether between life and law.
"Do not let me die like this," he once told his scribe."But do not let me live longer either."
Final Week – The Fraying
He sees threads now — not people.
Guards pass outside. He names them by their connection:One burns green. One bleeds silver. One is already dead, though they don't know it yet.
He tries to write. The ink catches fire.
He tries to sleep. The air thickens into voices.
He tries to cry. No water comes.
The Whisper in the Crown
Some nights, he removes the Crown.
Not to rest — he cannot. But to remember that he has hands. A skull. A name.
He places it on a stone stand, in the center of the room.
It pulses.
Faintly.
Like a heartbeat beneath the earth.
He wonders:
"Did we seal the gods out…or did we lock one in?"
His Final Entry – Etched in Flame
They find it three days after his death — not written in ink, but burned into the far wall of his chamber. Not with fire, but with will.
Seven lines:
The Crown remembers its shape.The leyline still sings its name.I wore it so none would need to again.But someone always will.Because we cannot resist the silence.Because we would rather command than understand.Because in the end, we are the chain and the key alike.
At the bottom: a symbol.
A circle.An eye scratched out.
Thaleon's body was intact.The Crown was not.It had already shattered.
Not from battle.From refusal.