The ring had not stopped humming since the sky turned blue.
It was faint—like a whisper caught in bone—but constant. A thrum in his blood, a resonance in his teeth. Not pain. Not warmth. But calling.
Downward.
Caelan stood at the edge of the spiral staircase that Seraphyne had forbidden him to descend. Until now.
The guards had moved aside this morning with no words, no gestures—only silence. And when Seraphyne met him at breakfast, she simply said:
"The one below has stirred. You must go."
Now he descended alone.
The stairwell narrowed the deeper he went, carved of stone older than the palace above. Cracks webbed the walls, bleeding silver veins that pulsed like arteries. Symbols—not of vampire or werewolf craft, but older, deeper—marked each turn.
Eventually, even the air changed.
It thickened.
Grew colder.
Still.
Then—he reached it.
A circular arch of petrified bone. Beyond it, a vast hollow carved into the roots of Noctisfall itself.
The Throne Below the Throne.
---
There was no grandeur here. No gold. No banners.
Only stone.
An obsidian platform jutted up from the earth, jagged and raw, and atop it sat a single throne. Carved from the same black rock, veined with red and ink-dark blue, it pulsed softly—alive in some way stone should not be.
But it was the presence on it that stopped Caelan cold.
Not a figure.
Not a body.
Just… a shape.
Cloaked in darkness so deep it swallowed even the faint silver glow of the cavern's heart.
Eyes opened within the shadow. Not two. But many.
And a voice—like stone grinding against time—spoke without breath.
"Heir of the Broken Line. Child of the Forgotten House. Step forward."
Caelan's knees nearly buckled. But he obeyed.
He stopped a few paces before the throne.
"Who… are you?" he asked, his voice thin in the hollow dark.
"I am the one who sat before crowns were forged," it answered. "I am the memory beneath Kael's dominion, beneath Raen's howl. I am the slumber beneath the stone."
A pause.
"You may call me Threnas."
The name echoed. Not just in the air, but in Caelan's bones.
---
"Why am I here?" Caelan asked.
"To see if the blood remembers," Threnas said. "To know if the world has birthed an echo or a reckoning."
"I don't understand."
"You are not meant to," Threnas whispered. "Understanding is the final gift. Not the first."
A pulse radiated from the throne. The pendant at Caelan's chest burned—not from heat, but from weight.
His body swayed.
And visions came.
A temple sunken beneath the earth.
A sword buried in the heart of a tree.
A child born of two kings, bleeding silver and dusk.
A war that was never spoken, but never ended.
He gasped.
When he opened his eyes again, Threnas was standing.
Or… hovering.
It had no feet. No form. Just shape. Memory. Gravity.
"You have walked the halls of Noctisfall. You have touched the Veiled Record. The sigil stirs in your marrow. But that is not enough."
Caelan grit his teeth. "Then what is enough?"
Threnas leaned forward, and all the air vanished.
"When you are offered power, and choose restraint.
When you are given truth, and do not flinch.
When you stand before death, and do not beg.
When you know what you are, and still choose who you will be."
Then the shadow withdrew. A breath returned to the world.
"You are not yet this."
A slow blink of those impossible eyes.
"But you may be."
---
The throne pulsed again.
And from its side, a small object floated forward—encased in silver light.
A fragment of a crown.
Blackened. Cracked. Ancient. But unmistakable.
Duskwither.
Threnas said nothing.
Caelan reached out and took it.
Pain seared through him the moment his skin touched metal. But he held on.
Visions returned—but these were different. Older. From before time had names.
A sigil drawn in ash, devoured by fire.
A wolf and a bat, kneeling at a cradle.
A queen screaming beneath a crimson eclipse.
And a gate, made not of stone—but of blood and memory.
Then—
Silence.
---
He fell to his knees, the fragment clutched in both hands.
Threnas watched.
"When the three marks awaken, the gate will open. One by choice. One by blood. One by death."
"What gate?" Caelan asked.
But Threnas was already retreating, fading back into the throne.
"I am memory, not fate," it whispered. "Ask the living. They will lie. But they must."
Then everything vanished.
---
Caelan awoke lying at the threshold of the spiral stairs.
No one had seen him fall.
No one waited above.
But in his hand, he still held the fragment.
And behind him—beneath the palace—the throne was no longer empty.
Something had taken form.
And it watched.