When the light shattered, sound rushed back like breath after drowning.
Smoke covered the dais. The crown’s glow faded to a dim ember against Myrren’s burned wrist. Ash drifted through the hall like slow snow, falling on gold, blood, and glass. In that ruin, the prince knelt. His hands still burned, his voice rough as he said her name.

“Myrren.” His fingers hovered, afraid to touch her skin. “Look at me.”

She did. The light inside him wavered, too bright and too wild. His eyes no longer held sunlight but fever. Behind him, priests whispered prayers they no longer believed. Guards shifted, uncertain whom to obey. The Queen’s body lay beneath the fallen banner, the fabric still smoking.

“Myrren Vale,” Thane said more loudly, his voice cutting through the noise. “By flame and vow, I name you innocent of the Queen’s death. Before the court, before the gods” he looked upward, daring the cracked ceiling to answer “I claim you.”

A murmur spread through the hall. Some gasped, other0s crossed themselves. The air smelled of burned incense and fear. Myrren felt the spiral mark on her wrist throb, the dark veins inside it catching the light like melted glass.

“Thane,” she began, but he raised his hand. His light flared, lighting the terrified nobles around them. “Let all who still serve Eirden witness this. I will take her as my future queen. Her name will be cleared of shadow, her blood bound to the crown.”

He was performing. Every word sounded rehearsed. The hall had become his stage. She tasted iron in the air, a scent of resin that was hours old. It had all been prepared.

From the gallery, Ori’s voice called softly, “Don’t.”

Too late. Thane was already reaching for the crown where it lay among the shards.

“Myrren, take it with me,” he said. “The prophecy lied, but we can make a new vow. Our own spiral, one of light.”

His hand reached out, golden and trembling. For a moment she saw the boy who had once sworn to protect her under the stars. But the light behind him had teeth now. It burned without warmth, feeding on itself.

“Myrren,” he said again, quietly. “End this. Choose me.”

Her heart beat once, twice. Each pulse echoed through the mark searing her wrist. Smoke curled around them, turning the dais into a cage of flame and ash.

She breathed in the scent of ruin. “You do not mean me,” she said. “You mean the crown.”

Gasps moved through the court like wind through dry leaves.
Thane did not move. His hand still glowed, but the light trembled as if unsure whom to serve.

“Myrren,” he said again, softer now. “You know what this means. The nobles will kneel. The riots will stop. The spiral will end.”

Her laugh broke out sharp and tired. “You think vows can end spirals? You think crowns can heal curses?”

He flinched. Around them, the nobles leaned forward, hungry for blood. Somewhere behind the throne, Kael whispered to a Frostmint aide. Myrren caught the smell of resin again, old smoke, not from torches. This moment had been planned.

From the balconies came the first echo, clear and strange:
“Better she bends than the spiral breaks the kingdom.”

Another voice repeated it. Then another.
A chant rose, cold and rhythmic. “Better she bend…”
Each repetition tightened the air. The mark on her wrist pulsed in time with it.

Her heart lurched. The onyx grooves under her skin burned red. She saw it then, for only a breath, the faint shimmer of a spiral pattern over the whole court, like a net of light and shadow. The same shape carved into the altars of the Silent Veil in her nightmares.

Thane’s light grew stronger, pushing against the chant. “You hear them,” he said fiercely. “They want peace. Let me give it to them. All I ask is your hand.”

She stepped back. “And my will.”

“This is not chains. It is salvation.”

“Then why does it smell of smoke?”

The words struck him. His brightness faltered, gray creeping into the gold. “You do not understand what they will do if you refuse. The priests already call it blasphemy. They will say you killed the Queen with poison, that your shadow lover bound your soul.”

At the word lover, the whispers turned sharp.
Ori’s cry of protest vanished under the noise.
Seliora stood, calm as frost. “Your Highness,” she said, “if this display fails, you will lose the crown.”

“It will not fail,” Thane answered, though his fear filled the air like metal. He turned back to Myrren, desperate. “Please. Say yes before they call it treason.”

Her pulse pounded. She felt Corven’s tether stir in the distance, shadows pulling tight in answer to her pain. Smoke thickened. The crown’s glow flickered like a dying coal.

The whisper came again, from everywhere at once:
“Bind what breaks.”

The words struck her like a whip. Her wrist burned. A line of silver light opened between them. Thane’s flame recoiled from it.

She knew then that saying yes would close the trap the Silent Veil had written centuries ago.

“Myrren,” he began.

She lifted her chin. “No.”

The single word rang through the hall like glass breaking.
The chant stopped. The torches flickered. For one long breath, nothing existed except her refusal and its echo. It sounded as if the world itself could not decide whether to keep breathing.

Thane swayed as though struck. His fire dimmed to a dull ember. Silence filled the room while the first flakes of ash began to fall again.

The ash fell thicker, soft as snow, until every surface turned gray.
No one spoke. Even the priests were silent, faces pale in the fading light.

Then Thane straightened.

The golden prince who once burned for her was gone. The man who rose now looked carved from the same stone as the throne behind him. When he spoke, there was no warmth left.

“Then it is true,” he said quietly. “The spiral cannot be broken.”

He turned to the nobles, shoulders squared, light surrounding him in a cold halo. “Eirden will not fall to shadow. The Queen is dead, but her bloodline endures. I claim the crown by right of light and fire.”

The words were for the court, but his eyes stayed on Myrren. Each word cut deep. “And she will answer for what she has done.”

Gasps filled the hall. The same nobles who had once admired her now backed away while guards stepped forward, waiting for Thane’s order. Their faces flickered between pity and relief. The danger had moved away from them.

Myrren’s wrist throbbed where the silver wound still burned. “Thane,” she whispered, “you can still choose truth over them.”

His eyes softened for a heartbeat, then turned to stone. “Truth is what the crown declares.”
He raised his hand. Light spiraled upward, touching the cracked mirrors above. Each shard caught fire until the hall glowed with false dawn.

In the blaze, Myrren saw what others could not. Behind the torches, the shadows stirred, trembling like smoke around a heartbeat. Corven. The tether between them pulled tight. She felt his fury like a storm behind a wall, but he did not appear. Only his shadow shook at the edge of the light, unable to cross.

The pressure of the spiral grew until she could barely breathe. The onyx mark throbbed, pulsing with the rhythm of the crowd’s rising chant.
“Bind what breaks. Bind what breaks.”

“Stop!” she cried. “You are feeding it.”

But the court did not hear her. Their fear had turned into worship. Their voices made the spiral stronger. The air trembled. The torches bent inward as if bowing to Thane’s light.

Light met shadow one last time.
The collision made no sound, only a rush that tore the breath from her lungs. The mirrors shattered, shards raining down like stars. Thane’s fire flared, swallowing every trace of darkness it touched. For a heartbeat, he stood bright and terrible, crowned in ash.

When the blaze faded, the mark on Myrren’s wrist was black.
Her knees hit the floor. The tether went loose. The crown hovered between them, half-melted, dripping gold like tears.

Thane looked down at her, with his face unreadable. “You could have been saved,” he said softly. “But you chose the shadow.”

He reached for the crown. The flame caught its edge, and ash rose in slow spirals around his head.
Somewhere beyond the smoke, Corven’s voice came, distant and furious.
“You chose the spiral.”

The floor shook. The crown’s light flickered once, then died.
Only ash remained, swirling upward, drawing the prophecy’s shape in the dark air.