The scent of rose ash clung to the throne hall like memory, burned sweetness, impossible to forget, impossible to name.

Myrren didn’t remember how she arrived here. Only that her knees still ached from the stone floor in Corven’s lab. Only that her fingers trembled, and the spiral token in her pocket felt hotter than it should have. Not glowing. Not burning.

Just aware.

The courtiers were silent. No one jeered. No one dared.

Before her, the Queen sat unmoving upon the spiral-throned dais. Her crown, spiked and silver, caught the torchlight with cruel elegance. But it was the spiral beneath her that held Myrren’s eye that carved into the marble itself, ink-dark, curling outward like a blooming wound.

It pulsed.

The Queen said nothing.

Not when the guards escorted Myrren forward.

Not when nobles turned to track her steps like hounds scenting weakness.

Not even when the spiral etched beneath the throne shimmered  only for a moment, like oil rippling on water as Myrren crossed into its edge.

She halted. Her breath caught. The scent changed.

Beneath the perfumes and wax and courtiers’ nerves, something else lingered: smoke.

No. Not real smoke. Something older. Burned myrrh. Crushed bone. And faintly… frostmint.

Her frostmint.

Her masking agent, once used to cover her most volatile tinctures. It was laced through the incense bowls near the dais. Faint. Purposeful.

Someone had dusted the throne room with memory poison.

The Queen knows. Not just about the spiral. About me.

Myrren’s heartbeat staggered. Her skin prickled with a phantom heat, the spiral token pressed hard against her side, unignorable. She dared not move. Dared not speak.

And still, the Queen remained silent.

Nobles watched from their balconies, none seated. The Court was not in session, this was not a trial, though it smelled like one.

It was an audience.

A warning.

A crown preparing to act without raising its voice.

Myrren’s eyes darted toward the courtiers. She spotted Aurelia near the frostmint banners, her painted lips tight with anticipation. Kael Droveth scribbled notes in the shadows, his eyes flicking between her and the spiral floor like he was studying a living experiment. Even Lady Seliora, so often her shield, stood with unreadable stillness with rings glinting, unreadable.

The air itself seemed to listen. No laughter. No whispers. Just the slow, sacred tension of a spiral turning toward its center.

Myrren’s hands twitched at her sides. She could feel the grooves beneath her heels,  the marble spiral warming. It had never been just a symbol. It was a seal. A summoning circle. A snare.

And she’d walked into its eye.

The Queen finally moved.

Her gaze is a pale, knife-sharp that  landed on Myrren with the weight of judgment already passed.

“Myrren Vale,” she said, voice soft as silk drawn across glass. “Do you know what you are?”

Myrren’s voice caught behind her teeth. She could still feel the memory-vapor clinging to her lungs. If she spoke now, would her own words even be hers?

“I…” Her tongue felt thick. “I am a scentcrafter. Summoned by..”

The Queen’s hand lifted. Just one finger.

“Not what you do, Mistress Vale.” Her tone didn’t rise, yet it filled the hall like a curse. “What you are. What the spiral has made of you.”

Myrren’s skin chilled. Her gaze flicked again to the carved spiral beneath her boots. Its outer rings shimmered faintly, no longer stone but something breathing. Watching. A mirror to the one in her pocket.

“I don’t understand,” she whispered.

The Queen’s lips curved not a smile, not pity. Something older. “You do. You’ve seen the signs. Dreams that do not belong to you. Kisses that leave no scent. Reflections that move first.”

Myrren’s breath hitched. Her hand twitched toward her side, where the token burned. The memory of two Corvens flared behind her eyes the light and shadow colliding in the kiss that still lingered on her mouth. Which had been real? Which belonged to her?

“You think you are unraveling,” the Queen said, descending a single step from her dais. “You are not. You are merging.”

Myrren’s spine locked. The word echoed, not just through her ears, but through the spiral itself. She felt it in her bones, in the marrow that no longer pulsed clean. The scent in the air deepened, laced now with something sour,  like wilted violets and distant thunder.

The air between them grew heavier. Myrren could smell her own fear now with sharp, bitter as crushed yew.

“Cordelia Vale once stood where you do now,” the Queen murmured. “Bright. Gifted. Marked. She believed she could outrun the spiral too.”

The name landed like a slap.

“She.. she was erased. Her records…”

“Were cleansed. For the kingdom’s sake. Her spiral broke her.” The Queen’s voice sharpened, ice behind silk. “But not before she took others with her. A prince. A priest. Half a court shattered on the altar of a fate she thought she could rewrite.”

“No,” Myrren breathed. “That’s not what  the prophecy..”

“The prophecy,” the Queen hissed, “is not a promise. It is a trap. A snare wound tighter with every repetition. And still, every generation, some clever girl dares to think she is the exception.”

The silence after that was total.

The Queen studied her.

“You’ve danced between light and shadow. You’ve kissed both your ruin and your salvation. You carry the spiral in your blood, girl.”

Myrren staggered back a step. Her heart felt too loud, beating in spirals of its own.

“Cordelia tried to escape. You…” The Queen stepped down again, closer. Her gown whispered against the stone. “You may yet end it.”

The Queen descended the last step.

Myrren stood frozen within the spiral’s final ring, breath sharp in her throat. The carvings beneath her feet throbbed now, visible even through the haze of incense. Shadows curled where torchlight should have fallen. Somewhere behind her, a noble shifted, silks whispering like rumors. But no one dared speak.

The Queen’s voice dropped to a whisper only Myrren could hear. “You think you are the start of something. That you were chosen. But you are not the storm’s beginning.”

Her breath tickled Myrren’s cheek with perfumed  roses, threaded with ruin.

“You are its cost.”

Myrren’s hand clenched around the spiral token in her pocket. It pulsed once then heat, then heated again,  not burning, but alive. It knew.

“I have seen many spirals,” the Queen continued, gaze pinned to her like a dagger’s tip. “Girls who dreamed too vividly. Lovers who believed they could outpace fate. Every one of them shattered beneath what they carried.”

“Why summon me, then?” Myrren’s voice cracked, low and desperate. “Why not end it?”

“Because this one ends differently.”

The Queen smiled with a terrible, sorrowful thing.

“Because this time, the spiral does not begin with you.”
She stepped back, eyes glinting.
“It ends with you.”

The spiral on the floor flared invisibly, but Myrren felt it: a pulse in her bones, a pull behind her navel, as if her blood had been threaded through with a map she never consented to read.

Behind her, a breeze rose. But the hall was sealed. No windows open. No doors ajar.

And still  the incense turned.

No longer frostmint and myrrh. Now it was ash.

Ash and bone and endings.

Myrren’s breath stilled. Her fingertips trembled.

A whisper echoed in her skull,  her own voice, or the spiral’s. She couldn’t tell anymore.

“One shall break…”

The token in her pocket burned brighter. She fumbled for it.

“One shall bind…”

The Queen turned away, already retreating into the spiral’s eye.

And as Myrren opened her palm to reveal the onyx token, still warm, still pulsing,  the final whisper curled like smoke from its grooves:

“And one shall wear the crown of ash.”