The world still smelled of burnt vows.

They had dragged Ori through the western doors, but Myrren still heard the echo of her friend’s cry threaded beneath the chant that refused to die outside the walls. Bind, break, ash. It throbbed through the marble like a heartbeat.

Ash dusted her palms, lightless and warm. The crown the nobles had seen had vanished, yet its scent, frostmint and blood, clung to her skin.

Footsteps stopped beyond the locked antechamber. Holt’s voice, low and rough, said, “They will call it testimony, not trial. But you know better. Say nothing until he does.”

The latch turned once, twice. When it clicked shut again, silence pressed until she could hear her own pulse counting the beats between faith and betrayal.

They brought her to the Hall of Witnesses at dawn.

Smoke drifted from overturned torches. The marble had been scrubbed but not cleansed; the air reeked of wax, sweat, and faint ozone where Lightbinding had flared too violently the night before. The seven Regents sat in judgment, their signet rings catching the thin light.

Thane stood before them, unarmored, bare-handed, haloed by the shimmer of restrained magic. The glow that had once steadied her now trembled, flickering like a candle cornered by wind.

Holt waited behind him, sword sheathed, jaw tight. When his gaze found hers across the chamber, the warning in it was plain: watch what breaks.

A Regent’s voice broke the silence. “Prince Thane of Eirden, tell us what happened at last night’s gathering.”

Thane bowed his head. “There was confusion. The crowd mistook a miracle for a curse.”

Whispers stirred through the hall.

“Did Mistress Vale create the light you released?”

“She did not,” Thane said quickly. His voice sounded too bright, too polished. “She was only a reflection. She stood inside my circle, and my magic responded to her.”

Myrren froze. That was not what he had said before. Only hours earlier he had sworn that his power could never bind another person without intent. Holt’s shoulders tensed; he had heard the lie as well.

The oldest Regent flipped through a parchment. “Yesterday you said her presence steadied you. That her craft helped you focus, an act of support, not provocation.”

Thane looked up, eyes glowing faintly gold yet distant. “Then I was mistaken.”

The whole hall seemed to draw breath. Myrren felt the bond between them twist, her heartbeat stumbling. A thin light leaked from Thane’s hands, cracked with gray at the edges.

Holt stepped forward and said quietly, “Be careful, Highness. Love can bend the truth faster than poison.”

Thane did not look at him. “I speak for the crown,” he said louder, “not for the heart.”

The words landed like a blade. Myrren flinched. The scent of singed roses filled the air, his light reacting to the tremor in his voice and to her silence.

A scribe’s quill scratched, sealing his contradiction into record.

And beneath that sound she heard the faint snap of something unseen, a rope under strain, the first fiber of faith giving way.

The Regents whispered among themselves, their voices sharp and quick, like trapped insects tapping against glass. Cold light poured through the tall windows, washing the hall in pale color. From outside, the chant still echoed faintly through the walls: Bind, break, ash.

Regent Frostmint waved her fan slowly, pretending to stay calm. “Eirden has seen false miracles before,” she said. “But never one that left ash on the floor.” Her eyes shifted toward Myrren. “Explain that, Prince.”

Thane’s fingers twitched. The glow around his skin steadied, then flickered again. “Light burns away what is corrupt,” he said. “The ash was what remained.”

A hiss spread through the benches, half awe and half disbelief. Holt muttered under his breath, “That is one way to hide a body.”

Myrren’s heart jumped. The words stuck in her mind like a thorn. She saw again the Queen’s lips turning black in her final breath, a dark flash no one dared to mention. Was it poison—or the cost of Thane’s magic gone wrong? Even the heavy perfumes in the hall could not cover the faint, sweet smell of decay.

Regent Kael Droveth pushed his glasses up his nose, his eyes sharp. “Strange,” he said. “The Queen’s chambers smelled of frostmint and blood the same night your miracle flared. Were you cleansing corruption there as well?”

Thane’s jaw tightened. “Her Majesty’s death is not in question.”

“Nor its cause?” Kael asked quietly.

“My light did not touch her.”

The words sounded careful, practiced. Yet the way he said light made Myrren’s stomach twist. He was separating himself from the truth, one word at a time.

Frostmint snapped her fan shut. “Enough.” She turned to the guards. “Bring forward the witness who stood closest to the accused.”

For a heartbeat, Myrren thought they meant her. But the herald’s voice rang out instead: “Lord Corven Veyne, witness for the Guard.”

He stepped from the shadowed aisle, uniform unadorned, every movement precise. The torches dimmed instinctively around him, as if recognizing a master. His presence broke the chamber’s symmetry; even Thane’s light bent slightly, colors warping where gold met gray.

Corven gave a short bow. “I was there when it happened.”
“Speak,” Frostmint said.
“The light didn’t come from her,” Corven replied calmly. “It burst out when the Prince’s promise broke.”

The hall seemed to move all at once, sound, scent, and heartbeat twisting together. Myrren’s throat tightened. When the promise broke. She remembered that moment: Thane reaching for her, his voice shaking, the words of his vow falling apart.

A low voice from the scribe’s dais whispered, unthinking, “Bind what breaks.”

Heads turned; no one claimed the words. Yet they hung in the air like smoke. Myrren felt them burn against her skin, a phrase half-remembered, half-prophecy.

Thane’s light flared in answer, defensive, furious. The glow cracked again, a spiderweb fracture racing up his forearm.

And for the first time, Myrren wondered if his devotion could ignite the kingdom faster than any poison she had ever brewed.

The silence that followed was unbearable. Even the scribes forgot to breathe.

Thane turned toward her at last. The light trembling around him made every motion shimmer, as though he stood behind glass about to fracture. “Myrren Vale,” he said softly, “you have always believed love and loyalty are separate things. But before the crown, they are one.”

His voice was still beautiful. It had once steadied armies. Now it sounded like a confession disguised as command.

“You taught me to trust the light, not to fear it,” she whispered.
“And you answered that trust with shadow.” His hand rose without meaning to, and the glow in his palm flared, urgent. “I promised I would keep you safe, even from yourself.”

“Safe?” The word left her with a bitter taste. “You would lock me in gold and call it kindness.”

A murmur ran through the Regents, half scandal, half curiosity. Holt tightened his hold on his sword but stayed still. This was not a fight for steel.

Thane stepped closer. The light followed him, forming a circle between them like a leash. “If I fall, the kingdom falls. If you fall, I will burn the kingdom to keep you from darkness.”

Her breath caught. Behind him, Corven’s shadows flickered once, silent refusal.

She felt the tether between them all tighten, light pulling, shadow resisting, her body the fault line where they met.

“You call it duty,” she said, “but it’s really fear. You can’t stand to let anything you love be free”

Something fragile shifted in his expression. For a heartbeat, she saw the boy beneath the crown, the one who had laughed under orchard light, who had believed that promises could fix the world. Then the mask closed again.

“Then forgive me,” he murmured, “for loving you enough to bind what breaks.”

The phrase struck her like a blow. The whisper she had heard before, bind what breaks, now wore his voice. The prophecy was consuming his tongue.

The hall’s lamps dimmed. Frostmint gasped as the gold around Thane’s hands darkened, veins of gray threading through brilliance.

Myrren’s tears stung. “You do not see it, do you?”

“See what?”

“That your light is the shadow now.”

A hush fell so deep it hurt.

Then a faint crack echoed like ice yielding underfoot, marking the moment his devotion began to die.

The first crack widened with a sound like glass inhaling. Light bled from Thane’s palm in thin ribbons, splitting into gold and gray. Each pulse of brilliance dimmed the torches until the hall glowed only with him, then not even that.

“Thane,” Holt barked, stepping forward, “release it!”

But Thane’s gaze had gone distant, rapt. “It is only light,” he murmured. “It cannot hurt her.”

The air hissed. The edges of his radiance turned black, feathering like ink in water. Myrren felt the temperature drop; the scent of ozone gave way to iron and frostmint. Her lungs filled with it.

She reached toward him. “Stop, before it takes you too.”

He did not seem to hear. “This is how I keep the crown from breaking.”

The Regents rose, panic unraveling their composure. Frostmint’s fan snapped in half; Kael pressed himself against the dais, eyes wide. “Saints preserve us. His Lightbinding is corrupting.”

Shadow surged through the cracks in the gold like veins seeking a heart. It crawled up his arm, across his throat, until half his face was lit, half drowned in darkness. His eyes burned two colors at once, amber and storm.

For an instant, the hall reflected both: nobles wreathed in light on one side, veiled in shadow on the other. The line between them shimmered like a blade.

Corven moved forward, calm and steady, until he reached the edge of Thane’s light. The two powers met with a deep, rumbling sound, their force colliding inside Myrren’s chest. Pain shot through her ribs as the bond between them twisted.

“Stop,” Corven said, his voice low and commanding. “You’ll destroy her.”

“I created her!” Thane shouted. “She lives because I..”

The word love never came. The light burst outward, blazing like a sun that suddenly collapsed into ash. Myrren fell to her knees as every candle in the hall went dark.

When she looked up, Thane stood frozen. Golden fire still glowed under his skin, but streaks of living shadow ran through it. Over his heart, the mark of the spiral burned bright, half light, half dark, turning slowly like a brand.

Someone screamed.

Across the ruin of the chamber, a single figure still stood untouched. Serenya. Her silver mask glinted once before the gloom swallowed her again.

Her whisper slithered through the silence:
“Light breaks first.”

The words rippled through Myrren’s mind like a command she had heard a hundred times before.

And as the first flakes of ash drifted from the ceiling, she realized the prophecy’s next loop had already begun.