Chapter 9
The floor of the solar tilted violently to the left. The iron trestle table overturned, sending glass and ink smashing across the flagstones. Across the chamber, the boarded window blew inward, white oak planks snapping like matchsticks as a wave of superheated, violet-tinted ozone roared into the room.
From the Great Hall below came the sounds of pure, unbridled terror: the shrieking of five hundred nobles, the deafening crash of silver chandeliers hitting marble, the frantic, thundering stampede of horses and men fleeing into the courtyard.
The palace was not crumbling from age.
The foundations were buckling.
A high-pitched, metallic shriek tore through the air—a sound that resonated in the roots of my molars, setting my teeth vibrating so hard my gums bled.
Galen went rigid.
The gray color in his eyes vanished instantly, wiped away by a surge of brilliant, terrifying abyssal fire that consumed the irises. The blackened veins on his neck swelled, bulging outward like thick cords of rotting rope.
“The seal,” he gasped, blood spraying from his lips onto my chemise. “It’s… midnight.”
“Galen, no!”
He didn't listen. With a terrifying, unnatural surge of adrenaline—the desperate strength of a dead man walking on pure nerve-endings—he tore himself from my grasp.
He hit the floor on his hands and knees, dragging his broken legs behind him like dead weights. He lunged for the greatsword stuck in the stone, wrenched it free with a shower of sparks, and used the blade as a crutch to haul his towering frame upright.
“Stay back!” he screamed, his voice no longer human, vibrating with the double-timbre of the abyssal rift beneath us. “It’s breaking through! The three years are up! If I don't seat the core before the bell finishes tolling, the mountain collapses! The entire valley falls into the pit!”
“You can’t survive another hour on that throne!” I cried, scrambling to my feet, my boots slipping on the slick floor. “Galen, look at you! You’re already ash!”
“Then I’ll burn to the bone!” he roared, turning toward the double doors that led to the high dais of the Throne Room.
He kicked the doors open.
The sight that greeted us through the portal stole the breath from my lungs.
The Great Hall beyond was empty. The nobles had fled; the tapers had been snuffed by the violent draft; the tables lay broken in drifts of spilled wine and crushed meats.
And at the far end of the cavernous hall, upon the five tiers of basalt, the Obsidian Throne had awakened.
It was no longer a chair.
It was an open, roaring mouth into the bowels of the abyss.
Towers of black and violet soul-fire were erupting from the seat, licking the high vaulted ceiling fifty feet above, scorching the ancient banners to floating cinders. The air around the dais was distorting, bending light into sickening, oily whorls. The basalt steps were split by glowing crimson fractures that vomited sulfur and liquid shadow, their edges bubbling like hot wax.
And the throne was calling.
The psychic hum had become a deafening, ravenous roar—a vortex of ancient, hungry magic that reached out toward the royal quarters, demanding the sacrifice it had been promised three hundred years ago.
Galen staggered forward.
He didn't hesitate. He didn't look back.
Using the tarnished greatsword like a cane, his linen tunic whipping around his withered frame in the unnatural gale, he dragged his dying body across the marble floor of the Great Hall, leaving a trail of black, smoking blood in his wake.
“Galen!” I shouted, sprinting after him, the heavy canvas case of my lute banging against my hip.
He reached the base of the basalt steps.
The soul-fire lashed out.
A tongue of violet flame wrapped around his right calf. The leather of his boot turned instantly to gray ash; the flesh beneath charred black, releasing a sickening puff of white smoke.
Galen didn't scream. He threw his head back, his teeth bared in a feral, defiant snarl, and dragged his ruined leg up to the first tier.
*Two.*
*Three.*
With every step, the throne’s fire bit deeper. The violet flames leaped onto his forearms, consuming his sleeves, scorching the hair from his skin, turning his knuckles into blackened cinders as he clung to the hilt of his sword.
“Run, Aurelia!” he bellowed through the roar of the vortex, his voice cracking on the ash clogging his throat. “Run before the rift opens! Get out of Oakhallow!”
I didn't run.
I kicked off my heavy traveling boots. Barefoot, my calloused soles gripping the cold, vibrating marble, I sprinted across the ruined hall.
I reached the first tier of the dais.
The heat hit me like a solid wall of iron, blistering my lips, singing the edges of my hair. But I didn't stop. I took the steps two at a time, my royal blood singing in harmony with the agony of the stone, matching the resonance of the rift step for step.
Galen reached the fourth tier, turning with the last shred of his mortal strength to block the final approach to the seat. His face was a mask of blackened bone and burning violet eyes, his limbs already half-consumed by the ravenous soul-flame.
“Flee!” he screamed, raising his ruined hand to shove me away. “It will devour you!”
I stepped onto the bloodstained dais.
The abyssal soul-fire roared, leaping around our bodies, an inescapable cage of violet heat that sealed us off from the rest of the world. The ground beneath our feet shrieked, the iron core of the kingdom buckling on the razor edge of total ignition.
I reached into the leather pouch against my chest.
My fingers closed around the ancient sky-silver resonance crystal—not the astrolabe, but the core prism I had spent three years charging with the voices, the coppers, and the unwavering faith of a million commoners who had sung of their King of Ash.
I uncapped the crystal.
A blinding, crystalline beam of pure silver light pierced through the swirling violet smoke, reflecting in the burning, widened pupils of Galen’s eyes.
I met his gaze, and through the heat, through the falling ash, through the cataclysmic roar of the dying world, I gave him an unyielding, sovereign smile.
“Did you truly believe I would let you burn in silence for my throne, Galen?”
The cataclysmic flame roared to engulf us both.
