Chương 138: Prologue: The Duty

The royal palace of Erabergh does not sleep. It pants. It is a heart of stone and gold pumping ambition, fear, and decree ink through veins of cold marble. A dull echo that claims to silence the voices she still carries stitched to her skin. Selena of Solendra knows it well. She has traded the inclement sand of the desert and the hungry whisper of the Void for a quieter kind of horror.

One that does not drip dark blood onto forgotten pedestals, but instead sits on velvet sofas, serves tea in fine porcelain cups, and smiles with the gray eyes of King Thaeron. A horror that does not seek to tear the limbs from her body, but to master her strings. Three years of absence granted her no truce; they only charged her a higher toll. Now, a new and strange armor weighs heavily on her shoulders.

They gave her epithets that were links, they granted her titles that smell of iron, of obligation, and of a loyalty that does not belong to her. New names to chain the same borrowed soul. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. Around her, the court whispers and spies sharpen their knives in the shadow. They believe the true danger lies at the borders, the war roaring once again, or the neighboring kingdoms.

They do not understand that she no longer dances to the tune of men. Furthermore, they do not know that each of her alliances, each strategic silence, and each fragile crystal of her reputation is merely a palisade to protect the little she has left: that internal compass still beating in the distance, that inner sea of lies where any approach is a wound waiting to happen.

However, her actions, those she has pondered and protected, have led her to the duty of her future, an artifact and that unexpected consequence of pursuing the truth. It is the responsibility, she has been a vessel to contain the truth, one that overflows whenever she manages to glimpse it deeper and deeper. In Erabergh, peace is only a ceasefire between treasons. The board has changed, but the price remains the same.

To survive the storm, the girl who once walked into her own trap must learn to be colder, more calculating, and more implacable than the very throne she serves. Because when reality is manipulated, the ruins demand a ruler. Power, just like the Void, never leaves a vacancy. It is not the sword that subdues you. It is the duty that falls dull like the sound of deep hammering, guided by other hands.