Chương 200: Chapter 58: Dressed in the Only Truth

The King stood up, the weight of the crown invisible yet tangible in his posture. He took the military attire from the steward's arm and, with a surprisingly personal movement, deposited it directly into Selena's arms. The thick fabric, the intense red, was heavy. Not only physically; it carried the weight of expectation, of secret and of future violence.

—Tomorrow you will be named marchioness at first light —said Thaerón, his tone now practical, almost mundane— It is the same ceremony as always, pomp, bows, signatures on parchments. You will be bored. Rest. There was no emotion in his words; it was the simple logistics of power. With a slight nod of his head, the monarch turned around and left the room, leaving her alone with the scarlet uniform and the oppressive silence of decisions made.

The next day, after the ceremony as empty and predictable as the King had announced, the endless gala dances where, once again, she received a parade of marriage proposals from nobles eager to annex her new title and her blood to their lineages, Selena arrived at her quarters with a shrunken soul and an exhausted body. The fake smile hurt her facial muscles. The weight of the crimson velvet dress and silver lace weighed heavily on her shoulders. She did not even take it off.

With a sigh that was almost a groan, she dropped onto the bed, the layers of fabric spreading around her like a pool of dried blood, she sank into a dense, dreamless sleep, she slept like a log. The following morning found her still dressed and wrinkled. The sunlight seeped through the heavy drapes, illuminating dust motes that danced on the nightstand. There, resting on the polished wood like a fallen leaf, she saw a letter. Without the heraldic seal, nor elaborate wax.

It was a simple envelope of parchment paper, neatly folded. She recognized it instantly: the handwriting was Samira's and it was written in Sahric. A beat of affection and nostalgia ran through her chest before even opening it. Upon unfolding the paper, she read the brief and discreet content:"My lady, I have begun the entrusted mission. As you suggested, I will not send more letters, only those reporting my personal situation or imminent danger.

When I obtain sufficient and verifiable information about the target, I will return to find you where we agreed. I understand that a secret of such magnitude can only be delivered in hand. I congratulate you on your advancement to marchioness. May the paths guide you with wisdom. Sincerely, Samira." Selena sighed, a long and loaded sound. It was the sting of a newly confirmed absence. A friend. A true friend.

The woman who, in the first days in Kaelburg, had helped her with her morning hairstyles, patiently braiding her hair while telling her stories of the parchments she restored. The one who, with a patient smile, had taught her the guttural complexities of Norrun sitting together in the Cloister of the Forest. The one who had opened the doors of Sahric to her and whose face always lit up with a light of its own when talking about books, about stories that only paper kept. Samira had departed.

Not as a freed slave, but as a free agent, navigating toward the dangerous mists of the Omnipresent Shadow. Selena folded the letter carefully and kept it in a small wooden casket alongside a few other prized possessions. One more thread stretched into the distance, thin but strong. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. That week, she also failed to get the King to grant her another access to the Book of United Flesh.

Her discreet requests were met with polite evasion or with the simple silence of an impossible schedule. Sorrowful, she began to think that the month of waiting until the Arcana Resonant advancement ceremony would arrive and pass before she could flip through those dangerous pages again. Perhaps that single, fleeting reading in the sealed chamber would be all that fate would permit her. She sighed, resigned. At least, she thought, they let me see the entrails of the realm's power.

At least I touched, even for an instant, the heart of the mystery. As if she had foreshadowed it with her pessimistic mind, so it happened. She did not cross the sealed doors again, nor feel the cold of the chamber of luminous beetles. Time flowed, and the morning of the ascension ceremony arrived with the deceptive calm of an ordinary day. Selena dressed like every day. She put on a simple light linen dress, practical for the summer heat that still punished the capital.

Her hair, tied in a low, functional ponytail. Her shoes, the same ones worn out by the road and training. Contrary to the day she was named marchioness, when she had accepted the social armor expected of her, this time she presented herself with the naked humility of what she was at the bottom of her heart and had never let go: a human. A woman before the threshold of the supernatural, dressed in the only truth she had left.

They guided her to a chamber in the deepest part of the palace's ancient wing, far from the golden halls. Upon entering, the contrast was shocking. The room was austere, almost spartan. There were no tapestries, nor busts, nor heraldic symbols. The walls were of smooth, unpolished stone, like those of a cave or a primitive fortress. The architecture seemed out of tune with the whole castle, older, more brutal.

The ceiling was low, perhaps three meters, and in the center, a skylight with an abstract stained-glass window of muted blues, grays, blacks filtered a faint and diffused light. In the center of the bare floor, carved directly into the rock, there was a circle of runes. Selena looked at it and a slight, almost ironic smile appeared on her lips. After all, she thought, runes do not have an echo of their own. It is pure theater, symbolism.

On a rough throne, carved in the same stone of the wall, sat Thaerón, but he was not the King she knew. He wore a simple black robe, without trimmings, without ornaments, of the same plain and functional cut she had so often seen on Valerian or Isolde. He bore no crown, nor rings, nor necklaces. Only the dark fabric, which merged him with the shadows of the chamber. It was the ritual nudity of power stripped of its tinsel. To his right side, Cassian.

He also wore a black robe, but with fine white trimmings on collar and cuffs that contrasted violently with his pale complexion, his brown hair sprinkled with the first grays and his light brown eyes, serene and observant. To his left, the other two familiar faces: Isolde, with her black robe trimmed in purple, her expression stern as a sharpened axe; and Valerian, with his trimmed in blood red.

The jester looked at her as she passed, and in his silver eyes shone a glint of mocking recognition, a smile that did not reach his lips, but that Selena felt as a complicit wink. But they were not the only ones. Outside the King's immediate circle, distributed in a wider semicircle and plunged into the penumbra of the torchless chamber, there were nine more figures.

All wore black robes, but each had trimmings of a different color, like a shadowy spectrum deployed: earthy brown, bright yellow, bubblegum pink, navy blue, sky blue, ash gray, reddish terracotta, pale beige and, the last one, an intense orange. Their hoods were raised, concealing their faces, but the presence of each one was palpable, a loaded quietness, like pillars of different materials holding up the same invisible ceiling.