Chapter 5 The Prophecy Whispered
The seer’s chamber lay buried beneath three layers of the citadel—far below the throne hall, farther still beneath the cells where Kael remained in chains. It was a room carved long before Lyrathia’s reign, long before the dynasty of Shadowblood Queens, when the world was younger and magic was still a raw, untamed force.
Lyrathia descended alone.
No guards. No attendants. Not even Thane, who had begged to accompany her. She needed space. Distance. Control.
And silence.
Always silence.
Torches flickered to life as she passed, responding to the ambient hum of her presence. Her shadows curled along the walls like watchful serpents. Her gown—black silk stitched with fragments of starlight—trailed behind her soundlessly.
The door to the chamber opened before she touched it.
Inside waited three figures: her Archivist Sorin, her Blood Seer Maraxis, and a trembling acolyte clutching a sealed iron case.
Lyrathia stepped onto the mosaic floor, where the old runes formed a spiral of faded crimson. “Why have I been summoned?”
Maraxis bowed deeply, his crimson hood falling forward. “My Queen. We have found something.”
Sorin added, “Something ancient. Something… troubling.”
Lyrathia’s eyes narrowed. “Speak plainly.”
The acolyte stepped forward, hands shaking so badly the iron case rattled.
Sorin snapped his fingers. Shadows coiled from the corners of the room and lifted the case for him, setting it upon the stone table. He opened it with reverence, revealing a scroll bound with blackened sinew.
Old. Too old.
Maraxis whispered, “This was found behind a false wall within the Eastern Archive. Hidden for nearly a thousand years.”
“Show me,” Lyrathia ordered.
The scroll uncoiled with a brittle hiss, flakes of ancient parchment drifting to the floor like ash.
Written in ink the color of dried blood were only a few lines.
Maraxis read aloud:
“The throne forged of silence will crack.
The Queen unfeeling shall awaken to ruin.
Her heart shall stir for the one who ends her reign.”
The air grew colder.
Lyrathia stood perfectly still, her expression carved from obsidian—unchanging, unreadable. A statue of the monarch she had always been.
Sorin cleared his throat hesitantly. “My Queen… this prophecy is dated from the era of the First Curse. It may refer to—”
“It refers to nothing,” Lyrathia said sharply.
A hard edge crept into her voice, but it wasn’t anger. Nor fear. Merely… disturbance. And that in itself was wrong.
The prophecy’s words shouldn’t have reached her. Shouldn’t have mattered.
She had not felt anything in over eight hundred years.
And yet as she stared down at the faded script, she felt a flicker inside her chest. Not emotion—no, that was impossible—but something like a tremor in the dead soil of her heart.
An echo.
Kael’s face flashed through her mind without invitation:
His defiant stare.
The way he had refused to bow.
The pulse beneath her fingertips when she touched him yesterday… and the jolt that followed.
She forced the memory aside.
“This prophecy is nothing more than rebel superstition,” she said. “It holds no weight.”
Maraxis exchanged a glance with Sorin. “My Queen,” the seer said softly, “the scroll was not hidden by rebels. It was sealed by your ancestor. By Queen Myrrath the Silent.”
Lyrathia stiffened.
Her ancestor—the first of their line to receive the curse of emotionless immortality. The queen whose heart had been turned to cold crystal. The queen from whom Lyrathia’s curse descended.
Sorin added gently, “The scroll predates even her reign. She merely preserved it.”
Lyrathia’s hand curled into a fist. Her shadows twisted sharply in response, rattling chains across the chamber walls.
The acolyte flinched.
She ignored him. “What else?”
“That is all,” Sorin said. “The prophecy ends there.”
Lyrathia’s gaze drifted back to the words:
Her heart shall stir for the one who ends her reign.
For the briefest moment, she considered asking the question clawing at her mind—but she shoved it down. She was a queen. She did not entertain irrational thoughts.
Still…
She turned away from the table, her voice smooth and icy. “Destroy the scroll.”
Maraxis hesitated. “My Queen… are you certain? Its magic is old and its warnings—”
“Destroy it,” she repeated, “and burn whatever wall it was found behind. I will not have my court polluted with prophecies meant to breed dissent.”
Sorin bowed his head. “As you wish.”
But she could sense their unease.
As she reached the doorway, Maraxis called carefully, “My Queen… forgive me, but has anything… unusual occurred since the mortal’s capture?”
Her body stilled.
Too perceptive. Seers always were.
She lifted her chin. “No.”
“Of course.” Maraxis bowed deeply. “Forgive my impertinence.”
Lyrathia swept from the chamber.
But as she ascended the steps, her thoughts spiraled.
Unusual.
Yes. Touching Kael had been unusual. His blood resisting her magic was unusual.
And the way he had looked at her—fearless, unbroken—was more than unusual.
It was dangerous.
She reached the upper corridors where moonlight spilled through stained glass, painting her silver. She paused before the tall windows.
Her reflection stared back—a creature of cold beauty, carved from shadow and regality. A queen without a heart. A being incapable of love, pain, fury, delight.
And yet something inside her… shifted.
A tremor. A crack.
Barely there, but undeniable.
She whispered to herself, “The prophecy is nothing.”
Even her voice sounded different—fainter, as if unsure.
She turned away and continued through the palace halls, passing guards who bowed low. They knew better than to meet her gaze. Her silence alone was said to drive mortals mad.
But Kael had met her eyes.
And he had not broken.
A curse stirred inside her like awakening stone.
Her heart shall stir for the one who ends her reign.
Lyrathia stepped into the quiet of her private chambers. Moonlight brushed her cheek, unexpectedly warm. Almost tender.
She exhaled slowly.
Not an emotional sigh. She knew it wasn’t. But something adjacent. Something nearing the border she had long believed impassable.
Kael was a threat.
Not because he was defiant.
Not because his blood was anomalous.
Not because the prophecy existed.
But because the crack she felt yesterday had not closed.
If anything, it had widened.
Her advisor’s question echoed again:
Has anything unusual occurred…?
Lyrathia touched her chest lightly.
She felt nothing.
And yet…
Her fingers lingered.
A sign of hesitation she would never allow anyone else to witness.
A sign of caution.
A sign of possibility.
Her shadows curled protectively around her as she whispered into the empty room:
“This prophecy will not touch me.”
But the silence that answered her felt like doubt.
And far below her, in the dungeons lit by dim red lanterns, Kael sat chained—eyes open, waiting.
As if he sensed she would come.
As if something between them had already begun, with or without her permission.
As if the prophecy had not been a warning…
…but the first turn of a key.