The cry tore through the chamber like glass.
It wasn't sound. It was sorrow given in a form of grief so pure it bent the air and crushed the heart.
I staggered, clutching my ears. The temperature plummeted as frost webbed up the stone walls, crawling along the iron ring that surrounded the space as it bound the banshee's prison. The fissured crown beside her shimmered in the cold like a tear frozen mid-fall.
Vikra drew his sword. "Eriden…"
"I know!" I gasped. "She's not just any spirit."
The mist around the banshee thickened, forming into a figure half-woman, half-cyclone. Her hair flowed like ink underwater, her body wrapped in translucent rags of silk that rippled with each breath she took… if she even breathed at all.
When her eyes opened the room dimmed. Her eyes glowed the pale blue of a dying flame, and I could feel the weight of centuries looking through me.
"Who… dares disturb my mourning?" she snarled
Her voice echoed not from her mouth but from the air itself. The torches bent toward her like supplicants, their light dimming.
Vikra stepped forward, sword raised but voice steady. "We were sent by the king. He says you've been haunting the halls and killing his men."
The banshee's laughter broke like glass. "His men," she hissed. "His liars. His murderers."
The frost deepened. Behind her, spectral shapes began to form. Shadows of armored knights, kneeling in a circle around her, their heads bowed. When she turned her gaze upon them, they disintegrated into dust.
I took a trembling step forward. "You… You're the banished Queen," I whispered. "Aren't you?"
Her gaze snapped to me. Her face was beautiful-terribly, impossibly beautiful, but it cracked around the edges like porcelain too long forgotten in winter. Her lips were sown together, closed to be forever silenced. "Queen," she repeated, as if the word itself were poison. "He took that title from me when he took my son." she screeched her banshee cries and we covered our ears for bearing.
The iron ring pulsed. The chains shuddered and I saw it… the memory, playing in the air like smoke:
A boy no older than twelve, bright-eyed, sword clumsy in his hand.
The king behind him, tall and cold, his face carved in arrogance.
The glint of steel, the whisper of betrayal and then a pool of blood flicked onto white marble.
The image shattered.
My breath caught in my throat. "He had the crown prince killed…"
Her scream split the chamber. The walls trembled, dust raining down in silver motes. "He called it treason," she spat, "said my child plotted against him. Lies! All lies! He feared my son. Feared the strength, the kindness, and the heart that he never had. He knew the people would love my son… more than they could ever love him as a king."
Vikra and I both ducked as a wave of energy blasted outward, shattering pillars, sending shards of frost across the floor. The banshee rose, weightless, her grief made into power.
"Now he hides behind a new queen," she hissed, "and her hollow laughter fills my halls!"
"Your Majesty!" I shouted over the howling wind. "You don't have to do this! You must let go of this pain…"
"LET GO?" Her voice fractured the stone at our feet. "What is left to hold when all you love is burned away by the one who swore to cherish it?"
Her rage, bit like frost. Ice spears burst from the ground, slicing toward us. Vikra deflected two with his sword, but one barely clipped his arm, tearing right through his sleeve.
"Stay back!" he growled, gripping his blade tighter.
I didn't listen. The banshee's sorrow was so loud it drowned out fear itself. My chest ached with it, my lungs burning. The molecules in the air screamed at me, begging for release.
"Eriden!" Vikra shouted. "If you're going to do something, do it now!"
I closed my eyes and reached deep.
The air roared, the elements pulsated through me, anticipating me to wield them.
And from beneath them all came Ether, a silent hum like the heartbeat of the world, raw and infinite.
The air around me rippled as I stepped forward. "Your Majesty!" I called again, voice carrying like thunder. "If it's vengeance you want, then strike me. But your son, he wouldn't want this. Not you, not your kingdom, not this ruin."
For a moment, the banshee stilled. Her expression flickered, softening and uncertain.
Then she screamed again, and charged.
The impact was pure devastation. I threw up a barrier of compressed air, sparks of Ether lacing through it. Her spectral claws tore through, slicing across my arm. I gasped but stood firm.
"Forgive me," I whispered, and unleashed everything.
Flames roared upward, a vortex of fire and wind spinning together, swallowing away her bottom half. Water condensed from the air, feeding the storm as it swirled around us. The cavern became a hurricane of color and light, Ether binding it all into a single pulse of creation and destruction.
The banshee's form flickered in and out, her scream fading into sobs, her fury collapsing into grief.
When the storm died, I stood trembling, chest heaving, hair clinging to my damp face.
The Queen floated inches above the ground, dim and completely fragile. Her form was almost human now. Her hands ghost-pale, her eyes no longer burning but wet with tears that couldn't fall. The stitches on her lips slit apart.
"I… only wanted to see him again," she whispered. "My boy… my Solen… my crown prince. He was the light of my world."
My throat tightened. "He's waiting for you," I said softly. "Wherever souls go in this world, he's there. Don't let the king take that from you too."
For the first time, the banshee smiled. It was faint, but it was hers.
She lifted a hand and touched my cheek. "You have his courage," she murmured. "And his kindness."
Then she looked past me to Vikra. "Protect her," she said. "For her fate is not yet hers to choose."
Before I could ask what she meant, her form began to dissolve into light, scattering into motes that drifted upward like fireflies.
The cold faded with her. The chains melted into nothing. The crown clattered softly onto the stone floor and the iron ring shattered into fragments booming with a loud thud onto the stone floors.
I knelt, reaching for the crown, but it turned to dust between my fingers.
When I looked up again, the banshee was gone.
Only silence remained.
Vikra came to stand beside me, his sword still in his hand. "Is it over?"
I nodded slowly, tears blurring the ruined hall. "Yes. But she wasn't the monster."
He sheathed his blade and looked toward the stairway leading back to the world above. "They never were. The monsters are the ones living above. "
We walked out in silence. The echo of her final words clinging to the air like the ghost of a lullaby.
"Protect her." her voice sang.
I didn't know if she meant from the king, from Ether, or from myself. But as the light of dawn touched the steps ahead, I felt her sorrow settle deep in my bones and a quiet vow burned behind my ribs.
[The king would pay for what he had done. No matter how long it took.]