The sky over the capital was the colour of a fresh bruise—a deep, mournful grey threatening to weep. It was a fitting canvas for the burial of a king.
The Stone-Gardens lay shrouded in a silence so profound it felt like a physical weight upon the shoulders of every soul present.
The pathways were lined not with common mourners, but with the ranked and titled: dukes and barons in sombre velvets that drank the weak light, foreign emissaries standing like carvings of judgement, and the full assembly of the Royal Guard, their armour polished to a dull, heartless gleam. They formed a wall of silent steel, a barrier between the living royalty and the dead.
The air was thick. It carried the smell of freshly turned, damp earth, the cold exhalation of ancient stone, and the cloying, sweet-rot scent of funeral lilies—a smell Tenebrarum would forever associate with loss.
At the centre of it all, standing before the gaping maw of the royal crypt, was Tenebrarum.
He was a figure of absolute, terrifying stillness amidst the sea of shifting silks and hissed whispers.
He wore the formal, onyx-black robes of the Crown Prince, edged with silver thread that caught the light like shards of ice. Upon his face was the mask—the familiar, impassive obsidian plane that sealed away the man, presenting only the symbol. The new king. The heir. The shadow.
Yet beneath the robes and the mask, he wore the full, brutal weight of the pain. Alone.
To his right, a precise and calculated pace behind as custom dictated, stood Isabelle.
She was a masterpiece of curated mourning in a gown of dove-grey silk that whispered with her every slight movement. A veil of sheer black lace obscured her features, but did nothing to dim the sharp, assessing gaze behind it. She was the picture of solemn support, a living promise of continuity planted beside the untested monarch. Her eyes, behind the lace, missed nothing—not a twitch of a lord's hand, not the tilt of an emissary's head, and certainly not the rigid, silent form of the man who was now going to be her husband.
The ceremony unfolded with a torturous, sonorous slowness.
High priests, their faces painted with solemnity, intoned blessings in a language so dead the very words seemed to crumble in the air.
Smoke from heavy censers coiled in thick, fragrant ropes, wrapping around the bier like ghostly chains.
All eyes, however, remained fixed on the crown prince.
The court was a beast of a thousand heads, all leaning in, waiting.
Would he break? Would a tremor betray the son beneath the crown? Would a sigh escape the mask?
Tenebrarum did not move. He was a monolith of grief and power, his breathing so shallow his chest barely seemed to rise.
As the final, echoing prayer faded into the thick air, the pivotal moment arrived. The crystal casket, borne on the shoulders of eight grizzled generals—men who had fought for his father—was carried forward to the lip of the crypt. Tradition demanded the new king lay his hand upon the casket in a final, public farewell.
Tenebrarum took one single, measured step forward. A collective, silent inhale swept through the Stone-Gardens.
He raised his right hand, bare of any glove, pale against the black of his sleeve. For a suspended moment, it hovered over the cold, flawless glass.
Beneath it, his father's face was a stark sculpture of pallor and peace, a stranger in death. Then, Tenebrarum laid his palm flat upon the surface.
A shock seemed to travel from the point of contact—through the glass, through his arm, and into the stone beneath their feet. The air itself tightened. He held the pose, his head bowed not in prayer, but in a private, crushing conference with the ghost before him. He held it for the span of ten heartbeats, the only sound the distant, lonely cry of a rook.
When he straightened and turned to face the assembled might of the kingdom, he was transformed. His masked gaze swept over them, and it was not the look of a grieving son. It was the cold, assessing, impersonal stare of a sovereign surveying his possessions. The silence deepened, now charged not with grief, but with a formidable, awakening dread.
The weak king was dead.
But before the finality could settle, a ripple disturbed the solemn ranks.
A guard—not a general, but a lower-ranked sentinel from the palace gates—broke from his post. His face was ash-pale, his steps hurried and clumsy on the sacred stones. He ignored all protocol, striding directly toward the dais, drawing a hundred horrified stares.
He dropped to one knee before Tenebrarum, leaning in so his urgent whisper was for the royal ear alone. The words were hissed, desperate.
Isabelle, from her place of honour, saw it all. She saw the guard's frantic lips move. She saw Tenebrarum's masked head tilt, just a fraction, as if struck by a small, invisible blade. And then she saw his hand, which had been resting at his side, clench.
Slowly, inexorably, the leather of his glove straining, the fingers curled into a fist so tight the knuckles stood out like bone pebbles against the black.
Lady Flavia.
The name was a silent explosion in his mind. Escaped.
The news was a visceral blow, a betrayal that cut through the numbness of grief with a sharp, personal venom.
His father was being sealed in stone, and she was fleeing into the world. A wave of fury, desolation, and something perilously close to panic threatened to rise and choke him.
He did not want to show an inch of emotion. He would not give the crows this satisfaction. He forced his breath to remain even, his posture unchanged, as his father's casket began its slow, irrevocable descent into the eternal darkness.
Life and death were too close friends. And life, it seemed, was running from him.
"And by our ancient traditions and sacred customs," the High Priest's voice boomed, reclaiming the ritual, "a prince is to be king. Let the successor rise."
The world narrowed to a tunnel. The crowd's silence was absolute, a vacuum waiting to be filled.
Tenebrarum walked forward, each step heavy with the weight of a crown he had not asked for and a throne that felt like a sentencing.
Before the crypt, the High Priest stood, holding the Crown of Shadows—a brutal, beautiful circle of obsidian and sharpened silver, said to be forged from the heart of a fallen star.
It was lowered onto his head. The weight was immediate and profound, a cold, permanent pressure. It felt less like an honour and more like the locking of a manacle.
"Let it be known!" the Priest cried, his voice cracking with fervour. "This is our new king! King Tenebrarum Mortifer!"
For a heartbeat, there was nothing. Then, as if breaking a spell, the crowd erupted. A thousand voices, a roaring wave of forced loyalty and naked ambition, crashed over him.
"LONG LIVE THE KING!"
The sound was deafening. It was not a cheer, but a conquest. It filled the bruised sky, shook the lily petals loose from their stems, and echoed off the tombs of his ancestors.
His stepmothers wept—one with the ragged, desperate sobs of a woman whose world had just ended, the other with the silent, hollow tears of a queen who had seen too many ends. Their grief perfumed the air, cloying and thick as the funeral lilies.
His brothers did not weep.
They stood apart, a wall of simmering malevolence in fine black wool. Their eyes, sharp as drawn steel, were not on their father's sealed tomb, but on him. On the crown. Their stares were promises, sharp and unspoken: This fight for the throne was finally over.
Tenebrarum stood immobile at the centre of the storm, his masked face giving nothing away.
Behind the obsidian, his eyes were fixed on the dark mouth of the crypt, now sealed.
And in the clenched fist at his side, hidden by the folds of his robe, his nails bit deep into his palm, drawing blood—the only offering of pain he would permit himself on the day he buried his father and lost everything else.
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To be continued...