# Chapter 287: The Prince's Choice
The throne room of the Crownlands was a cavern built for echoes and intimidation. Sunlight, thick with the dust of ages, slanted through high, arched windows, illuminating motes that danced like restless spirits in the air. The air itself was heavy, a blend of old stone, cold metal, and the faint, cloying scent of the King's spiced wine. Tapestries depicting centuries of unbroken rule lined the walls, their threads faded but their message of absolute authority still sharp. At the far end of the hall, upon a throne carved from the heartwood of a great oak, sat King Theron, his face a mask of weary disdain.
Prince Cassian strode down the long, crimson carpet, the sound of his boots swallowed by the vastness of the room. He had not bothered to change from his riding leathers, which were still stained with the pale grey dust of the wastes and the darker, richer soil of the riverbanks. He carried the scent of the outside world with him—a wild, untamed aroma of ash and impending storm that felt profane in this sterile hall of power. He stopped at the foot of the dais, his gaze locked on his father. The Royal Guard, flanking the throne in their polished silver and blue plate, stood like statues, their hands resting on the pommels of their swords, their faces hidden behind impassive helms.
"Father," Cassian began, his voice ringing with a clarity that cut through the room's oppressive silence. He did not bow. He did not kneel. He stood as a man delivering a verdict, not a son seeking an audience.
King Theron shifted on his throne, the leather groaning in protest. He took a slow, deliberate sip from a jeweled goblet, his eyes, rheumy and pale, assessing his son over the rim. "Cassian. You return without leave. You ride into the heart of my city reeking of the Bloom-Wastes. You have abandoned your post and your duties. Explain this insolence before I have you stripped of your rank and thrown in the deepest dungeon."
The King's voice was a dry rasp, the sound of parchment being torn. It was a voice accustomed to obedience, a voice that had not known a true challenge in decades. But Cassian had seen what was coming. He had stood on a bluff and watched the sky tear open, had felt the raw, unfiltered terror of the Withering King's awakening seep into the world. The petty squabbles of courts and kings now seemed like the frantic chirping of birds before a landslide.
"There is no time for dungeons or ranks," Cassian said, his own voice hardening. "I have come from the wastes. I have seen the truth of what High Inquisitor Valerius has unleashed. The Withering King is not a myth. It is not a Synod bedtime story to frighten children. It is real, and it is waking."
The King let out a short, bitter laugh, a sound like stones grinding together. He set his goblet down with a sharp click. "The Withering King. A convenient phantom for a failed Inquisitor to seize power. Valerius is a zealot, a snake, but he is our snake. The Concord holds. The Ladder continues. The grain ships sail. The world is not ending, Cassian. You have simply spent too much time listening to campfire tales and not enough time attending to the matters of state."
"The matters of state will not matter when the world is ash!" Cassian's voice rose, the first crack in his composure showing. He took a step forward, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. "Valerius is not just a zealot anymore. He is a vessel. The power he wields… it is not of this world. I saw it twist the very air, felt it corrupt the ground beneath my feet. He is no longer fighting for the Synod. He is fighting to unmake everything."
He paused, forcing himself to breathe, to rein in the desperation that threatened to boil over. He needed to be a prince, not a panicked prophet. "The Radiant Synod is lost to him. The Concord is a tool he will use to shatter the other powers. We cannot stand against him alone. We need allies."
The King leaned forward, his eyes narrowing. "Allies? You speak of allying with the Sable League vultures? Or perhaps with the rabble that fugitive Vale has gathered? The boy is a traitor, a commoner who dared to defy the natural order. His rebellion is a festering wound, not a potential army."
"Soren Vale is the only one who truly understood the threat from the beginning!" Cassian shot back. "He is fighting for the same thing we should be fighting for: survival. His Unchained, the few Wardens still loyal to me, what remains of the Synod's opposition… we must unite them. We must bring all our strength to bear, or there will be no kingdoms left to rule, no grain to trade, no thrones to sit upon."
The silence that followed was thick and suffocating. The King stared at his son, and for a moment, Cassian saw a flicker of something other than disdain in his eyes. It was fear. Not the grand, noble fear of a king for his people, but the small, selfish fear of a man who felt his world, his carefully constructed reality, beginning to crumble. It was a terrifying, dangerous thing to witness.
"You speak of treason," the King whispered, his voice losing its bluster, replaced by a cold, sharp edge. "You would have me, the King of the Crownlands, break the Concord of Cinders. You would have me ally with criminals and rebels against the ordained authority of the Synod. You would have me place the fate of this kingdom in the hands of a debt-bound gutter fighter and a league of merchants who would sell us for a better price on wheat."
He rose slowly from his throne, his hand gripping the armrest, his knuckles white. He was still a large man, and the weight of his crown and his fury seemed to press down on the very air in the room. "You are my son, but you are a fool. You have been blinded by sentiment and cheap heroics. Valerius is a problem to be managed, not an apocalypse to be fought. The system has endured for centuries. It will endure this."
"It will not!" Cassian's voice was a raw shout now, all pretense of courtly decorum gone. "The system is the cage he has broken out of! The rules you cling to are the ones he is using to destroy us! Father, for once in your life, look past the ledgers and the lineage and see the fire that is coming for us all!"
The King's face hardened, the fleeting moment of fear vanishing, replaced by a granite resolve born of pride and paranoia. He saw his son not as a visionary, but as a threat. A rival. A challenge to his absolute authority that could not be tolerated.
"You are mad," the King declared, his voice booming through the hall. He raised a hand, a single, sharp gesture. "Or worse, you are a traitor. Your words are poison. Your actions are a betrayal of your crown, your family, and your people. You would see this kingdom burn for the sake of a commoner's rebellion."
He looked past Cassian, his gaze falling on the Royal Guard. "Captain of the Guard, arrest the Prince. He is to be charged with high treason. Confine him to the Black Cells until such a time as a trial can be arranged."
The world seemed to slow. Cassian heard the command, but it felt distant, as if spoken underwater. He saw the Captain of the Guard, a man he had trained beside, a man who had sworn fealty to the Crown and to him, hesitate for a fraction of a second. The man's gloved fingers tightened on his sword, his helmet turning slightly, as if to look from the King to the Prince. It was a moment of choice, a microcosm of the choice the entire kingdom now faced.
Then, duty won. The Captain's shoulders squared, and he took a single, heavy step forward. "By your command, Your Majesty."
Two other guards began to move, their armored boots scraping on the stone floor, the sound a grating prelude to his doom. They were coming to take him. To chain him. To throw him into a hole to rot while the world ended outside. He thought of Soren, fighting with nothing but his will and the few who dared to follow. He thought of the Withering King, a hunger that would not be sated by treaties or titles.
He would not let it end like this. He would not be a footnote in the final chapter of a dying world.
Cassian's hand moved with a speed born of desperation. It did not go to the dagger at his belt, but to the hilt of the longsword at his hip, the blade he had carried since his sixteenth birthday. The steel slid from its scabbard with a sound like a tearing scream, impossibly loud in the vast hall. The ring of the metal was a declaration, a line drawn in the stone.
The two advancing guards froze. The Captain of the Guard stopped dead. The King's eyes widened in disbelief, his hand falling from the throne as he stumbled back a step.
Cassian brought the sword up, its point leveled not at the guards, but at the heart of the Crownlands itself. At his father. The blade trembled slightly, not from weakness, but from the immense, terrible weight of the choice he had just made. He was no longer a prince. He was an outlaw. A rebel. A traitor.
His gaze met the King's, and in it, there was no more pleading. No more argument. There was only sorrow and steel.
"Then I am a traitor, Father," he said, his voice quiet but carrying the force of an oath. "But I will not let you doom this kingdom."