The royal castle of Helios was in turmoil, though turmoil was perhaps too dignified a word for the panic that had set in. It was more like a festering wound finally bursting open.
The newly crowned King had not returned.
It hadn't taken Eliana long to piece together the wreckage of her son's disappearance. The missing guard reports, the empty bed, the direction he'd been seen walking, it all pointed to the Flame of Helios. He had gone to attempt the Ritual.
Horror had settled in her chest like cold lead. She knew him. She knew her boy. Lumiel wasn't ready. He wasn't stable. He was fragile, a porcelain doll trying to play soldier. He had fainted at his own coronation, for gods' sake, crumpled under the weight of a crown before it had even settled on his brow.
So, in the dark hours of the night, a terrible certainty had taken root in her mind: Lumiel hadn't gone to the Flame to conquer it. He had gone to end it all. He had chosen a legendary death over a life of inadequacy, throwing himself into the fire because he couldn't bear the ice of the throne.
It had been a week. Seven days of silence. Seven days of the sun burning overhead, indifferent to her agony.
The archives were clear, written in ink that didn't care about a mother's hope. Those who succeeded returned within a day, perhaps three at the absolute most. Her husband, the previous King, had walked out of that tower in two days, triumphant and changed.
But there were other inscriptions. Names of those who entered and never came back. The ones who failed. The ones the fire consumed.
Three days was the limit. Seven was a grave.
Yet Eliana refused to accept the mathematics of grief. She stood outside the tower day after day, a statue of denial, waiting for a door to open that had remained stubbornly shut.
Her only comfort, if you could call shared misery comfort, was her daughter, Lenora.
Lenora, however, had already passed her judgment. She didn't share her mother's desperate, blind faith. When the third day had come and gone with no sign of her brother, she had broken down, weeping until she had nothing left to give.
She knew the truth. Her brother wasn't strong enough. He never had been. He was kind, yes, soft, gentle Lumiel who liked poetry and avoided conflict but kindness didn't survive in that fire. She believed, just as her mother secretly feared, that he had chosen the Ritual as a glorified suicide.
And God, she resented him for it.
The bitterness of it choked her. How dare he? How dare he leave them like this, right on the heels of their father's death? How dare he leave them alone to face a court of vultures who had been sharpening their knives since the King's funeral?
The nobles weren't even waiting for a body. They were already convening in the throne room, their voices echoing in the halls where her father once ruled. They discussed the future of the Kingdom with the casual arrogance of men who smelled blood in the water. They debated succession. They weighed candidates.
They didn't even mention Eliana as Queen Regent. To them, she was already a relic, a weeping widow whose lineage had failed.
Both women knew what was happening. They could feel the power slipping from their fingers like sand. The court was a pack of hyenas circling a dying lioness, waiting for the right moment to tear into the carcass of the Helios dynasty. But neither of them had the strength to face it.
Marconius Helios had been a peaceful King. Critics called him soft, mocked his desperate need to see peace in every conflict, but he had been strong where it counted. As a husband, as a father, he had been their shield. His existence alone had kept the wolves at bay.
His loss had been a hammer blow. But losing Lumiel? Losing the heir? That shattered what was left.
The world was ruthless to women without protectors. Even if Lumiel had been weak-minded, even if he lacked confidence, his mere existence, the blood of Apollina pumping through his veins had been a wall. A symbol.
Now, that wall was gone. And the enemy was at the gate.
"I—I won't accept this! I will never accept this!"
Eliana's scream tore from her throat. She fell to her knees before the tower, her hands clawing at the dirt as if she could dig her way to him.
She couldn't enter. The wards would incinerate her before she took three steps. So she stayed on the edge of the kill zone, begging. Praying to Apollina, to Helios, to any god who might be listening, though the silence suggested they had all turned their backs on this family.
"M—Mother..."
Lenora's voice trembled. Her eyes, red-rimmed and exhausted, filled with tears she thought she'd run out of. She knelt beside the Queen, wrapping her arms around her mother's shoulders, resting her head against the older woman's trembling back.
It had been over a week.
She wanted to say it. The words were right there, sitting on her tongue like bitter poison: He's gone. We have to leave. We have to survive.
But she couldn't.
If she said it out loud, if she gave voice to the reality that Lumiel was ash and bone, she was terrified she would shatter completely. And she couldn't afford to shatter. Not now.
She had to be strong. She had to find some scrap of iron in her soul to protect her mother, and herself, from the nightmare that was coming for them all.
Without a protector, they were nothing but assets. Livestock to be traded. Lenora knew this with a clarity that made her stomach turn. She was of marriageable age, the last child of the previous King, a walking, breathing seal of legitimacy for whoever managed to force a ring on her finger.
She would be targeted. Hunted. And she might not have a choice but to bare her throat to the wolf if she wanted to shield her mother, the only family she had left in this wretched, empty world.
Eliana, wrapped in her daughter's embrace, lowered her gaze. Her fingers dug into Lenora's arm, desperate and weak.
"Lenora... what happened..."
"It will be fine, Mother..." Lenora forced the words past her lips, though they tasted like lies. Her voice trembled, betraying her. "So please... stay with me." She tightened her hug, clinging to her mother, begging her to not leave her as well, to not leave her alone.
Something in that plea reached Eliana. Seeing her daughter, usually so composed, so fierce—reduced to this trembling, terrified child brought a flicker of clarity back to the Queen's eyes. She hugged Lenora back, offering what little comfort she could scrape together from the ruins of her soul.
Maybe it was time to open her eyes. To stop staring at a closed door and look at the girl beside her.
She couldn't lose her remaining child. She had to stay strong, at least until Lenora was safe. She had to—
Suddenly, the air changed.
A shockwave, not of sound but of pure power, rippled through the atmosphere.
Both Eliana and Lenora pulled away from each other, heads snapping up in unison.
The Flame of Helios, that miniature sun that had hovered impassively for a thousand years was pulsating. It wasn't just burning; it was breathing. After Marconius's death, it had dimmed, a dying ember reflecting a dying kingdom. But now? Now it shone with a ferocity that turned the night sky into noon. It pulsed, brighter and bigger, illuminating every stone of the capital in harsh, unforgiving relief.
And then they saw it.
A speck of concentrated fire separated itself from the main body of the Flame. It plummeted like a falling star, expelled from the heart of the sun, streaking down the length of the tower before slamming into the ground below with a crash that shook the earth beneath their feet.
Eliana and Lenora stood up, stunned into paralysis.
They moved unconsciously, drawn like moths, stopping just outside the tower's threshold. The heat radiating from within was a physical barrier, a wall of superheated air that threatened to singe hair and blister skin. Even Lenora, with the royal blood running through her veins, felt she would incinerate instantly if she took another step. The Flame was agitated, dangerous, its power surging beyond anything in living memory.
They could only stand at the precipice, narrowing their eyes against the glare, trying to see what had crashed into the stone floor, creating a smoking crater in the center of the tower.
Silence stretched.
Neither woman spoke, but the hope on their faces was a painful, terrifying thing. It was the look of someone betting their last coin on a rigged game.
They held their breaths.
Watched.
Waited.
Tears streamed down Eliana's cheeks, unheeded, as she clasped her hands together in a prayer she was too afraid to voice.
Then, from the depths of the crater, a wave of golden heat rippled outward.
A hand appeared, gripping the edge of the broken stone. It wasn't just flesh; it was glowing, veins tracing patterns of liquid gold beneath the skin.
Slowly, agonizingly, a figure pulled itself up and out.
Lenora's hand flew to her mouth, stifling a gasp that was half-sob, half-scream.
Eliana couldn't even make a sound. Her throat locked tight as tears of pure, devastating joy blurred her vision.
Standing there, bathed in a golden aura that seemed to hum with power, was a man.
Topless and transformed.
But neither Eliana nor Lenora could ever mistake him.
He was taller. Leaner. The softness of his previous life had been burned away, replaced by sculpted muscle that was visible even through the distorting waves of heat. His curly golden hair moved as if underwater, caught in the updraft of his own power. And his eyes... his eyes glowed like gems carved from the sun itself, burning with an intensity that demanded worship.
Lumiel raised his hand, staring at it as if seeing it for the first time. He looked down at his chest, at arms engraved with golden runes that pulsed in rhythm with the Flame above.
He had awakened.
Finally and successfully.
A smile, faint, weary, but very triumphant ghosted across his lips.
Then his eyes rolled back, and he pitched forward, collapsing face-first onto the stone floor with a heavy thud.