The Ashes Whisper His Name
The palace should have felt calm at dawn.
But it didn't.
The golden morning light barely softened the chill that slithered through the corridors. Whispers clung to the walls like mold. Something had changed overnight—something that made the air feel wrong.
In the far east quadrant, a patrol unit had made a gruesome discovery. They stood in a half-circle, weapons drawn but utterly useless, staring at what remained of nine royal guards.
Or what used to be royal guards.
The bodies were so burnt, they no longer resembled men. They were melted to the stone, bones fused into blackened armor, skin blistered beyond identification. Some limbs had curled in grotesque final poses, and one jaw hung open in a soundless scream, frozen in time.
The scent of sulfur and scorched flesh was enough to make one of the guards vomit into the hedges.
No spells could have done this.
No blade, no fire from any court mage.
Whatever did this… it had come from somewhere far darker.
When Prince Derek arrived at the scene, he didn't speak.
He simply stared at the remains, his sharp features still, but his storm-grey eyes narrowed with thought.
Behind him, his younger brothers trailed in tense silence—Prince Cason, always meticulous in thought, and Prince Amir, the youngest of the three, who was still learning to control his expressions. His face wrinkled in clear disgust.
"Are we certain this isn't sabotage?" Amir asked, stepping back with a frown. "Could the fire-wielding princesses have—"
"This isn't pyro kinesis," Derek cut in. "Look at the ground."
The stone beneath the corpses had cracked open, veins of black seared into the foundation. Even the metal of the guards' swords had melted.
Derek crouched down, gloved fingers brushing a fragment of ash.
"This… is not from our world."
The implications coiled around his words like smoke.
Cason stepped forward, peering at the carnage with a thoughtful frown. "You think it's true, then? That someone opened the border?"
Derek didn't answer. Not yet.
He stood, his voice low and clipped.
"Bring the bodies to the back chamber of my study. Wrap them in enchanted linen. Do not speak of this to anyone. Not even your shadows."
He paused, turning back to the corpses one last time.
"And prepare the summoning of the All-Seeing Eagle."
The scent of burnt steel and sulfur still lingered in the eastern courtyard, long after the charred remains had been removed. Servants were forbidden to speak of it. The floor had been scrubbed thrice, the cracks between the stones darkened beyond healing, but nothing—not soap, not enchantment—could hide the horror of what had happened.
Silken drapes swayed in the breeze, pale gold against the morning light. But the beauty of the room was marred by violence.
A crystal vase lay shattered on the marble floor. Two pillows had been torn apart at the seams. A comb, thrown in rage, still stuck halfway into the wall like a blade.
Princess Selene stood at the center of the room, trembling.
Her normally flawless hair—glossy and coiled—had come undone, loose strands falling around her face. Her lavender silk gown had slipped slightly off one shoulder, but she didn't notice, or care.
"They said it was Lucifer," she whispered, her voice barely a breath.
Across the room, Sadie knelt on bruised knees, her head bowed low. Her dress was rumpled, one sleeve torn. Her hands were clutched tightly in her lap, shaking.
"I—I don't know what happened," Sadie stammered. "I helped her pack… I didn't know she would—"
"Didn't know what?" Selene snapped, rounding on her. "That she'd vanish? That the guards would be burnt alive?"
Sadie flinched. "She didn't say where she was going."
Selene paced, her bare feet silent against the polished marble.
"Ten guards," she muttered. "Ten trained men. Gone. Burnt beyond recognition. The survivor—gods, his leg…" She shivered.
Her voice dropped.
"He kept saying Lucifer. He was weeping like a child. Begging for forgiveness."
"That name," Selene whispered, "hasn't been spoken out loud in centuries."
She turned sharply, her eyes wild. "The Moon Goddess sealed him behind the veil—sealed him! He can't cross unless summoned by the chosen one."
Sadie said nothing. She had no answers. Only fear.
Selene ran her hands through her hair, pacing again.
"What is she?" she hissed. "Who is Elowen?"
A knock came at the chamber door—measured, calm.
Selene froze. Her eyes darted toward Jeria, her chief maid, who stepped forward and opened it a crack.
She stiffened.
"It's Princess Xyril."
Selene's stomach clenched.
Perfect timing.
She adjusted her robe, pulled her hair back into something like order, and composed her face into a mask of neutrality—though her hands still trembled faintly.
"Let her in."
Princess Xyril entered with the grace of drifting snow.
Her gown was pale sea foam, threaded with silver that caught the morning light like stardust. Her long black hair fell freely down her back, and her face—calm, heart-shaped, eerily lovely—was untouched by emotion.
Behind her, two veiled handmaidens followed without a sound.
Xyril's eyes took in the disarray with one sweeping glance. The broken vase. The shattered nerves.
She smiled faintly.
"A difficult morning, I take it?"
Selene said nothing for a moment, eyes narrowed.
Then she laughed bitterly.
"Oh, it's been perfect. Thank you for asking."
Xyril didn't sit. She simply walked to the window, trailing a hand along the edge of a table as she passed.
"I assume you've heard."
Selene's lip curled. "The palace is a graveyard of whispers."
"Nine men dead," Xyril said softly. "Burnt so thoroughly that their armor melted into their bones. One survivor, barely human. And the word he kept repeating?"
She looked over her shoulder, eyes glinting.
"Lucifer."
Selene's throat tightened.
"Do you believe it?" she asked, barely above a whisper.
Xyril tilted her head, thoughtful.
"I believe something unnatural happened. I believe the fire was not of this realm. And I believe someone very powerful came to save a girl who shouldn't matter."
A silence stretched between them.
"Elowen," Selene said, the name like venom. "She ran. And somehow… she was protected by him."
She looked away, clenching her jaw.
"She's no one. A maid. A girl I picked up out of pity. But now—now the Devil comes for her?"
Her voice broke.
"Why?"
Xyril finally turned from the window and walked forward, the hem of her dress whispering across the floor.
"That's what I want to know."
Selene blinked.
"You don't know?"
"No," Xyril said plainly. "I don't know what Elowen is. I don't know why Lucifer would risk the veil to rescue her. But he did."
She paused, watching Selene closely.
"And now, we are all tangled in something we can't see."
Selene sat down heavily, the strength draining from her limbs.
"Do you think she's… the Chosen?"
Xyril was quiet a moment.
"I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not. But even if she's not, something about her matters. He wouldn't have come otherwise."
She folded her hands.
"That's what terrifies me."
Selene swallowed.
"They'll come looking," she said. "Derek. The Eagle. They'll trace the attack."
Xyril nodded.
"Send the injured guard to my quarters. If the prince searches, it's better he finds nothing in yours."
Selene hesitated.
"Why are you helping me?"
Xyril met her gaze.
"Because if your name is exposed now, we both fall. And I have no intention of falling."
Xyril turned to leave, her maidens gliding behind her like silent shadows.
At the door, she paused.
"If Lucifer truly walks our world again… then the world is already changing."
She didn't look back.
Selene sat in stunned silence, her thoughts spiraling.
Why Elowen?
What does she have… that even the Devil would burn a kingdom to protect it?
The chamber beneath Prince Derek's private study was unlike any other room in the palace.
Few even knew it existed.
Built from smooth volcanic stone, its dome arched like the inside of a celestial sphere. No windows. No torches. Only a single ring of ghost light candles that hovered midair, suspended by enchantment, their pale flames flickering without wind. The air was cold—unnaturally cold—despite the presence of fire.
At the center of the room stood the altar.
Circular, carved with celestial runes, etched with symbols of balance, time, and truth. The kind of magic not conjured—but obeyed. Ancient.
And in the center of it all—resting atop a perch of polished bone and crystal—sat the Great All-Seeing Eagle.
Its body was carved from petrified obsidian, yet it moved like flesh. Feathers shimmered with starlight, and its wings—vast and regal—were stretched in permanent mid-spread, as though forever on the cusp of flight.
Its third eye, set dead in the center of its brow, pulsed with white-gold light. Living. Aware.
Breathing.
The room was heavy with silence. It pressed into the bones, made the air thick in the lungs.
Prince Derek stood before the altar, unmoving.
Behind him stood his brothers—Prince Cason, with his arms crossed, face expressionless but tense. And Prince Amir, younger, less practiced, who knelt by a low silver brazier, carefully feeding thin strips of whisper weed into the smoke.
The fragrant leaves curled and burned, sending tendrils of silver smoke spiraling into the eagle's eye. The ritual had begun.
"It's ready," Amir whispered.
Derek nodded.
He stepped into the center of the circle, cloak sweeping behind him. His voice was steady—too steady—as he raised the royal seal in his right hand.
"Great Eye," he said, "we call upon your truth. Speak to us. Reveal what is hidden."
The eagle's head turned.
A slow, mechanical twist of carved neck bones. Its beak opened, and a sound emerged—like the sighing of ancient trees, or the breath of a cave.
Then the eye blinked.
Once.
The room darkened.
The candles dimmed.
The brazier's smoke stilled, suspended mid-air like frozen mist.
Derek didn't flinch.
"Who burned the nine guards in the eastern corridor?" he asked. "Who did this?"
A pause.
Then the eagle's eye flared.
Its voice, when it came, was not a voice at all—but a sound inside the mind, ancient and echoing. The kind of sound that made your skin prickle and your blood slow in your veins.
"Lucifer."
The chamber fell still.
A single word—but it struck like a thunderclap.
Amir drew back slightly, his throat bobbing. His fingers trembled as he reached for more whisper weed, but he dropped the next strip into the brazier.
Cason's arms tightened across his chest, brows furrowed.
"It's true," Amir whispered. "He's here."
But Derek remained calm. Outwardly.
"Why?" he asked.
His voice echoed in the room, solemn and low.
"Why would Lucifer—sealed beyond the veil—risk crossing into the human realm?"
The eagle blinked slowly.
"They sought to kill one he loves. One whose soul is bound to him."
The words echoed unnaturally, sinking into the skin. A quiet dread gripped the chamber.
Amir's head snapped toward Derek.
"Bound? To the devil?"
Cason's voice was grave.
"He has never cared for anyone in a thousand years. Not even when he walked the celestial halls. Who could… who could he care for now?"
Derek's breath slowed.
He spoke carefully.
"Who is she?"
The eagle's eye pulsed—once, twice—and a wave of windless pressure passed through the room.
Then:
"The most beautiful maiden in this palace."
The words landed like prophecy.
No name.
Just a description. One that somehow felt more damning than a name ever could.
Amir looked at Cason.
Cason stepped forward, voice quiet. "Could it be Princess Selene? Or that foreign noblewoman, Maerina? Or—"
Derek said nothing.
He stared into the glowing eye of the eagle, hands clenching slowly behind his back.
He already knew.
The image of her came unbidden—Elowen. The quiet maid with eyes like dusk and moonlight. The girl whose presence had stirred something in him, long before he had reason to name it. The girl who had no name in court, no title… yet had never left his thoughts.
She was different. Unspoken. Distant.
"She can't be," he whispered.
But the thought clung to him like a curse.
"Is she the Chosen One?" he asked, barely above a breath.
The eagle was silent.
Its wings did not shift. Its eye did not blink.
Then
"That… you must find out for yourselves."
For a moment, the candles flickered wildly, their flames pulling inward as though inhaling. The whisper weed turned to ash.
And then—silence.
Derek stood still, his brow furrowed, heart thudding behind his ribs.
He turned to his brothers.
"No one speaks of this. Not until we know more."
Amir nodded quickly. Cason gave a slow, grave incline of his head.
"Who is she?" Cason asked.
Derek turned away from the altar, the name thick in his throat.
"It's Elowen"
"Find her," he said.
Then louder, firmer.
"Now.