"A crown is not worn on the head, but beneath the flesh. Some kings never remove it."
---
The descent had no stairs.
Only a rope of knotted human hair, slick with damp and age, leading down through a chasm carved by forgotten rites. Asma-Ra did not hesitate. His fingers gripped the braid like it remembered him.
Each breath deeper into the hollow made the talisman grow colder. The air thickened—not with heat or moisture, but regret.
Somewhere below, something old was remembering him.
Asma-Ra's boots hit stone. The catacombs gave way to a vaulted throne chamber, circular and immense—lit not by torches, but sapphire flames flickering in bowls of bone. The walls were carved in endless spirals—scripture of a mad monarch, etched with a finger sharpened to bone.
And at the center sat the King Beneath the Skin.
He had no eyes. No lips. His face had been peeled away, replaced by a lattice of gold wire stretching tight across muscle and bone. Yet he smiled.
A terrible, truthful smile.
"Asma-Ra," the king rasped. "Son of Fire. Wielder of the Ash Talisman. Devourer of promises."
Asma-Ra stepped forward. The talisman hummed in his hand like a hungry beast.
"I don't know you," he said.
"Liar," the king whispered, voice soft as flayed silk. "You knew me before you knew yourself."
He stood.
His body was made of many. A hundred faces stitched into a robe of flesh, each whispering a different word with each breath. Every toe wore a ring of kingship. His crown floated behind him, never touching his skull—held aloft by whispers alone.
"You gave me eternity," he said. "Then you buried me with it."
"You were Ajāmila's king?"
"I was his father," the king hissed. "And he was the price."
Asma-Ra flinched.
"You made a pact," the king continued, circling slowly. "The Tree demanded a life. I offered my son. You took him. Planted him beneath the Ashvattha's roots. He chants still, in your name."
Asma-Ra's throat burned. The talisman pulsed again.
"I never would've—"
"You would've," the king interrupted. "You did."
With a wave of his hand, the chamber changed.
Images surged—visions carved from guilt and root:
A young prince in golden chains, his tears watering the soil of the sacred tree.
A voice whispering: "No sacrifice, no seed."
And a man—Asma-Ra—pressing his hand to the child's heart, whispering fire into it.
The king knelt.
"I served you once," he said. "Now I only want your name—your true name. Speak it. And I shall let you pass."
Asma-Ra opened his mouth—but no sound came.
His name was gone. Erased by fire.
The king roared.
"Then you are unworthy!"
The throne cracked open. Roots burst from beneath, dragging the king's flesh behind them. He rose not as a man, but a crowned corpse-tree, his gold lattice turning into bark, his blood dripping like sap.
Asma-Ra fought.
But every wound he inflicted healed. Every flame he summoned died on contact.
Until he remembered Ajāmila's words: "Burn the roots, not the leaves."
He turned the talisman on the ground, not the king.
And the stone caught fire.
Flames raced into the soil, igniting the buried roots—the stolen immortality. The king howled—not in pain, but joy.
"Finally!" he wept. "You remember the pact!"
His body cracked apart.
From the ashes, a name rose—Rudravarta, etched in smoke and grief.
The third name.
Asma-Ra fell to his knees.
Not in weakness. In mourning.
He had killed a king.
But more than that—he had killed his own witness.
No one remained to remember the pact… except the Ashvattha.
And it was waiting.
---
END OF CHAPTER III
Next: Chapter IV – "The Crown of Crows"