Miriel
Days passed like dripping wax—slow, quiet, irreversible.
I returned to the Observatory only when summoned. No more, no less. Each meeting was wordless at the start. They'd wait until I arrived before speaking, always watching to see if I hesitated at the threshold.
I didn't.
I wouldn't give them that.
No one treated me like one of them. Not yet. Gwen barely looked at me. Ren didn't speak unless it was to correct me. Ji'er stayed silent, but sometimes her gaze lingered with something softer—curiosity, maybe. Or pity.
Cai? He watched everything and said very little.
But I learned.
The place we teleported to—the archive—wasn't just for hiding maps. It was older than the academy itself, hidden beneath layers of spellwork and myth, its access buried under false zuzhin and broken stairwells. The candles there burned with saltwick and memorylight, sustained by something that pulsed beneath the floor.
And the Observatory wasn't a rebellion.
Not exactly.
It was a study. A conspiracy. A reckoning.
A ledger of the truths the Empire buried. Names of bloodlines erased from court history. Dynasties are unmentioned in official doctrine. Churches that once burned witches and now preached purity. Kingdoms devoured and rewritten.
"We're not here to burn the system down," Gwen told me one night, hands inked from tracing maps. "We're here to remember what it stole."
They studied the heretical and the forgotten. Traced patterns in plague outbreaks. Watched troop movements masked as border patrol. They studied language—real language, not the version taught in court—that revealed ancestral memory encoded in script.
"This is the third empire," Ji'er whispered once, glancing at me like she shouldn't have said it. "The first two fell. They don't want us to know that."
I listened. I recorded. I kept my distance.
They didn't trust me yet.
Good. Because I didn't trust them either.
But I began to understand them.
Ren was once part of a militia that turned on its own after a treaty was signed and then erased from the record. He speaks only when necessary. He carries the silence of someone who's watched too many fall and been told none of them existed.
Ji'er came from the outer provinces, where maps were redrawn so often no one could remember who owned the land first. Her family spoke a dialect now outlawed in three districts.
Gwen, though… Gwen was harder.
She knew things she shouldn't. Read languages no longer taught. She spoke like someone raised in the palace archives but exiled for asking the wrong question one too many times.
And Cai—
Cai had access. To everything. He walked between towers like the world was glass and he knew every fracture. Professors gave him space. Guards nodded as if he were one of them. He never explained how he knew what he knew.
But he watched me now the way a strategist watches an uncertain piece on the board—useful, dangerous, not yet placed.
"Something's happening in Acacia," Gwen said, arms folded, her tone half-mocking. "Now that we've got our first witness…"
She tilted her head. "Care to say anything… princess?"
I froze.
"Don't rush her," Cai said, though his voice didn't carry warmth.
"We want to know what happened. Why Acacia fell."
"No!"
The word left me too loud, too fast. I didn't plan to say it like that. I didn't care.
"No," I said again, breath catching in my throat. "We didn't fall."
They all stared. Gwen's smile thinned. No one corrected me. No one moved.
I didn't explain. I didn't give them proof or theory, or history.
I just hated the way she said it. Fell. Like we tripped. Like we deserved it.
I hated her voice, her green eyes, and her questions.
And more than anything, I hated that I was standing in a stranger's archive while they picked at the corpse of my home like it was a riddle to solve.
My fists clenched. My mouth stayed shut.
Because anything I said now would be spit or screaming.
They didn't deserve to hear it—not like this.
The silence held for a long time. But I wasn't there anymore.
I was already back. In Acacia. In the last days. In the days when the wind changed and no one understood what it meant. Not yet.
Flashback begins:
It was raining the night Acacia began to vanish.
The kind of rain that mutes the world, turning torchlight into smears and footfalls into ghosts. The palace halls, once golden with courtly laughter, now stood bare—only the echoes remained.
The king had been buried days ago. His crown is sealed in stone. The throne had passed—but not yet placed. Not in wartime.
And so she wore no crown.
Only the weight of it.
Winnifred stood beneath the tall arch of the throne room's western window, hands trembling behind her back. Her father was gone. Her brother, the warrior-prince, had died at the border months before. What remained of the court scattered like frightened birds.
No coronation. No procession. Just silence.
The Jhaljie territory—once a vassal, always volatile—had been taken. The clans moved not in words but steel. They came at night, burned outposts, and vanished into the forest.
And now Giovanni—the only knight still loyal to the royal family—had vanished with the uprising.
The map shifted faster than she could read it.
The tribes were in chaos. The noble houses—Acacia's backbone—had fled. Letters left unopened. Promises broken in wax.
They had left the princess alone.
No crown. No council. No army.
Only him.
"We need to go," Raphael said, voice firm, standing at the center of the throne room as the storm thudded against the windows.
He was wet to the bone, cloak trailing water behind him, one gloved hand resting on the pommel of his sword. Not drawn yet. Not pointed. But ready.
Winnifred didn't turn.
"They ran," she said.
"They did," he agreed.
"They left me."
She finally turned to him then, eyes rimmed with exhaustion. No tears. She had burned through those already.
"I am still here."
"That's why we have to go."
"I am next in line," she said, louder now. "If I run, it's over."
Raphael stepped forward, lowering his voice. "If you stay, it's worse."
She wanted to argue. She wanted to scream. But she heard it in his tone: he had seen something. Heard something. Maybe from the scouts. Maybe from the servants. Maybe from his father, before the line went silent.
"Raphael," she whispered. "There's no one left."
"There's me."
Lightning split across the sky. For a second, the stained glass flickered red.
Outside, the palace bell did not ring.
No one would raise the alarm tonight.
Not for her.
The throne room shuddered.
Far below, past the gardens and the city wall, something had exploded—distant, muffled, but unmistakable. The sound of war had arrived without ceremony. No drums. No horns. Just the roar of fire and the sickening silence that followed.
Winnifred didn't move at first. Her hands were clenched at her sides, eyes locked on the floor of veined marble. She waited for the bells. For soldiers. For anyone.
None came.
"That was near the outer district," Raphael said. He was already at the window, already pulling gloves tighter over calloused hands.
She followed, her steps too calm for what had just begun.
Outside, Acacia's northern edge burned.
Smoke poured over the spires, bleeding into the clouds. Screams had not reached them yet. But she saw the flicker of torches moving—not orderly, not in rank. This wasn't an army. It was a collapse.
A betrayal.
"The city watch won't hold that gate," Raphael muttered.
"They're supposed to." Her voice cracked. "They swore to."
He looked at her. Not unkindly. Just with the truth.
"No one's sworn anything that matters in weeks."
You're wrong, she wanted to say. Someone will ride out. The nobles will rally. Someone will—
But she had seen the letters. Seen the sealed doors. The empty halls. The fading crest on the outer banners.
The clans had already won. Not by siege, but by subtraction.
Acacia was hollowed from the inside.
"Your Highness," Raphael said, quieter now, "we have to leave before they reach the southern wall."
The title hit like ice.
She blinked. "I am not crowned."
He moved toward her.
Another sound echoed—closer. Metal on stone.
Guards?
No.
She recognized the cadence. Not boots. Hooves.
They had gotten through.
Winnifred turned on her heel and strode toward the corridor.
"There's a passage through the eastern garden," she said.
Raphael was already following. "This counts."
The palace was darker than it should've been.
Torches unlit. Servants gone. Doors ajar where they once stood proud.
They moved fast, past the hall of mirrors, past her brother's abandoned quarters, past the stained-glass room where her father once read aloud at dusk. She did not look back.
Outside, the sky cracked again—lightning, or something worse. No time to wonder.
They reached the garden gate.
The lock was open.
Someone expected us to flee.
"Be ready," Raphael said, sword drawn now, cloak pulled close.
They pushed through.
The eastern garden had not been touched. Not yet. Rain soaked the path and turned the old stepping stones into a mirror of broken stars. Thorned vines coiled around the trellises. Her heels crushed petals she once pressed into books.
They moved along the wall, heading for the river.
Then, shouting.
Three men. Blades drawn. Not in uniform. Their armor bore no crest—just cloth and rust and red bands around their wrists.
Jhaljie tribesmen.
They had reached the inner grounds.
Raphael stepped in front of her.
"Go," he barked. "Get to the water."
"I'm not leaving—"
"Run!"
She didn't run.
Not until the first blade rang against his.
Not until he shouted her name, not like a knight, not like a guard—but like someone who knew she wouldn't listen unless he screamed it.
So she ran.
The river was ahead.
The storm opened above.
And behind her, Acacia burned.
The river bled into mist as she ran.
Each breath was a blade in her chest, but she did not stop—would not stop—because behind her, the throne still stood. Cracked. Empty. But not bowed.
We didn't fall.
She meant it. Even now.
Even as the floodgates of memory dragged her backward through blood and silence.
It hadn't begun with armies.
Not at first.
It began with absence. Empty seats at the council. Letters left unanswered. Grain shipments were withheld from loyal provinces. They said it was rationing. Temporary.
But it was a test.
When her father died, the noble houses bowed. They kissed her hand. Swore loyalty to the line. But not to her.
She had no illusions.
They saw a girl. A scholar. A name, not a presence. No sword at her hip. No war scars to prove authority.
So when the Jhaljie clans began stirring—when rumors of the prince's assassination bled into accusations—the court grew quiet.
Not loyal. Not defiant.
Just silent.
And silence was treason by another name.
The Jhaljie made their move fast.
One tribe rose, then three. Then five. Unified banners where there had once been only fractured colors. For generations they had been kept apart—rivalries preserved like weapons. But not now.
Now, they marched under a single emblem.
Not against the empire. Against Acacia itself.
Because someone had told them what they wanted to hear:
"The crown is weak."
"The princess is untested."
"Now is the time."
And the noble houses?
They left.
One by one. Each with a reason. Family matters. Poor harvests. A cousin ill in Sera. The weather.
She summoned them to court.
They delayed.
She issued decrees.
They declined.
And when the border outposts fell, no one rode out. No messengers came. No steel arrived.
She was alone—not because she was defeated.
But because they chose not to follow.
Back in the garden, soaking and breathless, she crashed into a thorned gate, scratched and muddy, heart pounding like a war drum gone mad.
Raphael caught her just before she fell.
"Keep moving," he urged. "Don't stop now."
But her legs trembled. Not from fear.
From rage.
From pride.
From betrayal.
She was not a lost girl. She was a sovereign. She was born in a hall of fire and blood, and they had no right—no right—to call her kingdom dead.
She whispered aloud to the rain:
"Let them say I fled. Let them call me ghost. But one day, they'll choke on the silence they left me in."
Present Day
The Observatory Vault
The light in the room had dimmed without her noticing.
The violet sigils along the archive wall pulsed faintly, as if listening or breathing.
Miriel stood near the center of the observatory's private vault, her voice long since gone quiet. She had not meant to say so much. She hadn't meant to tell it all—but it had come out anyway, like blood under pressure.
No one interrupted her.
Not Gwen, leaning against a stone shelf, arms crossed tight.
Not Ren, silent and rigid, his eyes unreadable.
Not Ji'er, who watched her the way one watches a storm form in the distance.
And not Cai.
Especially not Cai.
He stood like a stone. Not cold, but rooted. Watching her like a man who had studied maps his whole life and had finally heard one speak.
Miriel exhaled, sharp and shallow.
"I don't want your pity," she said, wiping her palm along her sleeve. "And I don't want your judgment."
"We didn't give you either," Gwen replied. Her voice had lost its edge. "But you gave us something we didn't have before."
"And what's that?" Miriel asked, jaw still tight.
"The truth."
Miriel looked away. "It doesn't change anything. They still think we fell."
Gwen's expression didn't shift. "Then make them regret it."
The silence that followed was heavy, but no longer hostile.
Ji'er stepped forward, quiet as a thought. "If you ever want to name names… the houses that left you, the ones that turned… we can trace them. Maybe even use them."
Miriel nodded once, but said nothing more.
She was not weeping. Not shaking. But something inside her had cracked—not from weakness, but from release.
And the pieces would not go back the same way.
Cai finally spoke. "You'll get your first task tomorrow. It won't be about Acacia. Not directly. But we think the threads lead back."
She didn't answer. She didn't need to.
She was already planning her next move.