Chapter 1: The Throne of Ash and Altitude
Chapter 1: The Throne of Ash and Altitude
The world below was a graveyard of history. The great keeps of Valerion and the obsidian spires of the Solace Empire were now nothing but jagged ruins, reclaimed by the choking vines of the Blackwood. From their wreckage rose the Kingdom of Elamira.
Sitting precisely on the border of the two fallen giants, the city had been transformed. At its center stood the Crimson Keep, a castle of blood-red stone so impossibly high that its upper spires pierced the clouds. It was a feat of architecture impossible for men alone; Pip had commanded the dragons to haul the massive stones into the heavens, creating a fortress that remained forever out of reach for any wing or weapon.
Inside the High Hall, the wealth of a united land was visible. Golden Dragon coins and Silver Fist cents, the new currency of the realm, clinked in the pouches of the merchants below. But at the top of the keep, the air was thin and smelled of death.
Pip sat upon the throne, looking more like a corpse than a king. The Grave-Light chemicals had finally claimed his vitality; his skin was a translucent grey, and every breath was a wet, rattling struggle. He looked down at the new world he had built, a kingdom born of a jester’s joke and a butcher’s mace.
“It’s a long way down, isn’t it, Kael?” Pip rasped, coughing a spray of black bile into a silk cloth.
Kael stood by the balcony, looking out over the clouds. He was draped in heavy, dark furs, his mace leaning against a pillar of dragon-bone. “It’s too high, Pip. You can’t smell the blood from up here. It makes a man forget what he is.”
“I brought you here to remember,” Pip countered, his eyes burning with a final, desperate light. “The Smith, the Clockmaker, he is forging something in the dark. My beasts can’t see him. The wind doesn’t know where he is. He is smacking the anvil of time itself.”
Pip gestured to the three women standing at the foot of the throne: the sharp-eyed Seraphina, the calculating Marcella, and Lady Briony of the Iron Reach, who stood with her hand on the hilt of a short-sword, her eyes fixed on Kael with a look of pure, unadulterated challenge.
“The Kingdom of Elamira needs a Smith of its own,” Pip continued, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Not of gears, but of blood. One of these women will help you forge an heir, Kael. Because when the Clockmaker returns, he won’t bring an army. He will bring the end of tomorrow.”
Kael walked toward Briony, his heavy boots echoing in the silent hall. He looked at the woman who had watched him burn her family’s gates and saw no fear-only the same stubborn arrogance that kept him alive.
“A contest, then?” Kael mocked, his old cocky grin flickering for a second. “Fine. But if they die during the trials, don’t ask me to refund the coins.”
Pip smiled, a terrifying sight on his dying face. “The trials aren’t just for them, Butcher. They’re for you. Because a King of Dirt is easy to be... but a King of a High Crimson Castle? That requires a soul.”As Pip finished speaking, every clock in the Crimson Keep, from the grand pendulum in the hall to the small watches on the guards’ wrists, suddenly stopped. The silence was deafening.
Pip’s eyes widened. “He’s here. He isn’t waiting for the contest to end.”
A shadow began to stretch across the floor, moving against the direction of the sunlight. It was the shadow of a man holding a smith’s hammer, and it was moving faster than time itself.
The three ladies, Seraphina, Marcella, and Briony, stood like statues under the oppressive weight of the stopped clocks. The silence in the High Hall was unnatural, a physical pressure that made their ears ring.
Pip’s head rolled back against the dragon-bone throne. His eyes were wide, fixed on the corner where the shadow of the Smith’s hammer continued to grow, despite the lack of a sun.
“Kael...” Pip wheezed, his hand trembling as he reached for the mace leaning against the pillar. “He isn’t... alone.”
From the freezing mists that swirled around the Crimson Keep’s highest balcony, a figure drifted in. It wasn’t the Clockmaker, not yet. It was theNecro-Shaman, his rotted robes fluttering in a wind that didn’t touch anything else. He moved toward the throne, stepping over the Golden Dragon coins scattered on the floor as if they were pebbles.
He leaned over the dying Jester, his skeletal jaw unhinging to release a breath that smelled of centuries-old dirt. He didn’t look at Pip; he looked directly at Kael, who had already gripped his mace, his knuckles white with the “Blood-Rage” beginning to simmer in his veins.
The Shaman let out a sound like dry parchment tearing, a laugh.
“The first volume was about the living,”the Shaman hissed, the words vibrating through the floorboards. ”The second was about the royal. But the third... the third is about the debt.”
Kael stepped forward, his eyes burning with the void of the God of Death. “I paid my debts in Solace blood, you bag of sticks. Get out of my house before I turn you into kindling.”
“You built a house of crimson stone to hide from the dirt,” the Shaman countered, pointing a jagged finger at the three highborn women. “You think you can forge a future by burying the past? No, Butcher. The Smith has come to reclaim the materials. Every gear he turns is a heartbeat stolen from your line.”
The Shaman turned his gaze to Lady Briony. The Iron Reach survivor didn’t flinch, even as the frost from the Shaman’s presence began to coat her armor.
“A debt is a heavy thing to carry into a marriage, little wolf,” the Shaman whispered.
With those words, the Shaman vanished into a cloud of ash. The clocks in the room suddenly began to whirl backward, the hands spinning at a blur, screaming with the friction of metal on metal.
Kael turned to Pip, but the Jester was coughing up gold-flecked blood onto the throne.
“The contest...” Pip gasped, his vision fading. “Kael... start the contest. The Smith... he’s not just coming for your head. He’s coming to unmake the day you were born.”
Kael realizes that the “Trial of the Hunt” isn’t just about a beast in the woods. The Clockmaker has used his smithing skills to “re-forge” the dead animals of the Blackwood into clockwork abominations.
Kael to Briony: “If you want to be my Queen, you better be ready to kill things that have already been dead for an hour. And don’t get blood on the furs, they’re new.”
