Chapter 22. The Forgotten Throne

The air below the vault was colder than stone had any right to be. It was not the honest chill of earth or depth, but a penetrating cold that crept into bone and lingered there, carrying whispers that felt far too intimate, as though the mountain itself remembered things it should not have known.

The third queen walked alone.

Her passage left no sound, yet her steps echoed all the same, reverberating through the ancient corridors as if the stone itself insisted on acknowledging her presence. The fragment of the crown resting against her brow pulsed with a faint, deliberate rhythm—more heartbeat than flame. It did not burn. It did not warm. It watched.

Every etched line along the walls shimmered as she descended. The deeper she moved into the mountain’s heart, the brighter the symbols glowed: old wolf runes long forbidd