Chapter 27. The Hollow Queen

Veyra stood barefoot on a peak of obsidian and frost, her shadow cast long by a sky that no longer followed day or night. The mountain had given her no throne—but she needed none. She didn’t wear power. She emanated it.

The wind obeyed her.

The flame-beasts gathered behind her in a solemn arc. Smoke curled from their spines like ancestral breath. Some bore sigils scorched into their hides, others nothing but scars—testaments to battles older than memory. None of them moved. They watched.

She wore her hair in braids lined with bone rings. Her arms were marked in runes of betrayal and return.

Below, the remnants of the first council knelt.

Not all had died.
Not all had fled.
Some had merely waited in the cold until the old blood howled again.