Chapter IV: The Hollow Crown

  The Black Wind howled through the dead trees like a chorus of the damned, its voice rising and falling in unnatural cadence. Edryc clutched the newly restored silver thread in his fist, feeling its heat pulse in time with the throbbing ache of his corrupted arm. The wound had stopped festering after the ritual, but the black veins still spiderwebbed beneath his skin, a constant reminder of the uncle whose blood now mingled with his own.

  Líotha crouched at the mouth of the shallow cave, her bone charms rattling in the unnatural breeze. "It's searching," she murmured, her voice barely audible over the wind's mournful wail. "The Wind has our scent now. It won't stop until it claims what's owed."

  Garric spat into the fire, the flames hissing as his phlegm struck the embers. "Then we move before it finds this hole." The old warrior's face looked decades older in the flickering light, the scars standing out like pale worms beneath his skin. "Brynwood's ruins lie half a day's march north. If any answers remain, they'll be buried in your father's vault."

  Edryc flexed his injured hand, watching the black veins pulse with each movement. "The vault was sealed when Brynwood fell. No one knows—"

  "I know," Líotha interrupted. She turned from the cave mouth, her tarnished silver eyes reflecting the firelight in a way that made them seem to glow from within. "The Sleepers showed me the path in dreams. Your father left something there—something more than bones and regrets."

  The journey through the Ashen Valley was a march through a graveyard of giants. The petrified trees stood like sentinels, their skeletal branches clawing at a sky the color of old bruises. Strange sounds echoed through the dead forest—whispers that might have been wind, scratching that could have been branches, but which set Edryc's teeth on edge regardless.

  Garric's men moved like ghosts between the trees, their patchwork armor muffled with strips of moss and bark. Edric counted twelve in total—once proud warriors of House Bryn, now reduced to scavengers and outlaws. Their eyes held the same hollow look he'd seen in prisoners who'd endured too many tortures, men who'd stared into the abyss so long it had stared back.

  At midday they found the first corpse.

  It hung from the lowest branch of an especially massive petrified oak, its limbs twisted at unnatural angles. No rope held it—the body seemed fused to the wood itself, its flesh turned the same gray as the dead tree. The face was frozen in a silent scream, the mouth stretched far too wide.

  "One of yours?" Edryc asked quietly.

  Garric shook his head, his remaining eye narrowed. "Not ours. Not Legion either." He pointed to the corpse's hands, where the fingers had elongated into claw-like appendages. "This is the Sleepers' work. They're waking faster now."

  Líotha approached the hanging corpse without hesitation. She pressed her palm against its chest and closed her eyes, murmuring words in a language that made Edryc's ears ache. When she withdrew her hand, a single black feather came away with it, though no bird had flown near.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  "He was a scout," she said, twirling the feather between her fingers. "Sent by the Wolf-King to find Brynwood's secrets. The trees took him before he could return."

  Edryc stared at the feather as it dissolved into black smoke between her fingers. "Vargor seeks the vault too."

  The bog-witch's smile held no warmth. "He seeks what your father found. What drove him mad in the end."

  As they pressed onward, the landscape grew stranger. The petrified trees twisted into agonized shapes, their branches forming arches that seemed too symmetrical to be natural. The ground beneath their feet grew spongy, then wet, until they found themselves walking through shallow black water that reflected no light.

  Garric called a halt when the ruins of Brynwood's outer wall appeared through the mist. The once-proud fortifications were little more than broken teeth now, the stones blackened by fire and scarred by something that had left deep, parallel grooves in the granite.

  "Legion didn't do that," one of Garric's men muttered, tracing a claw mark as wide as his hand.

  Líotha placed her palm against the stone. "The Sleepers walked here the night Brynwood fell. Your father let them out, Edryc. Just as he let them in."

  The interior of the ruined keep was worse. The great hall where Edryc had played as a child now lay open to the elements, its vaulted ceiling collapsed inward. Strange fungi grew in pulsating clusters on the walls, their surfaces glistening with moisture that might have been sweat or sap or something less wholesome.

  Garric led them through the rubble to a section of the western wall that appeared untouched by destruction. He pressed his hand against a seemingly random stone, and with a grinding noise that set Edryc's teeth on edge, a section of the wall swung inward.

  "The vault," Garric said, his voice hushed. "Where your father kept his secrets."

  The air that rushed out was stale and cold, carrying with it the scent of old parchment and something metallic. Edryc took the lead, his silver thread pulsing brighter as he descended the narrow stairs into darkness.

  The vault was smaller than he'd imagined—a circular chamber no more than twenty paces across. The walls were lined with shelves containing books, scrolls, and artifacts that made Edryc's skin crawl to look upon. But it was the object at the room's center that drew his eye.

  A crown rested on a simple stone pedestal. Not gold or silver, but something black and porous that seemed to drink in the light. Its surface was carved with runes that matched those now appearing on Edryc's silver thread.

  Líotha inhaled sharply. "The Hollow Crown. I thought it legend."

  Edryc reached for it instinctively, but Garric caught his wrist. "Don't. Not until you know the price."

  The old warrior moved to one of the shelves and withdrew a leather-bound journal. He handed it to Edryc with a grim expression. "Your father's last words. Read them before you choose."

  Edryc opened the journal to the last written page. The handwriting was barely recognizable as his father's—the normally precise strokes wild and erratic, as if written in the grip of fever or madness.

  "They promised me victory. They promised me vengeance. They did not tell me the crown would whisper. It speaks even now, showing me things no man should see. Théodred was right to fear it, but it's too late for regrets. I have opened the way. The Sleepers will walk again, and all of Hárthal will—"

  The rest was an illegible scrawl, ending in a dark stain that might have been ink or blood.

  Outside, the Black Wind's howl grew suddenly louder, accompanied by a new sound—the rhythmic thud of drums.

  "Vargor comes," Líotha said, her eyes wide. "And he brings your uncle with him."

  Edryc stared at the Hollow Crown, his reflection distorted in its black surface. The silver thread in his hand burned like a brand, its light pulsing in time with the approaching drums.

  Somewhere deep beneath Brynwood, stone ground against stone as something ancient answered the call.