Ashes of the crown

POV: Prince Ruvan ❄️🔥🩶

Night in the Citadel was silent — not peaceful, but watchful. Every gust of wind whispered across the frost towers like breath caught in prayer.

Prince Ruvan walked alone through the North Tower. No guards. No advisors. No sister. Just the cold, and the bitter thoughts crawling under his skin.

He stopped before a sealed obsidian door — one carved with runes so ancient only the bloodline of the Northern Shard could open it.

"Verak sol," he whispered.

The door dissolved into frost dust.

Inside was a chamber untouched by time: mirrors lined the walls, tall and arching, made of flame glass — reflective, but flickering like fire trapped in ice.

This was a room for kings.

And Ruvan didn't feel like one.

He stepped into the glow, and the mark on his chest began to ache again — subtly, but undeniably.

He pulled his collar aside and looked at it.

Where there had once been only a vague shape, there was now a defined symbol forming — a spiral of flame curling into the shape of a crown, edged in silver.

It wasn't just marking him.

It was changing.

"You're not supposed to evolve," he muttered.

The mark pulsed, as if responding.

He clenched his jaw. "She's interfering with my power."

But part of him knew the truth.

This wasn't interference.

It was connection.

The mirror directly across from him — the largest of them all — shimmered to life. Not because he commanded it, but because the bond wanted to be seen.

A flash of color. A vision.

Ariya.

Sleeping.

Hair tangled. Fingers curled around something glowing — the shard Lira had given her. The one he hadn't known about until now.

Her mark glowed faintly on her skin — the same place as his own.

"She doesn't even know what she is," he whispered. "What we are."

The flame glass shifted, flickering with a brief vision of a girl walking through fire… and not being burned.

His breath caught in his throat.

Not from fear.

From longing.

He stepped back.

Slamming his magic into the mirror until it cracked, lines spiderwebbing across the frame.

"She won't win."

The room echoed with silence.

"She can't."

But the mark pulsed again.

Not in warning.

Not in threat.

But in invitation.

"You don't even hate me yet," he murmured. "Not the way I deserve."

He didn't want to be weak. Didn't want to be vulnerable. The North had never allowed him that.

So he would do what he did best.

Not strike her with blades. Not wage war with armies.

But tear her down the way only he knew how.

Emotionally. Silently.

From the inside out.

He summoned a scroll from the black table in the center of the room.

A map.

A plan.

The first stage of her emotional unmaking had already begun — lies, memories, twisted truths.

But now… it was time for the next phase.

The trap that would test her faith. Her strength. Her team.

Her hope.

"You'll come to me willingly, Flameborn," he said, eyes dark. "And you'll wish you never did."

He turned and exited the chamber, sealing the door behind him.

The mirror flickered once more.

Ariya stirred in her sleep.

And far away, the mark on her collarbone burned with a cold, silver fire.