The Night of Unmaking
The Great Hall of Castle Vherath had been built, centuries ago, to make mortals feel small before the gods of ice and flame. Tonight it succeeded better than it ever had.
Frost crept along the vaulted ceiling in filigree patterns, catching the torchlight and scattering it into a thousand trembling stars. Banners of the royal house—white thread on deep blue, the sigil of the Unbroken Flame—hung motionless in air so cold that breath came out in silver plumes from every mouth in the hall. Hundreds of courtiers stood in their finest furs and jewels, packed shoulder to shoulder along the length of the chamber, their faces turned toward the dais like flowers starved for a sun that refused to rise.
At the center of it all stood the Hearth of Ashvane, ancient and black, carved from a single slab of obsidian quarried from the mountain's heart. No fire had touched it in eleven months, not since the autumn equinox, and the stone seemed to drink the torchlight rather than reflect it. Tonight, as every Winter Solstice for four hundred years, a child of royal blood would kneel before it and wake the flame that lived, supposedly, in their very marrow.
Tonight, that child was Elara.
She stood…
