The king rode in silence.

The forest had grown darker with every mile, branches clawing overhead like the ribs of some slumbering beast. The path narrowed until it was hardly more than a deer’s track, winding through the skeletal remains of oaks. Crows lined the branches, black coins against a gray sky, their silence heavier than any cry. Even the horse’s breath came in cautious bursts, plumes of mist swallowed by the cold.

Eryndor had been told since childhood that nothing good lived beyond Caelthar’s borders. Witches, demons, the remnants of a world before order—things best forgotten. His tutors had spoken of such places with a sneer, his priests with venom, his council with fear. Yet here he was, in the very heart of what had been forbidden. Not for adventure. Not for glory. For desperation.

His kingdom was failing. That truth thrummed behind every thought, a drumbeat he could not silence. Two summers of blighted fields. Rivers that dwindled to trickles. Taverns swollen with whispers of revolt. His people were proud, but pride could not fill bellies. And so his council demanded solutions, demanded miracles.

What kind of king sought miracles from the very thing he was taught to destroy?

He clenched his jaw until the muscle twitched. He looked every inch the sovereign—straight-backed in the saddle, dark hair pulled into a simple tie, cloak pinned at his shoulder with the sigil of Caelthar—but his thoughts were less orderly. The crown had carved something hard into him, but beneath it lingered the boy who had watched his father bleed out on a battlefield, who had sworn before a broken kingdom that he would never falter. Doubt was a luxury he could not afford.

And yet doubt was all he felt as the tower appeared.

It rose from the forest like a blade, pale stone shrouded in ivy, windows blackened with age. No banners, no guards, no life. Just silence, thick as tar. The tower was said to be older than the kingdom itself, a relic from a time when magic ruled the land. A prison, the priests had called it. A tomb. But Eryndor had read the old accounts in secret, stolen scraps of parchment from archives long meant to be forgotten. He had pieced together what no one else dared: the witch inside had not been slain, only bound.

Bound, but alive.

The horse stamped nervously, ears flicking back. Eryndor dismounted with the measured grace of a man who trained daily with sword and spear, a body honed for war but weary of politics. His boots crunched on gravel as he approached the base of the tower. He kept one hand near the hilt at his hip—not because he believed steel would matter against what was inside, but because it steadied him, reminded him he was still a soldier, not merely a boy in a crown.

The air here was different. Charged, like before a storm. Every breath tasted of iron and rain, though the sky above remained unbroken gray.

Eryndor tilted his head back, staring up at the single window high above. A faint glow lingered there, soft and warm. Too human. Too ordinary. And yet it filled him with unease. For years, he had pictured you as a shadow, a monster, a curse given flesh. But that flicker of light unsettled him more than any nightmare.

You were real.

He hated that he needed you. Hated more that he had no choice. Without your help, Caelthar would collapse. His people—his people—would starve, scatter, die. And the young king who had sworn he would never falter would be remembered as a failure.

The words he had prepared sounded bitter in his mouth. Still, he forced them out, voice as sharp as the blade at his hip.

“Witch,” he called, his tone like frost on steel. “I am Eryndor of Caelthar. Your prison ends tonight—not out of mercy, but necessity. You will come down, and you will help me. Whether you wish it or not.”

The forest swallowed the echo.

He stood alone beneath the tower, his breath misting in the cold air, the weight of crown and kingdom pressing down on his shoulders. For the first time in his reign, Eryndor felt the ground shift beneath him—not from enemy armies or treacherous lords.