A storm howled beyond the palace walls, as if the heavens themselves had come to challenge Kael Ardyn's reign.
Lightning split the sky in jagged fury, painting the world in flashes of silver—only to be swallowed again by darkness. The wind shrieked like a thousand dying kings.
But inside the throne room, there was only silence.
An unnatural, oppressive silence.
Kael sat alone on his throne of blackened steel, carved from the bones of fallen dynasties, his fingers tapping the armrest in a rhythm that mirrored the storm's fury.
This was not a war of swords.
This was a war of masks.
A war of shadows.
And he was the one who taught the world how to lie.
The iron doors creaked open like a beast exhaling its final breath.
From the shadows came his true court—no robes of gold, no rings of office. Only black cloaks and silver masks, each face an enigma carved in steel.
These were the ones who truly ruled at Kael's side.
Assassins. Spymasters. The unseen architects of his empire.
Voren led them, his mask simpler than the rest—but his presence more dangerous.
"They say Lucian has returned," Voren said. His voice was a challenge, a test.
Kael did not blink. "Then the people are drunk on fantasy."
"And yet, they believe."
"That," Kael replied, "is the problem."
From the shadows, a woman stepped forward—her mask etched with the delicate lines of a spider's web, as intricate as the games they played.
"It is not Lucian," she said. Her voice was silk woven with venom. "But someone wants the world to think it is."
Kael leaned forward, a predator scenting blood.
"A ghost, then," he murmured. "A fiction in armor."
"Fictions are dangerous," another voice rasped.
Kael's eyes glinted beneath the torchlight. "Only if we allow them to breathe."
The woman bowed low. "We have begun the purge."
Across the capital, Kael's spiders danced.
In the markets where whispers thrived. In the taverns where rebellion fermented. In the backrooms where broken men prayed to forgotten gods.
They followed the smoke of lies back to the flame.
A name emerged.
A meeting place—carved into the bark of a tree long thought dead.
A wax seal with a sigil not seen since the early days of Lucian's rebellion.
Each piece drawn into the web Kael had spun.
And at the center of it all—
A crack.
A weakness.
The candlelight danced across Selene's pale face as she sat alone, staring at the flame as if it could burn away the guilt beneath her skin.
She had heard it again.
The voice.
"Selene," he had whispered, as if her name were a wound. "You don't belong to him."
She should have spat in his face.
She should have laughed.
Instead… she had listened.
Now, the silence screamed louder than thunder.
She had chosen Kael.
Hadn't she?
Then why did her chest ache like betrayal?
Why did the memory of that voice haunt her like a ghost at her window?
Kael stood on the castle wall, his cloak snapping in the wind, his eyes fixed on the far horizon.
Then—a light.
A single flickering torch in the distance. A signal, coded and unmistakable.
The web had closed.
Voren appeared behind him. "The source has been found."
Kael turned, not with urgency—but with certainty.
It was never a question of if.
Only when.
His voice cut through the storm. "Prepare my horse."
Tonight, the phantom would bleed.
And the kingdom would remember—
Kael Ardyn was not haunted by ghosts.
He hunted them.
To be continued…