The city was crumbling.

  Not in the way most places fall apart — not in the way that war or plague brings them to their knees. No, this was the slow, insidious decay of something far older: the unraveling of a promise, the death of a covenant made long ago.

  The kingdom had forgotten itself.

  The kingdom had forgotten her.

  Ithan stood at the edge of the city, looking out at the hills beyond. The sun hung low in the sky, a dying ember that bled across the horizon, staining the earth with its last, fading light.

  There was no fire in the world anymore.

  No burning desire to reach for something greater. The winds had stopped carrying whispers of hope. Only ash and dust moved across the land now.

  He felt the weight of it.

  He had always been the one to carry the burden. The one to stand at the side of the one who had saved them all. The one who had held the crown when no one else could bear it.

  And now she was gone.

  Ithan turned and walked toward the ruins of the palace once more. The steps he had taken so many times now felt like the weight of a thousand years. The earth beneath his feet seemed to resist him — as if it too was tired of remembering.

  The Blade had been shattered. Her final act, a sacrifice so pure that it left no room for regret.

  But the shards were still here.

  In the rubble. In the memories. In the very air that hung heavy with the scent of forgotten promises.

  He found the pieces of the Blade buried beneath the stones, half-ruined but unmistakable. The shards shimmered faintly, as if the blade itself still remembered the purpose it had once served.

  And for the first time since Madeline's death, Ithan felt the stirring of something other than grief.

  A promise.

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  A vow.

  The ashes of the old world were carried on the wind, to the ruined chambers where once the rulers had sat. Their voices, their oaths — all vanished like smoke. The thrones, once gold, now faded to nothing but blackened stone, scattered with dust.

  In this place, there would be no king.

  No queen.

  Only the ashes of what they had once sworn.

  And yet, a new presence lingered in the darkened hall. Someone who would not forget the past. Someone who would rebuild — not for himself, but for those who had fallen.

  Aethel.

  She had been the one to carry the burden of leadership after Madeline had given her life. She had borne the crown long enough to know the weight of it, and now, she would set it aside.

  But she had no intention of letting it vanish into the ether, never to be remembered.

  “Ithan,” she called, her voice as weary as his.

  He stepped into the chamber, his face worn with the same grief that had hollowed her own.

  “It’s time,” Aethel said, holding out the hilt of the shattered Blade. "Time to end this."

  Together, they stood before the ruins of the throne, the pieces of the Blade in their hands. Ithan met Aethel's eyes, and in them, he saw the same thing he had seen in Madeline’s — the resolve to carry the unbearable weight of something lost, something that could never be replaced.

  They had made a pact long ago. A pact that had bound their fates together, though neither of them had ever fully understood its cost.

  Madeline had given them the world, but the world had not understood what she had done.

  Now, Ithan and Aethel stood as the final witnesses.

  “Take the oath,” Aethel whispered. “The one she would have wanted.”

  Ithan nodded.

  He raised the shards of the Blade above his head. The light from the dying sun caught on the fractured edges, and for a brief moment, it seemed as though the Blade itself pulsed with life.

  “I swear,” he said, his voice trembling with the weight of the promise. “I swear that I will remember her. I will remember why she died.”

  Aethel followed his lead, her voice low but steady.

  “I swear to rebuild what was broken. To rebuild what was lost.”

  They lowered the Blade together.

  And in the silence that followed, the world shifted.

  The city would not return to what it had been. That much was certain. The silence of the bells would remain, a permanent reminder of the price of their choices.

  But the earth would move again.

  The winds would stir.

  And somewhere, among the ruins of the kingdom, the name Madeline would be spoken again.

  Not as a curse. Not as a fading memory.

  But as a reminder.

  Of courage. Of sacrifice. Of love.

  And the cost of holding the Crown.

  Ithan and Aethel left the ruined throne room behind, the Blade now a symbol, not of power, but of something far greater.

  They would rebuild — not the city, but the memory of it.

  They would remind the world of what had been lost, what had been forgotten, and what had been sacrificed.

  The ashes of oaths were not easily scattered.

  But they would not be left to fade.

  They would live on in the hearts of those who remembered.

  And in the end, perhaps that was the only thing worth carrying.