ASHBORN: A TALE OF THE FORGOTTEN THRONE

The mist never left the Veiled Valley.

It crawled between the gnarled trees and licked the earth with cold breath, clinging to skin, soaking through bone. Even in the growing season, the mist here thickened when the outside world brightened with sun and bloom. It moved as though it remembered. As though it watched.

Ashra had grown up inside that breathless stillness. She knew how the fog thickened near the ridge paths and how the soil beneath her feet grew softer when something ancient stirred beneath it. She knew, too, when the birds went quiet because it meant something was listening.

She moved with silence, with purpose, her steps careful through the moss-thick forest. A woven basket rested against her hip, half-filled with shadow root and frost leaf, their bitter scents curling up beneath the cloth covering them. The herbs were dangerous, but they sold well, especially to those who spoke in whispers and paid in silver pieces smudged with dried blood.

A low caw broke the stillness.

Ashra glanced up.

From a branch overhead, a black shape peered down, head tilted, feathers glinting the colour of spilt ink in the dull morning light.

"You're late," she said to it.

The crow only blinked. Its eyes were too bright for an ordinary bird, one a soft burnished gold, the other clouded white like marble. A scar split the right side of its beak, sharp and crooked. He was ugly, but proud.

"Come on then," she added, and the crow dropped from the branch with a sharp flutter of wings, circling once before settling on her shoulder.

Ashra had no memory of when he'd first come to her. He simply had. Lorna claimed the bird had followed her out of the woods the night the fire took the old royal keep, but Ashra barely remembered that night at all. Only that she had been crying in the dark, and when she looked up through the smoke, he was already there, watching her.

She had called him Sable. And Sable had never left.

They returned to the edge of Dren Hollow by noon. The sun struggled behind the clouds, casting only thin, cold light across the village. A place of slanted rooftops and mould-stained chimneys, it was less a village and more a memory of one. Most who lived here kept to themselves. No one asked questions.

That was why Ashra and Lorna had stayed.

Sable lifted off her shoulder before she reached the crooked house at the hill's end. He flapped once, then settled atop the slanted chimney like a sentinel.

The door creaked open before she touched it.

Lorna stood inside, wrapped in her endless layers of shawls and scarves, though her shoulders were smaller than Ashra remembered. She seemed to have shrunk in the last winter. Her eyes, though, were sharp as ever, grey and gleaming like storm light over the sea.

"You went too far out again," she said.

Ashra stepped past her without answering, setting the basket on the table. "The southern ridge has better frostleaf."

"The southern ridge has Iron hounds. You think they wouldn't recognise that crow of yours? You think they don't remember who keeps company with things like that?"

Ashra stiffened. "He's just a bird."

Lorna snorted. "He's older than the stones of this house."

Sable cawed from the chimney, as if in smug agreement.

Inside the cottage, the smell of bitter herbs and smoke clung to everything. Bundles of dried moss and root dangled from the beams, and glass jars filled with pickled thorns lined the shelves. The hearth snapped and hissed with a low fire, casting flickers across the scarred floorboards.

Ashra set to work quickly, separating the herbs and hanging them to dry. Lorna moved more slowly these days, her joints stiff, her breathing shallow. The cost of old magic, she claimed. But Ashra wondered sometimes if it was guilt that weighed her bones down more than age.

"How many passed through today?" she asked.

Lorna stirred a small pot over the hearth. "Three Travellers. One with his face hidden, one with no tongue. The third didn't speak at all."

Ashra glanced over. "And the Hounds?"

"They circled near the west fields. I paid a fisher boy to throw them off."

"They're looking for someone."

"They're always looking for someone."

"No," Ashra said, frowning. "This time it's different."

She didn't know how she knew. It was like a weight in the air. A pressure behind the mist. The Hounds weren't here for random searches anymore. They were hunting. But for what-or who-she couldn't be sure.

That evening, she sat by the river.

It was the only place that felt quiet, even when the forest watched.

Sable perched beside her on a rock, grooming his wing with short, sharp jerks. He rarely left her side anymore. Not since the fire in the eastern hamlet. Not since the dreams had started again.

She looked down at the water, calm and dark. Her reflection stared back, slim face, pale eyes, the tangled braid slung over her shoulder like a whip. She pulled her sleeve back and touched the mark on her shoulder: the broken crown, raised faintly against her skin like old flame scars.

"Why did they mark me?" she asked aloud.

Sable tilted his head. The sound he made wasn't quite a crow's cry. It was deeper. Sadder. Like memory caught in a dying throat.

Ashra didn't remember her birth. Only the way she'd always felt wrong inside her skin. Like something didn't fit. Like something had been left undone.

Once, when she was barely twelve, she had wandered too deep into the forest and fallen through a veil of hanging ash. On the other side, the trees had been twisted, the light strange. She had heard voices singing in a language she had never learned but understood. A name had echoed in her bones.

Ashra of the Ashbone Line.

She hadn't known what it meant then. She still didn't. But it was the first time Sable had landed on her shoulder and whispered, in a voice like broken wind.

"Not yet. But soon."

Back at the cottage, Lorna sat at the table, staring into a bowl of water filled with crushed roots and bits of bone. She didn't look up as Ashra entered, but her voice followed her.

"They're looking for the line."

Ashra froze. "What?"

"The Hounds. The crown-blood. The heirs."

"There are no heirs," Ashra said automatically. "They were all killed in the fire."

Lorna's lips twisted. "So they were told. But fire lies. Ash does not."

She turned, revealing eyes that looked older than they should have. "You were born in ash, child. Marked in flame. The crows knew. The roots knew. I found you screaming in the rubble, covered in blood not your own."

Ashra's heart thundered. "You said I was your sister's child."

"I lied."

"Then who was my mother?"

Lorna looked at her for a long, aching moment. "Her name was Serayda. Queen of the old line. Your father was her shield. They died protecting the crown."

Ashra shook her head, backing away. "No. No, that's not......"

Sable dropped from the rafters and landed on the table with a harsh thud. His eyes burned gold. His feathers shimmered like coals.

"He remembers," Lorna said. "He watched it fall. Watched you crawl through the ash. Watched the throne crack beneath the weight of betrayal."

Ashra stared at the bird.

Sable met her gaze. And in that moment, something inside her broke open.

A flash-flame, screams, stone cracking.

A woman holding her, whispering her name, "Ashra, my fire-born girl."

A blade through a chest. Blood on marble. A sigil-a crown of bone and root-split in two.

She gasped, stumbling back, clutching the table.

"Why now?" she asked.

"Because the throne wakes," Lorna said quietly. "And it calls for you."

That night, Ashra stood alone outside the cottage. Sable sat on her shoulder, silent.

She looked at the trees. The mist curled low, but beneath it, something stirred. The earth shifted, subtle, like breath beneath skin.

She felt it in her bones. The memory. The fire.

Not fear. Not destiny.

A promise.

And in the sky above them, black wings circled dozens of crows gathering in the mist, silent sentinels to the return of something long buried.