The Cursed Empress

The sky looked wrong tonight.

It wasn't just the blood moon-massive, red, and angry-looming over the palace like a curse. It was the weight in the air. Heavier than storm clouds. Heavier than fear.

Nyra felt it settle in her bones the moment the temple bells rang.

She had just finished scrubbing soot from the marble pillars of the High Hall, her fingers raw and her tunic damp with sweat, when two guards appeared at the door. They didn't speak. They didn't need to.

The look in their eyes told her everything.

She'd been chosen.

Now she stood barefoot on the cold obsidian altar, her wrists bound in ceremonial cords the color of blood. The wind was still, but it carried a smell she couldn't name-ash, incense, and something sour. Something old.

Below her, the palace courtyard was filled with people. Nobles in gold-trimmed robes. Soldiers in black armor. High priests with their staffs of bone. Even the Empress Dowager had come, perched on her jewel-crusted litter like a dying vulture.

But it wasn't their gazes she felt burning into her skin.

It was his.

Prince Thorne.

He stood just beyond the stairs, half-shadowed beneath the archway of the Flame Gate, dressed in full black imperial armor, sword at his hip. His hair was a dark halo against the moonlight. His expression unreadable.

He did not blink.

He did not flinch.

He simply watched her as if trying to decide whether she was worth killing with his own hands.

Nyra's mouth was dry. Her pulse throbbed behind her ears. She had heard the rumors, the stories whispered by kitchen maids and old guards:

That Prince Thorne was born during a lunar eclipse and never cried.

That he'd killed a general in his first campaign with a single blow to the neck.

That he didn't believe in love, or gods, or anything that couldn't be conquered by a blade.

She believed all of them.

"Silence!"

The voice of High Priest Oryan rang out across the courtyard. He stood at the top of the temple steps, his golden robes gleaming like fire. His skeletal hands lifted high.

"The blood moon rises once in five centuries," he proclaimed, "and with it, the curse upon our empire deepens."

He paused, letting the silence press down like a hand on the throat.

"No crops grow in our eastern valleys. Our firstborn sons do not survive infancy. The royal bloodline weakens. The gods have turned their faces from Noctarein. And tonight, they demand an offering."

He gestured to her.

Nyra felt her knees wobble.

"A vessel," Oryan continued, "to absorb the curse so the empire may endure. This girl-lowborn, without ties, without name-has been chosen."

The crowd said nothing. Not even a murmur.

Nyra clenched her fists in their bindings. Her jaw tightened. Chosen? As if this had been a gift?

They had dragged her from her quarters without explanation. No goodbyes. No warning. The guard who brought her had whispered, "Don't scream. It'll be easier that way."

She hadn't screamed.

She wouldn't give them that.

Two robed priests approached and took her by the arms. Their touch was reverent, but cold. They guided her to the center of the seal etched into the altar-the sigil of Noctarein: a golden sun wrapped in the coils of a serpent.

They made her kneel.

And then the High Priest raised the sacred blade.

It was not made of steel. It was obsidian and bone, carved with ancient glyphs that shimmered in the blood moon's light. The weapon of sacrifice. The dagger that had ended countless lives over the centuries.

Nyra stared at it.

She wanted to cry, but her body wouldn't obey.

Instead, her thoughts drifted.

To the kitchen girl who used to braid her hair.

To the first snowfall she saw from the servant's tower.

To the sound of her mother's voice-a voice she could no longer remember clearly.

This is how I leave the world, she thought.

Alone. Unseen. Unloved.

The High Priest began to chant in the Old Tongue. The priests joined in, voices rising in a mournful harmony that sent chills down her back. The blade hovered above her chest, the chants reaching a crescendo.

And then-everything went wrong.

Or perhaps... exactly as it was meant to.

As the dagger descended, a violent wind ripped through the altar.

Not natural wind. Magic.

Raw. Wild. Unforgiving.

The sky cracked with a deafening boom. The blood moon pulsed. The blade shattered midair before it could touch her skin, scattering fragments in a burst of golden fire.

Gasps rang out across the temple.

Nyra screamed.

But not from pain.

From the burn inside her chest. It wasn't fire. It wasn't cold. It was... awakening.

Light burst from her skin-golden, molten, searing. The cords on her wrists dissolved. The altar beneath her cracked. The seal glowed like embers.

She collapsed, but the power held her upright.

The runes of the empire-the ones carved into every imperial seal, every crown, every scroll-burned themselves into her skin, stretching across her collarbones like a brand. Her body shook. Her vision blurred.

But she did not die.

She rose.

The chanting had stopped.

The priests had fallen to their knees.

The nobles watched with pale faces, frozen.

And Prince Thorne?

He stepped forward. Slowly. Deliberately. The crowd parted for him like water.

His sword was drawn.

He stopped only a few feet from her.

"You should be dead," he said coldly.

Nyra looked up, sweat slick on her brow, hair clinging to her back. Her lips parted, but no sound came out.

Thorne tilted his head slightly, eyes narrowing as he studied her.

"What are you?" he asked, voice quiet.

The High Priest staggered to his feet. "She... she bears the seal. The seal of the First Flame. That power hasn't surfaced in centuries. Not since the last Empress..."

"She's no Empress," Thorne snapped. "She's a servant. A vessel. The ritual failed."

"No," Oryan said, breathless. "It succeeded... in a way the gods have not granted since the Founding."

He turned to the stunned crowd, voice cracking with emotion.

"She is the curse-and the crown."

And then, slowly, he knelt before her.

"All hail... the Cursed Empress."

A sharp intake of breath rippled through the courtyard.

Then, one by one, the priests bowed their heads.

Even the nobles-confused, shaken-followed.

Nyra stood at the center of it all, the seal still glowing on her skin, the blood moon above like a watching eye.

And Prince Thorne?

He did not kneel.

He stepped closer instead... and whispered so only she could hear:

"I don't know what you are. But I will find out. And when I do, I'll decide if I let you live."

She met his eyes.

And for the first time in her life, she felt the world shift beneath her feet-not from fear.

But from power.