Chapter 3 The Bone Court Stirs

Ashra stood on the cliff's edge, the horizon veiled in dawn's bruised light. The wind pulled at her cloak, tugged at the braids in her hair, as if the world itself sought to slow her down. Behind her, Kael waited silently, arms crossed, eyes sharp.

Below them stretched the Hollow Vale-a vast expanse of blackened trees and hollowed ruins, shrouded in mist. This was the border of the forgotten kingdoms. And beyond it: the Bone Court.

"The path through the vale is cursed," Kael said at last. "Voices echo there. They feed on the weak-minded."

"I'm not weak," Ashra replied, her voice low but resolute.

Kael offered no comfort. Only turned and began the descent, her red cloak vanishing like blood into the fog.

Ashra followed.

They moved swiftly, shadow to shadow, across terrain that reeked of rot and old magic. Bones littered the ground- human, beast, and unidentifiable things best left nameless. Sable flew high above, crying out when danger neared. Once, they passed a tree with its trunk split in two-inside it, faces screamed silently from the wood.

The deeper they ventured into the vale, the heavier the air became. Every breath Ashra drew felt laced with forgotten memories. She began to hear whispers-faint and indistinct, like water trickling in a dry riverbed. Words she couldn't decipher yet felt drawn to, as if they'd once been spoken into her very soul.

By the time the Bone Court came into view, night had fallen.

Ashra's breath caught. The Court wasn't a castle. It was a graveyard city-spiralled towers carved from ivory and fossilised bone, veined with crimson ore. Lanterns of soul-light flickered in windows. The wind carried whispers not meant for the living.

Kael halted. "You enter alone."

"What?"

"You carry the blood. They'll test it."

Sable landed on her shoulder, unusually quiet.

Ashra nodded. Her steps didn't falter as she approached the gate. Her hand hovered over the runes carved into the bone archway.

It opened before she touched it.

Inside, skeletal guards watched from alcoves, unmoving. Shadows darted across her vision-too fast to catch. The air was thick with the scent of myrrh and fire. The walls pulsed faintly with an inner glow, like veins beneath translucent skin.

A procession of hooded figures watched her enter the central chamber. In the centre stood a dais of bone, and upon it, a woman clad in armour forged from silver and ashbone. Her eyes were black as voids.

"You are Ashra of the Flameborn line," the woman said. Her voice rang like chimes cracking in winter. "You come before the Court untested."

"I come seeking truth," Ashra replied.

"Then bleed."

A blade was tossed at her feet. Ashra picked it up without hesitation. She dragged the edge across her palm.

The floor ignited.

Not in fire, but in memory.

Symbols burned into being, dancing flames writing her lineage in the air around her. In them, scenes unfolded- her mother weeping before a shattered throne, a man in a crown of iron baring teeth in a snarl, Ashra as a child held aloft like a promise. A sword forged from starlight. A kingdom is crumbling beneath a burning sky.

"You are the last," the woman whispered. "And the world will kill you for it."

Ashra didn't flinch. "Let it try."

The flames died. The chamber darkened.

Then the Court knelt.

A door opened behind the dais. The woman stepped aside, gesturing for Ashra to enter. "You have passed the first trial. The rest will not be so kind."

Ashra walked into the darkness.

The chamber beyond was unlike any she'd seen before. Carved entirely from fossilised dragonbone, it curved upward into a high dome. A pool of black water lay at its centre. The moment she stepped near, the surface shimmered.

A figure emerged from the shadows, man, young and old all at once, draped in bone-colored robes. His eyes burned with pale fire.

"I am Maelcar, Keeper of the Ash Record. I am memory."

Ashra felt her knees tremble, but did not bow.

Maelcar gestured to the pool. "Look."

She gazed into it.

Reflections twisted memories not her own. Her ancestors, riding wyverns across blood-red skies. Her great-grandmother was wielding the Blade of Mourning to defend the last citadel. Her mother, younger than Ashra, was now standing before a masked man who knelt in allegiance.

Then Ashra saw herself.

A crown of flame upon her brow. An army behind her. Her enemies broke beneath her feet.

The pool went still.

"Why show me this?" she asked.

"To remind you who you are. And to warn you what you might become."

Ashra turned. "What comes next?"

"War."

She returned to the surface chambers with Kael waiting. Her eyes searched Ashra's face and found no answer there.

"They accepted you," she said. "I can see it."

Ashra gave a faint nod. "And they showed me what's coming."

"Good. Then you understand."

Kael led her to a chamber on the upper levels- part lodging, part shrine. There, Ashra was given time to rest. But sleep didn't come. Visions haunted her even with closed eyes.

She dreamed of Sable caged in flame. Of the masked man reaching for her. Of a city turned to ash.

She woke, gasping.

In the days that followed, the Bone Court trained her. Not in the ways of soldiers, but in the rites of memory and fire. She was taught to channel her bloodline's power-to summon flames not with anger, but with purpose.

Sable remained near her, silent but vigilant. He, too was changing. His feathers shimmered faintly with silver in moonlight. Sometimes, he whispered names in her dreams.

And slowly, Ashra began to change too.

She learned of the Forgotten War, of the betrayal that scattered her family, of the Bone Pact that bound the Court to silence. She read of her mother's exile, not death, but imprisonment within the Hollow Crown's grasp.

A plan formed in her mind. Dangerous. Reckless. Necessary.

She would find her mother. She would restore her line.

But first, she would need allies.

On the seventh night, Maelcar summoned her again. He placed before her a bone-and-obsidian blade.

"The sword of your line," he said. "Dormant until now."

As her fingers closed around it, the runes on its hilt flared to life. Ashra felt a power sing in her bones. It recognised her.

And the Court watched in silence as the flameborn heir raised her weapon to the hollow sky.

The time for hiding was over.