The Crown We Break

Chapter Two: The Disappeared

Chapter Two: The Disappeared

The wind shifted as they approached the village.

Lyra pulled her cloak tighter, though it wasn’t the cold that unsettled her. It was the silence. A stillness too complete for any place where people had once lived.

The trees stopped just shy of the wooden gate, which sagged open on its hinges. The air smelled faintly of ash.

“This is Ovrin?” asked Nel, the scout beside her.

“It was,” Lyra said.

They entered slowly. No crows. No barking dogs. Not even rot.

The buildings stood untouched. Laundry still pinned to lines. Half-carved wood stacked beside the smithy. Soup frozen solid in a pot left outside one home.

It looked less like a village destroyed, and more like one abandoned in an instant.

Or worse — erased.

“Where are the people?” Nel whispered.

Lyra didn’t answer. Her hand drifted toward the dagger at her hip.

They advanced toward the center of the village.

There, on the square wall of the chapel, someone had scrawled something in thick red strokes:

“The King Forgets. But the South Remembers.”

Beneath it, burned into the stone: the same symbol from the coin — a sword piercing a crown.

Nel stared. “They were taken, weren’t they?”

“Maybe.” Lyra’s throat tightened. “Or they joined willingly.”

Nel scoffed. “All of them?”

Lyra crouched beside the message. Traced the charred stone with a gloved finger.

“They left no bodies.”

They left no one.

⸻

Echoes in the Stone

Inside the chapel, the air was dry and bitter.

Lyra stepped in alone, the scout waiting outside. Her boots echoed on the old wooden floor.

Everything had been removed — pews, altar, offerings.

Except for a single object in the center of the floor:

A child’s doll.

Handmade, one arm torn.

A strange emptiness bloomed in her chest.

Lyra hadn’t believed the stories — not really. About Sareth gathering the poor, the angry, the unseen. Not with Caelan’s reforms spreading to the outer territories.

But this place…

This quiet, inescapable silence…

Sareth hadn’t just built a rebellion.

He was building a faith.

⸻

The Return

Two days later, Lyra stormed into the Hall of Accord. Snow still clung to her cloak. Mud streaked her boots.

Caelan stood with General Elric and Councilor Vos, mid-discussion. They stopped when they saw her face.

“Ovrin is gone,” she said.

“You mean destroyed?” Caelan asked.

“I mean gone.”

She flung something onto the table.

The doll.

Still slightly damp from the chapel floor.

Caelan’s face paled. He picked it up. Saw the red mark sewn into the chest — a crude sword.

“Caelan,” she said, quieter now, “this isn’t just rebellion anymore. This is movement. Devotion.”

Elric stepped forward. “We need to shut the southern roads. Post warnings—”

“That won’t stop them,” Lyra said.

“They’ll see it as provocation,” Vos warned.

Caelan didn’t speak.

He looked at the doll.

Then out the window, toward the south.

“Have the roads patrolled,” he said finally. “Quietly. No weapons drawn.”

“To what end?” Vos asked. “You can’t fight a shadow.”

“No,” Caelan said. “But I can follow one.”

He turned to Lyra.

“I need you to go south again. Not as a scout. Not as a spy.”

“What, then?”

“As a diplomat. Take two from the Council. Go unarmed. Ask for a meeting.”

Lyra stared.

“With Sareth?”

Caelan nodded.

“We need to know what he wants — before he decides to take it.”

⸻

Elsewhere — A Gathering Flame

Deep in the broken keep of Ferros, Sareth stood before a crowd nearly doubled from the last.

Some wore farmer’s leathers. Others, stolen guard uniforms. A few wore no shoes at all.

A woman approached. A lantern bearer.

“They’re saying the king sent a party to parley,” she said. “From the northern woman. Lyra.”

Sareth looked out over the rising tide of his loyalists.

“Let them come,” he said.

He smiled — the kind that didn’t reach his eyes.

“It’s time we spoke of memory. And the cost of forgetting.”