The Crown We Break

Chapter Three: Fire Sermons

Chapter Three: Fire Sermons

They gathered in a broken amphitheater, deep in the southern highlands.

The seats were cracked stone, moss-covered and worn smooth by time. Where once nobles had sat to watch poets or priests, now outcasts crowded the rows. Some stood barefoot. Others clutched stolen blades. All watched the man in the center.

Sareth.

His cloak was the color of dried blood. His voice carried like a blade through smoke.

“What is a king?”

No one answered. His audience didn’t need to. They had all lived under kings.

“Is a king the one who makes laws?” Sareth asked. “The one who collects taxes? Sends soldiers? Blesses marriages? Condemns thieves?”

He let the words hang in the air like flies over something rotten.

“No,” he said softly. “A king is a memory. A myth. A lie handed down from man to man, sewn into banners, poured into gold, whispered into the ears of the hungry while their bellies twist.”

He paused.

“He is a story told by those who feast, while we scrape the earth for seeds.”

They watched him. They believed him.

Sareth stepped forward, raising something in his hand.

The broken crown of King Aridan.

Still scorched from the pyre.

“He ran,” Sareth said. “The boy prince. He ran from this.”

He threw it to the ground. It clanged against the stone like a fallen blade.

“And now he sits behind council walls. Pretending we are free.”

A murmur spread through the crowd. Rage. Recognition.

“We remember,” he said, voice rising. “We remember the fields burned. The sons taken. The blood that built their palace.”

He pointed to the sky. “We will not be ruled by those who forget.”

And the crowd roared.

⸻

The Envoy Arrives

Two days later, Lyra arrived at the southern border under a white flag.

She rode with two members of the Council: Alden, the pragmatic smith-turned-diplomat from the north, and Maera, a sharp-tongued widow from the east.

They dismounted near a hollowed keep where smoke rose from cookfires. Armed guards watched them with curious, uncertain eyes.

“We’re here to speak with Sareth,” Lyra said, loud and clear.

The guards exchanged glances.

“Follow,” one said, voice dry with suspicion.

They led them not to a tent, but into a ruin. An old church long since abandoned, its windows shattered, its altar replaced by a cracked stone table. Around it, maps and coins and ash-covered scrolls.

Sareth entered without ceremony.

He had grown leaner since Lyra had last seen him. Harder. His eyes still carried that quiet fire, but now it burned colder.

“Lyra,” he said, voice calm. “The voice of the North.”

“Sareth,” she returned, holding his gaze. “The firebrand of the South.”

A faint smirk. “Titles again. Funny, I thought we were trying to escape those.”

Alden stepped forward. “We’re not here for rhetoric.”

“No,” Sareth said. “You’re here because your kingdom’s cracks are starting to bleed.”

“We came to offer terms,” Maera said.

Sareth walked to the altar-table. Ran his fingers along the edge.

“Terms?” he echoed. “When did you start thinking you had any to offer?”

Lyra stepped forward.

“We want peace.”

“Then why bring a spy?” he asked. “The girl who came before. The one with northern ink beneath her nails.”

Lyra froze.

“You knew?”

“She came to see what I was building,” Sareth said. “And maybe she even believed in it. But you—” he gestured at all three, “—you come with words. Not faith.”

A flicker of anger rose in Lyra’s chest. “You’re taking entire villages, Sareth.”

“I’m freeing them.”

“They don’t return. They vanish.”

“They choose not to return. Why would they? To your cold debates and false freedoms? You built a council. I’m building a cause.”

Maera shook her head. “You’re building an army.”

He didn’t deny it.

Instead, he turned to Lyra.

“Ask your king this: Who has more power — the man with the throne? Or the man with the story?”

⸻

A Message Carried North

When Lyra returned to Andar, she was quiet.

Caelan met her in the Hall of Accord.

“Did he listen?”

“He listened,” she said.

“And?”

“He wants you to know,” she said, slowly, “that he doesn’t need to march on your palace to unseat you. He just needs time. Time for the people to remember whose hands once fed them.”

Caelan turned away, jaw tight. “He’s building a religion.”

“He’s building you,” Lyra said quietly. “An opposite. A villain. And the more you resist, the more real he becomes.”

He closed his eyes.

Then opened them.

“Then I’ll give him something real to fear.”