The Crown We Break

Chapter Four: Broken Council

Chapter Four: Broken Council

The storm wasn’t outside the Hall of Accord.

It was within.

Twelve voices rose, crashed, and clashed like waves in a sealed room — the full council chamber pulsing with anger, fear, and fractured loyalty.

Caelan sat at the head of the circular table, one hand closed into a fist on the wood, the other resting near the silver coin. Lyra stood to his left. Vos, Elric, Menal, Maera, and the rest were arrayed around him, eyes wild with argument.

“You want to negotiate with a rebel priest?” Elric bellowed. “He’s indoctrinating whole villages, Caelan. That’s not politics, that’s war.”

“We already tried diplomacy,” Maera snapped. “He welcomed us with words and shadows, and sent us back with threats dressed in parables.”

“He never said he’d strike,” Lyra said firmly.

“Because he doesn’t have to!” barked Elric. “He’s letting belief do the work.”

Vos leaned back, voice colder than usual. “Then we burn the sermons out before they take root.”

A stunned silence followed.

“Burn?” Lyra repeated, incredulous. “You want to torch villages — our own people — to prevent them from believing in something?”

Vos folded his arms. “Before we lose half the kingdom, yes.”

Menal spoke up, quiet but sharp. “You think you can fight stories with swords? Every hammer we swing at him will make him more of a martyr.”

“And if we do nothing?” Maera said. “We lose the South, and the East won’t be far behind.”

They all turned to Caelan.

Waiting.

For a decision.

A command.

A king.

But Caelan remained silent.

He didn’t know what to say.

He had fled from the crown once — because the weight of these decisions had crushed his breath. Now, even with a council, it still crushed him.

The difference was, he couldn’t run this time.

His fingers tightened on the coin.

“I won’t be a tyrant,” he said finally. “And I won’t become the villain in Sareth’s story.”

Vos scoffed. “You already are, boy.”

Caelan stood sharply.

“I earned this seat with blood,” he said. “Mine and others’. I shattered the throne to share power — not to give it away to a false prophet in the mountains.”

Elric slammed his hand down. “Then fight him!”

“No,” Caelan said. “Not yet.”

He looked to Lyra.

“We’re going south again.”

⸻

After the Storm

That night, Lyra found Caelan in the archives, tracing his fingers over old maps, council scrolls, and reports from the frontier. His jaw was tight. His eyes bloodshot.

“You still believe you can win this without a war?” she asked gently.

Caelan didn’t look up. “I have to.”

Lyra stepped closer. “He’s building a myth, Caelan. Every day he waits, your name becomes more poison to those who never saw the change you brought.”

“I didn’t start this to be worshiped,” he muttered.

“But people need someone to believe in.”

He finally looked at her.

“I’m not sure I want to be that person.”

Lyra studied him for a long moment.

“You never did,” she said. “And maybe that’s why you should be.”

⸻

Elsewhere — The Ghost and the Flame

In the moonless dark, Sareth met with a hooded figure near the edge of a southern forest. The stranger bore no banner, but carried a curved blade sheathed in deerhide — unmistakably foreign.

“You came,” Sareth said, voice low.

The figure pulled back their hood.

A woman. Sharp-featured. Scarred across the jaw. She gave a curt nod.

“The East remembers,” she said.

Sareth smiled.

“The king does not.”

She stepped forward and placed a leather-wrapped bundle in his hands. He unwrapped it slowly.

A map.

An inventory of border weapons.

And a name written in a script not used in the kingdom anymore:

Thalen.

He looked up.

“Then we begin.”