The Crown We Break

Epilogue: The Seed And The Flame

Epilogue: The Seed and the Flame

Ten Years Later

The statue was small.

Simple.

A young man, barefoot, in worn traveler’s clothes — not a prince, not a king. Just a boy standing with his back to a castle, facing the open road.

No plaque. No name.

It stood in the square outside the People’s Assembly in Thalen, where children played around its feet and vendors sold bread and hand-carved whistles. A storyteller nearby pointed toward it as she gathered a group of wide-eyed listeners.

“They say he ran away from the crown,” she began. “Not because he was weak — but because he was strong enough to ask what else the world could be.”

A little girl raised her hand. “What was his name?”

The storyteller smiled. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is the choice he made. And the one you’ll make when the world asks the same of you.”

⸻

Letters from the Coast

Darien watched the waves crash outside their cottage window as he poured tea for two. Caelan sat at the table, reading the newest dispatches from Thalen.

“Two new Assembly bills passed,” he said. “One to abolish the last vestige of noble land rights. The other for grain subsidies in the drought-stricken north.”

Darien raised an eyebrow. “And you’re…what now? An official retiree? Or just a nosy citizen?”

Caelan grinned. “Citizen. Proudly nosy.”

A soft knock came at the door.

A courier. Young. Breathless.

He held out a sealed letter, bearing a sigil shaped like a cracked crown stitched into a flame.

Caelan opened it.

Inside:

“We’re holding the first constitutional convention for other kingdoms who wish to adopt our model. They want you to speak. As the man who gave up the throne.”

Caelan folded it and looked at Darien.

“You think they’ll mind if I bring a healer along?”

Darien smiled. “Only if he outshines you.”

⸻

Lyra and the Forge

In the Assembly’s chamber, Lyra stood before a new class of elected representatives — citizens of every stripe. Her hair was streaked with silver now. Her voice, as fierce as ever.

“You are not above the people,” she said. “You are the people. You represent them not by ruling, but by remembering. That’s what we built. And what we must guard.”

She paused, fingers brushing the edge of the cracked crown symbol etched into the lectern — now used not to signify royal power, but the choice to relinquish it.

“Let no one call peace weak,” she said. “It takes more strength to hold a hand out than to raise a sword.”

⸻

Sareth’s Path

In a tavern nestled against the outer walls of Thalen, a hooded man leaned over a chessboard, teaching a boy how to play.

“You don’t always have to protect the king,” he said, moving a pawn. “Sometimes, the pawn’s journey is the real story.”

The boy tilted his head. “But if the pawn gets to the other side, it becomes something else, right?”

Sareth nodded.

“Maybe even a queen.”

The boy grinned. “Cool.”

Sareth chuckled, the sound low and warm.

From the corner of the room, a former guard raised a mug. “To Sareth — the man who helped end two kingdoms without drawing a sword.”

Sareth raised his mug in return.

“No,” he said. “To the ones who believed we could.”

⸻

The Seed

Outside a small village on the border of what was once Caelan’s kingdom, a boy ran across the fields, a satchel of books slung over his shoulder.

Inside the satchel, one was worn at the edges.

It was titled The Prince Who Ran — a retelling of the story passed from village to city, from grandfather to grandchild.

He stopped at the base of an old tree and sat beneath it, reading.

And as the breeze carried the scent of ash and spring and history, he whispered:

“Maybe I’ll run one day too.”

Not away.

But toward.