CHAPTER 4 – THE SHADOW THAT REFUSED TO DIE
The kingdom celebrated for seven days.
For the first time in nearly twenty years, no black wagon rolled through the palace gates at sunrise.
No mothers hid their daughters.
No soldiers knocked on noble doors.
The nightmare was over.
Or so everyone believed.
Three weeks later...
The first body appeared.
A palace guard was found dead beneath the eastern watchtower.
No wounds.
No poison.
No signs of struggle.
His hair...
Had turned completely white overnight.
King Adrian stared silently at the corpse.
"It can't be."
Elisa knelt beside the body.
She examined his eyes.
His fingertips.
His lips.
Then she noticed something the royal physicians had missed.
Burned into the inside of his wrist...
A tiny black symbol.
A crown surrounded by thirteen thorns.
Her face lost all color.
"No..."
Adrian frowned.
"What is it?"
"I've seen this mark before."
"Where?"
"In one of Miriam's oldest books."
She looked up slowly.
"The curse didn't die."
"It escaped."
That night Elisa unlocked the ancient journal the old healer had left behind.
Inside were drawings centuries older than the kingdom itself.
One page stopped her breathing.
It showed thirteen black crystals.
Not one.
Thirteen.
The crystal beneath Adrian's throne had been only one fragment.
The curse had never lived inside a single prison.
It had been divided...
Hidden throughout the kingdom.
Destroying one merely awakened the others.
Someone had planned for the curse to survive forever.
Before dawn a messenger burst into the palace.
"Your Majesty!"
"The royal cemetery..."
"The graves are open!"
Adrian and Elisa rode there immediately.
Every coffin belonging to the former kings had been forced open from the inside.
Not outside.
Inside.
Yet every skeleton remained untouched.
Only one thing was missing.
Each crown.
All twelve royal crowns had vanished.
Then the cemetery keeper whispered something that made everyone freeze.
May you like
"I saw a man wearing all of them..."
"...walking into the forest."
