My Father Ordered His Own Mother's Execution and Forgot My Name—Then the Secret of His Relic Throne Revealed the Terrifying Truth About Our Enclave
Exactly nine days after the siege, the mountain citadel hummed with a different kind of silence. Not the fearful hush of impending war, but the muted efficiency of Ephraim’s Iron Smugglers. They now controlled the trade gates, ensuring supplies flowed, food was rationed, and their own interests were well-served. The sacred laws of Zion’s Rest had been largely replaced by the pragmatism of commerce.
I sat on a low wooden bench in the drafty scullery kitchen, the chill of the damp stone seeping into my plain grey linen dress. The smells of grease, raw earth, and stale smoke still clung to the air. In front of me, a wooden tub of murky water held a mound of winter potatoes.
My hands, once accustomed to the rough handle of a riding crop or the smooth touch of parchment, now held a dull paring knife. I scraped the skin from a yellow root, the mundane task a stark contrast to the weight of the hollow crown I now bore.
Gideon had convinced me to have the iron throne moved. It now sat locked away in a flooded cellar, submerged beneath feet of dark, still water, its toxic power nullified, perhaps forever. Caleb Hollister, the old scribe, had finally found peace, buried by Gideon in a quiet patch of mountain earth, his conscience unburdened.
I scraped another potato, the rhythmic sound almost meditative. The civil war was over. Zion’s Rest was safe, in a manner of speaking.
Yet, as I scraped the tough skin from the root, I noticed a subtle, terrifying shift within myself. I closed my eyes, trying to recall the exact shade of my mother’s eyes, a memory I had once cherished. Was it hazel? Or a soft, warm brown? The image flickered, indistinct.
I tried to hum the tune of the lullaby my father sang me as a child, the one he had tried so desperately to hold onto in his journal. The notes danced at the edge of my memory, a ghost of a melody, but the precise sequence, the cadence, eluded me.
A shiver ran through me, not from the cold, but from a profound, terrifying realization. The throne’s influence. The pervasive, insidious nature of its curse. Even without sitting on it, its shadow had lingered. The very air of Zion’s Rest, imbued with its toxic essence for decades, had begun its slow, subtle work. Or perhaps, the emotional toll of witnessing such profound loss and betrayal had simply eroded those tender parts of my own memory.
I saved the realm from my father’s cruelty, only to learn his cruelty was the only thing holding back the dark.
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