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
The stench of burning timber hung heavy in the air as we made our way through the narrow streets. The pamphlets had done their work. Even the children darted behind their mothers when I passed, their eyes wide with fear.
We had no time to investigate the source of the pamphlets. Urgent news, carried by breathless guardsmen, had just reached us.
King Malachi had collapsed.
We ran, Gideon’s long strides easily matching mine, towards the High Sanctum. The heavy oak doors were open, revealing a scene of quiet, terrible chaos. Guards stood frozen, their faces pale.
Inside the throneroom, Malachi lay sprawled across the stone dais, not on the iron throne itself, but beside it, as if he had struggled to reach it one last time before falling. His eyes were open, staring blankly at the high vaulted ceiling. A thin trickle of blood snaked from his ear onto the polished stone.
“Father!” I cried, rushing to his side, ignoring the guards, ignoring everything but the still form of the man who had forgotten me.
His skin was cold to the touch. His breath was gone. His eyes, once a vibrant grey, were now dull, lifeless windows.
Gideon knelt beside me, his fingers pressed to Malachi’s neck. He shook his head slowly, a grim pronouncement.
“Brain hemorrhage,” he murmured. “The throne took its final toll.”
My father, King Malachi Danforth, was dead. The man who had sacrificed his mind, his memories, his very humanity for Zion’s Rest, had finally succumbed to its silent curse. There was no grand farewell, no final moment of clarity. Only a cold, stone-hard silence.
The silence did not last long.
A distant wail, then another, pierced the mournful quiet of the sanctum. It was the sound of the signal horns, meant only for dire emergencies.
Then, a new smell, acrid and bitter, began to drift through the open doors—the unmistakable scent of smoke.
“What is that?” a nervous guard whispered, clutching his spear tighter.
Before anyone could answer, the first shouts echoed from beyond the sanctum walls. Not the shouts of grief, but of rage. Of battle.
“To the granaries! Seize the stores!”
“The timber mills are burning! They’re taking the western gate!”
Panic erupted. Guards scrambled, unsure whether to protect the dead king or defend the living city.
Three figures, each a commander of one of the enclave’s cult factions, burst into the throneroom, their faces grim, but with a predatory gleam in their eyes. Commander Boras, Commander Rian, and Commander Silas. Their loyalties had always been thin, their ambitions thick.
They did not mourn Malachi. They saw opportunity.
“Malachi is dead!” Boras bellowed, his voice echoing through the sanctum. “The throne is empty! Zion is ours!”
Rian, a younger, more zealous commander, raised his sword. “For the true faith! For Zion’s purity!”
Silas, the most pragmatic of the three, simply pointed towards the granary entrance. “Secure the food. We control the people, we control the kingdom.”
The civil war had begun.
From the high windows of the sanctum, I watched as plumes of black smoke billowed into the clear mountain sky. Flames licked at the timber roofs of the outer grain stores, painting the dusk a terrifying orange. The sounds of fighting, the clash of steel, the screams of men, rose from the streets below like a gruesome hymn.
My father’s body lay cold on the dais. The enclave he died to protect was tearing itself apart. And somewhere, someone was watching, smiling. The architect of this chaos.
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