The Fall of Kings

Mira's knees ached against cold stone. Her scrub brush moved in rhythmic circles, scouring away nobles' footprints from the narrow corridor. The Servant Quarters of Aethermoor Palace smelled of lye soap and resignation—twelve years of the same scent, the same motions, the same invisible existence.

The silver chains around her wrists bit into scarred skin. She'd learned to ignore the constant pressure, the dull ache that reminded her what she was. Cursed. Dangerous. Less than human.

Above, in the grand summit hall, voices echoed. Lords and ladies from all seven realms gathering for peace talks. Mira kept her gaze lowered, watching soap suds swirl and disappear into cracks between stones.

The first tremor knocked her brush from her hand.

Stone groaned. Oil lamps swung on their hooks, casting wild shadows across walls marked by generations of servants' fingerprints. Mira's hands flew to her wrists as the chains suddenly heated—metal burning against flesh, growing hotter with each heartbeat.

"What—" The word died in her throat.

The ceiling cracked open. Not slowly, not with warning—it split like an egg, revealing darkness that should not exist beneath a floating palace. Mira's chains exploded. Silver fragments scattered across wet stone, each piece glowing red-hot before cooling to dull gray.

Her magic flooded back.

It tasted like copper. Like blood and earth and raw power that had been caged for twelve years, compressed into a space too small, waiting for release. Mira gasped, her mouth flooding with the metallic tang of freed earth-binding magic.

Above her, nobles screamed.

The floor gave way. Lord Casimir Thornheart, his formal robes billowing as he plummeted. Rhen Shadowmend, clutching a leather journal to his chest. Dozens of others—all falling into the Abyss Below, their screams dopplering into distance.

Mira felt it pulling. The corruption down there, vast and hungry, its gravity all wrong. It didn't pull straight down—it yanked sideways, spiraled, shifted direction with each breath. Stone below her liquefied and re-solidified in impossible patterns.

But her magic knew the rhythm.

She touched the scars on her wrists. Phantom pain from vanished chains, but beneath—power. Real power, flowing through her like underground rivers she'd always sensed but never touched. The Abyss's warped earth sang to her magic, showing her which way gravity would shift next, where solid ground would form.

A thousand voices rose from the darkness. Whispers layered upon whispers, rhythmic as a choir, each one a soul the Abyss had swallowed. They sang of pain and peace, corruption and release, their melody beautiful and terrible.

Mira planted her feet wide. Grounding herself the way she'd learned in childhood, before the chains, before the curse. Her magic pulsed in response to the Abyss—she could navigate this. She alone.

Lord Casimir's scream cut through the whispers. The man who'd ordered her flogged for looking at him directly. Who'd called her power an abomination. Falling now, helpless, into a void that would devour him.

She could let them fall. Every noble who'd ever sneered, whispered, turned away. Let the Abyss have them. Let the corruption feast.

Mira's magic thrummed beneath her skin, waiting for direction.

Her worn scrub brush lay abandoned on wet stone. Tool of invisible labor. Symbol of twelve years erased, made small, forced to serve. She'd touched the scars on her wrists so many times they'd become habit—remembering the chains even when they were gone.

The nobles' screams grew distant.

Mira jumped.