Echoes of a Hollow Crown

The crown was too large for her head.

It rested there like a curse, gleaming with centuries of bloodshed and betrayal. Queen Seris of Virelle had been crowned at midnight—no fanfare, no cheers, only the droning chants of masked priests and the rattling breath of her dying father. The throne room had smelled of dust, candle wax, and old lies.

She was eighteen.

Seris had not wept at his death. Her father, King Dareth, had ruled with cruelty dressed as order. He had burned villages in the name of unity, imprisoned rivals beneath the palace in cellars of silence, and had once told her that a queen must have a spine of iron and a heart of smoke.

Seris had both.

But iron rusts, and smoke vanishes in the wind. Her kingdom—Virelle—was splintered. Nobles feuded like feral dogs, famine crept through the villages, and the truth of her bloodline was a whispered heresy in every alley.

Because Seris was not Dareth’s true daughter. Not by blood. She was a peasant girl, plucked from the ashes of a massacre, raised behind silk curtains and steel lies. The royal seer had chosen her for her eyes—violet, rare, and identical to the late queen's. A perfect illusion. A myth in the making.

No one outside the palace knew.

But myths are fragile things. And truth, though buried, always stirs.

---

The court was a viper’s nest dressed in gold. Seris sat at its center, veiled in mourning black, speaking little and watching much.

Duke Renholm, her father’s war hound, pressed her to raise taxes. Lady Vaedra, perfumed and sweet-eyed, smiled as she suggested Seris marry her son—“for the good of the realm, of course.” Even the High Inquisitor, cloaked in faith, had offered her a thin smile that said I know more than you think.

But Seris listened.

She let them believe she was young, frightened, uncertain. She let the court laugh behind her back and plot in candlelit chambers. And at night, she walked the palace alone, memorizing its hidden stairways, listening to the murmurs in the walls, and feeding the little birds who owed her their lives.

The court had forgotten the oldest rule of Virelle:

The quietest one always survives the storm.

---

It began with the ravens.

Every morning, one was found impaled on the palace gates—wings splayed, beak broken, a warning etched into its belly. False queen. Ashborn. Thief of crowns.

Someone knew.

The guards whispered of the Hollow Crown—a rebellion born in the south, in the marshlands where Seris had been found as a child. There, among the ruins of forgotten temples, the people spoke of the “Blood Truth”—that the real heir had died in infancy, and a changeling had taken her place.

The rebels painted her face on banners with hollow eyes and bleeding lips.

In response, Seris summoned the heads of the great houses. One by one, she flayed their secrets in front of the court—Renholm’s hidden ledger of bribes, Vaedra’s son caught poisoning her rival’s wine, the Inquisitor’s letters to exiled heretics.

She had watched them all for months. Let them dig their own graves.

Then she filled them.

They called her Cold Seris now. The Ashborn Witch. But they bowed.

---

The Hollow Crown moved closer.

They marched not with armies but with stories—tales of the real heir hidden among them, of Seris as a demon in a stolen face. Whole villages turned from her banners. Her advisors begged her to crush the rebellion with fire.

Instead, Seris disappeared.

For three weeks, no one saw her. Whispers bloomed—had she fled? Died? Had the Hollow Crown found her?

Then, on the eve of the autumn eclipse, she returned.

But not to the palace.

To the marshlands.

She came alone, dressed in mourning gray, and walked into the rebels' stronghold as if she belonged there. She spoke not as queen, but as a myth reborn.

“I am Ashborn,” she told them, her voice echoing over the swamp. “I was raised in your dust and blood. They shaped me into a lie. But I have taken the lie and made it truth.”

She lifted her crown high for them to see. “This kingdom was built on stories. Let mine be the sharpest.”

They did not kneel.

But they listened.

And that was enough.

---

Years passed.

Virelle became whole again—not through fear, but through memory. Statues rose not of kings, but of storytellers and spies. And in every village, they spoke of Queen Seris—the girl who had been a lie, then became legend.

No one ever found proof of her bloodline.

But no one dared ask.

Because the Hollow Crown was hers now—worn not on her head, but in the hearts of her people.

And myths, once believed, are stronger than any truth.