CHAPTER 497: WAR OF THRONES VI

Roman staggered as the battlefield memory tightened around him.

The phantom plain stretched wide—spears driven into mud, banners torn by storm winds, bodies strewn like discarded husks. But there was no Roman. His footprints had been smoothed over, his axe absent from the pile of broken weapons.

The Archivist’s decree whispered:

"Unwritten."

Roman’s veins bulged. His fists clenched so hard blood ran from his palms. "No!" His voice thundered across the false battlefield, shaking the phantom banners. "I was there! I held the line when no one else would!"

The scene resisted. It twisted, tried to swallow him, to smooth over his existence like a hand erasing ink from parchment. The blurred soldiers marched forward without him, the war continued as though he had never stood there at all.

Roman’s knees buckled. His outline flickered, pale threads peeling from his form like he was being rewritten into nothingness.

"Roman!" Liliana’s cry was sharp, bow raised though it had no target. Naval gritted his teeth, his sword trembling with the urge to cut the decree itself.

But Leon’s voice cut through their panic. "He can’t be saved for—he has to anchor himself."

Roman bared his teeth, snarling like a beast forced into chains. His memories flashed in shards—his first scar, the oath he swore at his commander’s grave, the years he carried his brothers’ names so they would not fade.

But the Archivist’s decree pressed deeper. "Names not written... are lost."

Leon’s fractures screamed. Fracture Requiem wanted to surge, to break the decree apart—but he knew the risk. To turn it outward here might unravel Roman just as much as it shattered the law. His hand trembled, fighting to restrain the unstable resonance.

Instead, he stepped closer, his voice low, sharp, resonant:

"Roman. If the law won’t write you—then carve yourself into it."

Roman’s eyes snapped wide. His breathing ragged, his body fading. But the words pierced him. He roared again, and this time he slammed a fist into the phantom battlefield.

The mud splintered.

A footprint appeared where there had been none.

The vision shuddered violently, threads snapping. Roman’s outline blazed back into solidity, his chest heaving, his body dripping with sweat and blood—but he was there. In the memory. In the law.

The Archivist’s hand lowered slightly. The battlefield dissolved, returning them to the silent city.

But its voice pressed again, cold and absolute:

"One remembered. Others remain."

The threads shifted. This time, they reached for Milim.

The girl blinked as the city twisted around her, reshaping into a temple of shattered glass and fire—an echo of something only she could know.

Her humming had stopped.

And for the first time since they entered the city, Milim looked afraid.

The world bent around Milim.

The cracked road, the moss, the broken carriages—all bled away in a flood of color and fire. The city was gone, replaced by a temple of obsidian pillars, each one slick with blackened glass. The air was molten, suffused with a heat that did not burn skin but memory.

At the temple’s heart, a great sphere of crystal floated—shattered, re-forming, shattered again, like it could not decide whether it had ever truly existed.

Milim froze. The smile that never left her face faltered. Her arms dropped to her sides, small hands trembling.

Leon felt his chest tighten. He had seen Milim fearless in the face of armies, humming cheerfully as fire rained around her. But now—her body quivered, her eyes wide with something he had never thought possible. Recognition.

Roselia’s lips parted. "She knows this place."

The Archivist’s voice carried across the false temple, sharp as etched stone:

"An unwritten birth. A fractured existence. Present truth... or fade."

Naval took a step forward instinctively. "Wait—she’s just a—"

Leon’s arm shot out, blocking him, jaw tight. "No interruptions. If you break the law of the trial, you don’t just get erased—you unwrite yourself."

The flames around the pillars coiled upward, forming blurred shapes—figures kneeling, heads bowed before the crystal. They were Milim’s people. Not in flesh, not in voice—just faint sketches of what once was. But every one of them turned faceless gazes toward her, waiting.

Milim’s lips trembled. She shook her head. "I... I can’t. That crystal—it wasn’t supposed to break."

The Archivist’s decree struck like a hammer. "If it broke, then it was never true. If it was never true, you are never written."

Her body flickered. Her outline frayed.

Roselia cried out, but Leon’s voice thundered over all of them, fierce and commanding:

"Milim! Look at me!"

Her eyes snapped to him, wide and wet.

"You told me once," Leon said, his voice raw with strain, "that when the world shook, you laughed. You didn’t follow what was written—you were the chaos that broke it. If the law won’t remember you, then burn your truth into it!"

The fractures inside him flared, unstable, resonating against hers. His body screamed under the pressure, but he poured the rhythm outward—not breaking the Archivist’s law, not yet, but giving Milim something to hold onto.

A pulse.

An echo.

Her echo.

Milim’s trembling stilled. She blinked, and for the first time since the trial began, she smiled—not playful, but sharp, defiant.

Her small hand clenched into a fist. "Then fine. If they forgot me—" she stamped her foot, and the obsidian temple cracked like brittle glass "—I’ll make sure they never forget again!"

The crystal above the altar exploded in a blaze of molten light. The kneeling shadows screamed without voices, dissolving into ash. The heat roared outward, not consuming, but engraving—the very pillars seared with burning lines of her existence.

Her body solidified again. The flickering stopped. She stood tall, shoulders heaving, laughter bubbling raw from her chest as her echo rang against the Archivist’s decree.

The temple shattered. The city returned.

The Archivist’s threads swayed slowly, as though considering. Then the decree rippled out once more, turning toward the next.

This time, the white arcs reached for Liliana.

Her bow was already raised. But her eyes... her eyes were sharp, afraid, and ready.

The threads coiled toward Liliana.

The ruined city folded away, and the world around her rippled into something colder.

A forest stretched out in all directions—endless trees of pale bark, their leaves silver, rustling without wind. The ground was soft with ash instead of soil. A faint mist drifted between the trunks, and somewhere far above, the moon loomed impossibly large, its light so sharp it bled through the branches like blades.

Liliana stiffened. Her bow was already in her hand, drawn, though there was no target. Her breathing slowed—controlled, deliberate.

Leon felt the shift in her aura immediately. She knew this place. Not just as a memory. As a scar.

The Archivist’s decree filled the hollow forest:

"A shadow’s oath. A vow without witness. Present truth... or vanish."

Naval frowned. "A vow? What’s it—"

"Shut up," Liliana hissed, sharper than he had ever heard.

Shapes moved in the mist. Pale silhouettes, cloaked in hooded veils, each with bows drawn. Their outlines wavered, but their presence was suffocating—like hunters carved from silence itself.

Roselia clutched her staff tighter. "Those aren’t illusions. They’re—"

"Her oath," Leon finished grimly.

Liliana’s eyes were locked on the figures, her lips pressed tight. Her body flickered faintly at the edges, her existence beginning to fray just as Roman’s and Milim’s had.

One of the veiled figures stepped forward. Though faceless, its posture mirrored hers perfectly, bow drawn at the same angle, the same stance.

The decree sharpened. "Your vow was unwritten. If none remember, it holds no law."

Her hands trembled. Just slightly. Enough for Leon to notice.

"Liliana..." he said quietly.

She didn’t answer. Her arrow tip lowered—just barely.

Naval cursed. "She’s fading—Leon, she’s going to—"

"Wait," Leon snapped.

Because he could feel it. The fractures inside him rattled, resonating faintly with her silence. This wasn’t just a trial of strength. It was a trial of what she refused to say.

The veiled hunters moved closer, bows raised. Each step they took, Liliana’s outline flickered harder.

Leon stepped forward, voice low but steady. "If you stay silent, the law will erase you. But if you speak—if you declare it—your truth will be written."

Her jaw clenched. Her lips moved soundlessly.

The faceless hunters surrounded her now, their arrows aimed not at her body, but her shadow. Her very place in the world.

Liliana’s breath caught. Her knuckles whitened on the bow.

Finally—she spoke, a whisper that still rang louder than the moonlight:

"I swore I would never miss. Not once. Not ever again. Because the last time I did—"

Her voice cracked, but the words poured out, sharp and breaking like glass.

"—my brother died."

The hunters froze.

The silver forest trembled.

And Liliana’s arrow blazed into being, her vow etched into it, burning with a memory the law itself could not erase. She loosed it with a scream—and the faceless hunters shattered into shards of silver mist.

The forest collapsed.

She was back in the city, knees hitting the ground, chest heaving. But she was solid. Remembered. Written.

Naval dropped beside her instantly, gripping her shoulder. "Liliana—"

She shoved him off, wiping her eyes with the back of her arm. "Don’t. Just... don’t."

The Archivist’s threads drifted, swaying like pendulums, before stretching outward again.

This time, they curled toward Roselia.

And Leon’s stomach sank.

Because unlike the others, Roselia didn’t look afraid. She looked... calm. Almost expectant.