Chapter 4: Whispers in the Walls

The Empress moved like a shadow through the ancient halls of the once-familiar palace, her fingers tracing the cold stone as if the walls themselves might remember her. And they did.

Each corridor she passed, each windowless corner, murmured to her—not in words, but in memory. The palace had not changed. But she had.

Seven days.

That’s what she had given them.

Seven days to confess.

Seven days to tear down the lies they'd built with gold and ink and fear.

Seven days before she would return with her vengeance fully unmasked.

But first, she needed answers.

Real ones.

Not from the thrones above—but from the ghosts beneath.

She descended into the underbelly of Vaelvarn—the buried levels of the castle no longer charted on official maps, where light feared to go and silence had settled like dust over centuries. The walls here weren’t just stone. They were bone and breath and betrayal. Long ago, this place had been a sanctuary. Then a prison. Now, it was neither.

Now, it was waiting.

She reached a door covered in rust and chains. A sigil glowed faintly beneath the grime—an eye carved in stone, surrounded by thorns.

“The Whispering Cellar,” Elira murmured.

Only three people in the kingdom had ever known its true name. Two of them were dead. The third was now a queen.

With a flick of her wrist, the chains untangled, writhing to the floor like serpents. Magic did not resist her here. In fact, it welcomed her.

The door opened with a groan like the sigh of a dying god.

Inside, the air was thicker, colder. The corridor twisted down in circles, like a serpent eating its own tail. Along the walls, faded paintings of old monarchs blinked slowly, their eyes tracking her as she passed. Each one had built a lie. Each one had buried a truth.

And the truth had teeth.

She reached the inner chamber at last—a circular vault of ancient stone, lined with mirrors that did not reflect her image.

The floor was etched with symbols older than language, and at the center sat a figure draped in rags. Skin the color of parchment. Hair like brittle straw. No eyes, only hollow sockets that pulsed faintly with blue light.

“Elira…” the figure croaked, voice like the rustle of a dying fire. “You have come.”

“You remember me,” she said, stepping into the lightless room.

The figure bowed its head. “We remember all children the world forgets.”

This was the Oracle Below.

They said she’d been imprisoned centuries ago, bound to the cellar after uttering truths that cost kings their heads. Kept alive by the magic she was cursed to speak. Fed by whispers in the walls.

“I seek the truth,” Elira said.

“And truth… seeks you.”

The walls shuddered.

The mirrors began to flicker—scenes flashing across their silvered surfaces: the day Elira was born, her mother’s hand trembling over her cradle; the night the fake prophecy was read aloud in the court; the moment Theron pressed his signet ring into the wax to seal her fate.

Each truth burned like a blade.

“You were framed,” the Oracle rasped. “But not only by Theron.”

Elira stiffened. “Then who?”

The mirrors rippled again.

She saw a woman—draped in emerald, gold-laced braids coiled like serpents, lips moving in the shadows behind the throne.

Queen Lysara.

“My stepmother,” Elira whispered.

“She knew of the prophecy’s power,” the Oracle said. “She twisted it. Rewrote it. The stars spoke of a child born with fire in her veins—but it did not speak of destruction. It spoke of change. She feared what you would become.”

“She turned my father against me.”

“Easily,” the Oracle said with a sickened smile. “Men like him only need a suggestion. The rest they do to themselves.”

Elira's hands clenched into fists. “She sits on the throne beside him while I wore ash and bled in the Wastes.”

“And now she fears your return,” the Oracle said.

Elira turned to the mirror that showed Lysara now—seated in her private chamber, whispering to a priest cloaked in crimson.

“She has already begun to plan,” the Oracle warned. “She will not let you speak again in the court.”

“I don’t need to speak,” Elira said coldly. “I need to expose.”

The Oracle tilted its head. “Then you must find the Echo Scroll.”

A chill swept through her.

That name—one from stories whispered by candlelight.

“It’s real?” she asked.

The Oracle’s face twisted. “Too real. It records all that is spoken in the royal court—true and false alike. But it was hidden generations ago, sealed beneath the Chapel of Silence. Only blood of royal line may unseal it.”

“And Lysara’s blood runs through my veins only in poisoned memory,” Elira said.

“No. But your mother’s does. And her voice still lingers in the stones.”

The walls began to murmur again.

And for the first time, Elira heard her.

Her mother.

Whispering.

Sweet child… Don’t trust the light. The shadows see clearer.

A tear slipped down Elira’s cheek before she could stop it. She hadn’t cried in years. Not when they threw her from the gates. Not when she’d buried her first friend under the cursed sands of the Wastes. Not when the flames of Elaren nearly devoured her soul.

But her mother’s voice broke something still raw and human inside.

“I’ll find the Echo Scroll,” she said, straightening. “And I’ll play it to the court before their own gods.”

The Oracle smiled—crooked and ancient.

“Then the lies will crumble. And what rises from the dust… will be your kingdom.”

Elira turned to go, but paused at the threshold.

“Will I win?” she asked.

The Oracle’s smile vanished.

“There are many futures,” it whispered. “But only one truth.”

Elira left without another word.

---

She surfaced from the undercellar in a forgotten chapel behind the west wing—dusty, sealed, untouched. Her magic had traced the echoes of her mother’s voice there. The stones here were old enough to remember royal footsteps. And hidden behind a false altar, beneath a slab marked by crescent moons, she found a staircase curling downward.

The Chapel of Silence.

Below it—her future.

The descent was steep, narrow, and lined with prayers in dead languages. No torch would light here. Her fingertips summoned flame—a violet orb that hovered before her like a will-o’-the-wisp.

At the bottom was a chamber covered in carvings of mouths. Thousands of them. Whispering, screaming, chanting.

In the center: a scroll sealed in black crystal.

She stepped toward it.

The magic resisted—screamed as she approached. It sensed her blood. It sensed her purpose.

But Elira did not falter.

She placed her hand on the crystal.

Blood surged from her palm into the seal.

The crystal cracked.

The scroll unrolled.

And the walls began to speak.

Voices layered over one another—King Theron condemning her; Lysara whispering to the scribes; priests editing the prophecy by candlelight.

Proof.