Blood-Crowned Queen

Selene was now sprawled across the ground, tangled plant life rising up around her like the gnarled fingers of restless phantoms. Billowing smoke danced through the air wrapping itself around charred remains of what had been a living, breathing forest. The ground burned beneath her hands—hot and rough, and still marked by flames that had spread across the land. With every breath, stabbing vibrations coursed through her lung tissue; she could taste the bitter, metallic bite of blood on her tongue.

Blinking hard to clear away the haze in her mind, she tried to sit up, gazing at the dark branches above that used to be lush and green. Now they were only memories of life, shards blackened and broken. She groaned and struggled to sit up, her body protesting every movement — I was bruised and battered but I was alive.

She had the feeling that she must have looked somewhat like a raccoon, with her sunburned skin smeared with soot and the dried blood from cuts on the way. Her long hair, once floating behind her like a stream of sapphires when the sun touched it, was now a tangle of things draped across her shoulders. At that moment, she felt exposed, vulnerable — naked and shivering in the cold air of this smoke-filled room.

And that’s when she saw it.

The mark.

Branded into her wrist like a terrible reminder — the dark sigil of a raven, seared in blackened flame. It was not simply drawn or painted; it was seared into her flesh, a brand representing her house… tainted and foul.

She traced the mark with trembling fingers. This wasn’t just a nightmare. It was real, and it was signed with Kael’s fingerprints.

(The same Kael who had once put his mouth to her ear and whispered the sweet nothings of her own heart into her head; who blew her dreams up so much they made the stars pass by her, bowing.) Kael had stolen her heart with lies, using the same soft lips that had once said her name to carve her open.

Images of his betrayal cut through her thoughts like shards of glass: his hand holding the hilt of his sword, his voice injected with feigned remorse, the brilliant scarlet of the royal cloak, a breath of hesitation, blades sweeping like hair, and the carnage that would come next; screams, flames, the palace falling down around them and the council chamber awash with blood.

She had lost her crown.

Her people…

Fists balled at her sides, she sunk her nails in the flesh of her palm until she felt the burn of blood pooling there. “I am not going to die here,” she hissed, her voice hoarse but defiant. “They will beg for mercy,” I’ll ensure of them.

In that silence, something nudged nearby. A rustle in the trees — was there a shadow lurking, watching her?

Selene jerked herself to her feet.

Every step was agonizing, but pain was evidence that she was still alive. Somewhere beyond this wasteland, her name still echoed. Somewhere, rumors hissed like little snakes, murmuring the tale of the flame-born queen who had become story—fortunes and fates.

She was just about to give them cause to be frightened.

She started walking — barefoot over the ash, driven by a thirst for vengeance, shrouded with wrath.

Two nights later, the woods cursed her, embrace the outside world.

She had emerged on the outskirts of the Vale of Mourning, wearing a tattered wolf pelt she filched from a hunter’s lost camp. She was hungry, but her insides were hollow and her movement was that of a wraith, silent and unseen. Her eyes, which had always been gentle and kind, glittered like pots of dark pebbles.

People had found her enchanting, always. Ethereal. She looked like her mother — the idolized queen who had died in shackles, her heart shattered by treason. But Selene was no longer gentle as a word. Her beauty was shaped by pain. She was no longer the sweet darling of the empire.

She was the last remnant of a fallen legacy.

A distant tavern across the way flickered with whispered firelight, made from bonewood and iron, a testament to the living. First she went to the stables, rummaging through an unattended pack to steal what food she could—dried meat, a flask of something she hoped was wine, and a hooded cloak to hide her identity.

When ready, she crept into the tavern.

The thrumming room lit up when she walked in.

And inside were soldiers, mercenaries, thieves — men who flourished in a world of danger and betrayal. They spent their hours numbing themselves with drinking, under the banners of a king who had robbed her of everything.

Their eyes held upon her, carving her open as they delivered daggers. They saw her trembling frame, debris-covered face, flame ignited in her eyes, and they confused it with fragility.

One of them got up from his seat.

He was tall and obviously drunk and heavily armed.

Selene turned to face him, allowing her eyes to linger on his lascivious grin. He reached out, his hand closing on her wrist. “Lost, little bird?”

She allowed him to touch her.

Let him push the sleeve of her cloak up.

She even let him look at the mark of the raven.

And then, a smile creased her lips.

And she twisted his wrist with such force, it cracked across the entire tavern.

He screamed in agony, and chaos broke out around her. Others sprinted forward, but Selene was quicker. A dagger reached one man’s throat and her foot, another man’s knee. Blood spattered on the walls.

She left the last one breathless.

“Say it,” she ordered, her voice silky but full of poison, “Selene Raventhorne isn’t dead.”

The man’s face blanched. “Y-You died—”

“Did I?”

With that she disappeared into the night.

To the north, Kael Dravien watched the city of Varos from his balcony. The cold wind tousled his hair, and he clutched the iron railing like a lifeline. Beneath him, the square blazed with light and dubious celebration — peasants writhed for the coinage, nobles raised cups to drink to a reality constructed of lies.

His lies.

Winning the kingdom had cost a heavy price, too—Selene’s death hung over him like a shroud of ash.

He never said her name aloud. Not in his war councils. Not even to his baroness queen from the north, a woman who scarcely registered in his memories anymore. Not to the daughter he had borne her, this fragile child who was nothing of the girl that had once twirled carefree through his dreams.

The specter of Selene haunted the corners of his mind.

Nights were filled with tossing and turning where he saw her face — bloodied, screaming, extending her arms through flames.

Other nights her laughter hung with warmth, how she’d whisper his name as if it were some secret name reserved only for him, how he’d broken her heart with the sword he told her had been made to protect her.

He had once loved her.

And then he had ruined her.

He believed it would stop with her.

But now the ravens circled again.

Selene walked through familiar paths in cliffs and kneecaps and ruins where time felt arrested. The blessed lands greeted her like an old friend—well known, treacherous, and alive.

She heard the winds, and they whispered her name, stalling sentences that had not breath in them.

She contacted the Temple of Bone just as the sun sank below the horizon.

It was once a hallowed space, now overgrown with creeping vines and drifting silence. Her fingers traced ancient carvings at the top of the altar: She Who Rises in Flame.

Blood was leaking from her palm onto the cold stones. The scar on her wrist throbbed like a heartbeat.

The shadows around her began to stir as though waking from a deep sleep.

Old gods resided beneath the earth.

A voice echoed in her, one that had been there before there had been words.

“Daughter of flames … Mother of vengeance … The blood moon rises.”

She lowered her head, bracing herself. “I am ready.”

Not for forgiveness. Not for mercy.

But for the coming war.

Come the end of winter, the name Selene Raventhorne had grown from hushed murmurs into a cacophony of cries. It was prayer, curse and even death sentence at once.

She glided like fog across the empire, overthrowing warlords and scorching their banners. No matter the realm — wherever the Raven Queen strolled, tyrants stumbled, ancient forces stirred. They talked of monsters bending to her will, witches worshiping her shadow, and a mute girl that walked at her side, bearing the frightful sign of the blood moon in her eyes.

Kael heard every tale.

And with each story, he felt his own life force slipping away.

His advisors urged action. His men hunted shadows.

But there was no weapon that could touch her.

No flame compared to the blaze within her.

Then one fateful night, she approached him.

Not as a dream. Not as a legend.

But in the flesh.

The masquerade was already in full swing when she entered the palace.

Hiding behind a raven mask, she adorned her body with an ensemble spun from dark flames and fine silk laced with the bones of the fallen. Her anger barely kept in check, Selene plowed through her foes. The hall shimmered with revels, jewels sparkling in the light — and Kael, clad in the crown of her father’s gold, sat higher than them all.

She stopped breathing at the sight of him.

He was different—hardened. The boy she had loved was gone — but so was the girl she had once been.

But he also missed the man he could have become.

Their gazes met from opposite ends of the packed room.

His expression transformed, the shock coursing through him as one of the wine glasses fell from his hand.

Selene didn’t pause.

She sailed through the ballroom like a storm on the way. Folks moved aside, a hush descended on the crowd.

When she arrived at the arboreal dais, she paused.

In a graceful show of defiance, she removed her mask.

Kael’s world was once again blown apart.

“Selene…”

She tilted her head, a little smile on her face. “Hello, my king.”

It was as though, entranced in some way, he descended from the throne. “You’re alive—”

“I’ve always been,” she answered quietly, “You just stopped looking for me.”

He got close to her, desperation in his eyes. “I thought you were gone.”

“You made sure of that.”

She took something from her cloak and flung it at his feet.

It rattled on the cool marble — a ring, her mother’s ornament, ripped from the debris of her grave.

Kael paled at the sight.

Music came to a jarring halt.

“I warned you once,” she said, her voice slicing like a blade, “that if you ever betrayed me, I would come for your crown.”

From one hand, she pulled a dagger.

The hall erupted into chaos.

But Kael stood frozen.

He stared at her, half grief and half astonishment.

“Selene… what did you become?”

Her eyes blazed with resolve, the blade pointed at his throat.

“What you made me.”

Outside, the city was ablaze.

And above it all, the blood moon floated in the sky.

Mist curled around Selene’s boots like frozen fingers, as if it were alive, tightening around her ankles with every careful step she took deeper into land that no map would ever know. This was not the whispering peace of the woods back home in Raventhorne. These trees were different. They reached up, sharp and sinister, gnarled fingers frozen in the act of reaching, as though the very ground sought to halt her in her tracks but could only try to hold onto her and lost.

It was one of those pregnant moments that signaled a storm in the distance. It smelled like ash mixed with ancient things, maybe blood or maybe just the echoes of memories long dead. The familiar sounds and sights of the living world faded away behind her, drowned in a deafening silence that reverberated through the Dead lands. In front, shadows stirred, then folded into a more substantial shape.

What appeared had always perhaps lingered just beneath the veil of fog — a tall figure cloaked in a robe of swi