THE KINGDOM BENEATH HER SKIN

THE GRAFTING OF THE KING

The city of Kareth Ravon woke before the sun and bells could be heard ringing through the ash dusted streets, counting the hours not with joy, but with tension because each chime a reminder: that the coronation was near. And with it, the Grafting.

By midmorning, the great square was overflowing. People crammed shoulder to shoulder yet no one moved far. All eyes remained fixed on the blacksteel Palace Gates, their surface etched with relics like splintered armour and swords with gold handles. Reminder of old kings.

The Grafting was never a celebration. It was a war against the body and mind, and the body and mind rarely won.

From his tower above the courtyard, High Scribe Ellion Thorne dipped his pen and began to write the first line of the new chronicle:

"On the Day of Black Flame, under the Watch of the Twin Moons, the heir of Kareth Ravon will ascend the throne."

He paused and looked down at the boy below.

Calyon Vel Ravon, now eighteen, stood in the sacred white robes of inheritance. He was tall for his age, dark haired and hollow cheeked, his expression carved into perfect stillness. But Ellion had seen him tremble last night. He’d been there when the boy's screams echoed through the altar chamber as the priests fed him the molten wine, a brew made from oil, iron shavings, and a thread of ancestor’s blood.

You had to bleed for the metal before it bled for you.

“Is he afraid?” someone whispered beside Ellion.

“Only fools aren't,” he muttered.

Below, the crowd hushed as the Priests who would lead the coronation entered. They were robed in red silk and humming songs of the spirits. They carried between them the Crucible, a sealed vessel glowing faintly through the slits, like some great beast was sleeping inside.

But it was no beast. It was the living metal of the royal blood line passed from king to king for six generations. It was half steel and half spirit, fed by legacy and bound by rite.

Once, it had belonged to Calyon’s father. And his father's father. Before the Rebellion. Before the Whitewoods ran red.

Calyon had watched the metal ripped from his father’s chest after death, the armor hissing as it rejected the corpse and slithered back into the Arx crucible. No one could understand why the crubicle rejected him so fiercely.

One of the priests stepped forward, his voice booming over the square.

“Let all who gather bear witness: today the heir bleeds, and the kingdom breathes anew.”

Then came the blade.

Ellion could barely watch.

A ceremonial dagger, short and wide, was pressed against Calyon’s chest. Not to kill but to open. Blood flowed fast, down his ribs, soaked into his robes. He did not scream. The boy just stared ahead with his lips turning pale already.

Then the Arx Crucible opened and the metal came alive. The crowd gasped mostly children experiencing the coronation for the first time but old men who had seen it for a few generation of kings watched solemnly.

The Crubicle rose in tendrils, hovering above the wound on Clayon's Chest. Then, with a sound like thunder drawn through bone, it struck.

The first tendril pierced his chest.

The second curled around his spine.

The third slithered under his jaw like a hand.

The crowd gasped as Calyon arched backward, feet lifting from the stone,his body convulsing. The Crubicle didn’t sit on top of his skin, it invaded it, wrapping around nerves,veins and cells replacing what once was human.

The Grafting had begun.

Ellion wrote furiously:

"The metal entered him like a curse, threading through his bones and his heart. The boy has become a man. The heir is also a weapon."

Down below, Calyon dropped to his knees. His eyes snapped open and it was no longer blue but grey like clouds with rain in them. His skin now shimmered with a faint iron sheen. And the wound on his chest? Gone. Sealed with a scar shaped like the ancient crown: seven-pointed, jagged, and cruel.

The priests fell to their knees and the crowd followed suit.

“All hail the Living steel.”

And the crowd responded:

“All hail Calyon of Kareth Ravon.”

It was done, but the king was not yet whole. As the sun reached its peak, and everyone had dispersed a different kind of silence swept the courtyard. Not reverent. Uneasy.

Because they all knew what came next.

Commander Serik, the commander of the Blackgurad stepped forward and unsheathed his ceremonial blade. It was three feet lonng and old. He looked to the king. “Your Majesty. The Trial.”

Calyon nodded.

A prisoner was brought forward. One of the rebel spies from the eastern front. Thin, bruised and emaciated from the lack of food and water. He had not seen the outside world for a year and now his eyes bulged with terror looking at Clayon on the throne.

“Your Majesty must prove command of the armor,” the Commander said.

Calyon stared at the prisoner and hesitated just for a moment and before raising his right arm.

Nothing happened.

The metal was still, dormant.

Everyone was holding their breaths. If Clayon couldn't command the Crucible, he could meet the fate of his father or worse. And so early.

Calyon closed his eyes, clenched his jaw and raised his right arm again m

Ellion leaned forward from the tower, holding his breath.

And then ,click. A sharp sound, like locks snapping open beneath his skin.

The Crubicle has responded.

Armor unfolded from beneath his flesh, walking across his forearm and finally taking the shape of a fanged gauntlet. The blade fell from the Captain’s hand and the gauntlet caught it.

The king turned to the prisoner and without a word, he drove the blade into the traitor’s chest.

A clean kill.

The courtyard was silent for a moment then erupted in applause.

Ellion wrote:

"The crown choose and the metal obeyed. Thus was born the last king of Ravon."

Calyon stepped back from the body, the blade steaming in his grip. Then, slowly, the armor retreated plate by plate folding back under the skin, disappearing like it had never been there. Only a faint shimmer remained.

The applause began again. This time it was like, but Ellion did not move.He was still staring at the boy. Still thinking of the last man to wield that blade.

King Vallan Vel Ravon.

Calyon’s father.

The last wearer of the Arx Crucible.

They’d tried to hide the truth in the official scripts and said he fell in battle at the Siege of Whitewood, blade in hand, loyal to the end.

But Ellion had been there and he had seen the truth.

It had taken four days for the king to die, not from blade or poison but because the armor rejected him.

It started with tremors, followed by the bleeding and then the screaming.

The living metal began to boil beneath his skin, trying to force its way out. It carved its way through his chest, back into the air, and returned itself to the Arx. The Crubicle was unforgiving and it showed itself Incase anyone forgot.

Some said it was because Vallan wavered during the rebellion. Others whispered that he sought to bend the metal to his will, instead of serving it. But all those who witnessed of the manner of his death knew the Crubicle could never be worn by the unworthy. It did not tolerate such.

Ellion’s gaze shifted downward, to the Arx itself.

The massive vessel was steaming faintly. Its body was formed by a blackened alloy or so the legends claimed. Bound in rings of metal that was etched by the first forger on earth. It was said to pulse when a true heir approached and shriek when pretenders tried to open it.

No king forged the Crucible.

The Crucible forged kings.

There were stories that in the old age, the metal came not from the earth, but from the sky, carried in burning stones. That the Crucible was shaped from the heart of one such fallen star, then fed with blood until it awoke.

No one dared test it now except the heirs

And only once. Once was enough.

Ellion looked again at Calyon.

He stood tall, silver still burning faint beneath his skin, a boy no longer. And yet, behind the calm… Ellion swore he saw the same look Vallan wore in those final hours.

Pain… masked as purpose.

But something more than that unsettled him. When Calyon looked up at the tower, at Ellion, his eyes didn’t glow with pride or power.

They glowed with hunger,like the boy had vanished and only the metal remained.

WHERE STARS DO NOT BELONG

SYRA’S POV

“Syra!”

My little brother’s voice crashed through my dream like a rock into still water.

“SYRA!”

I groaned, turning onto my side. My shoulder met the wall cold against warm skin and I pulled the wool tighter around my chest. “Gods take you, Arren,” I muttered, my voice cracked from sleep.

Still half-drowned in the dream.

It was always the same. The stars, whispering my name. No sky. No clouds. Just light endless, blinding and somehow alive. I floated inside it, weightless in a place I somehow knew was a dying supernova. All around me, the stars pulsed with sounds.

I didn’t know what it meant. But by the gods, it was beautiful…..and terrifying.

I opened my eyes and saw cracked and dusty ceiling above me. A spider had woven it's web at the corner and I could smell the smoke from the hearth downstairs drifted up through the slats.

My life was here. In