A Memory Unmerciful

The masses discriminate and persecute the remnants of their old oppressors; fueled by memories that are long and unmerciful.

Kael read those words in the crown's archive — written by the last king himself, in the final days before the fall. A prophecy and an epitaph, carved into the record of a dynasty that knew exactly how it would end.

What the last king hadn't predicted was Kael.

Standing in the ruins of the Verdant Court — he'd made the journey by night, guided by the crown's perfect memory of a road that had been erased from every map — Kael placed his hand on the stump of the hanging tree. The wood was dead, bleached white by decades of sun and rain. But beneath the bark, beneath the dead cambium, he felt it.

A heartbeat.

The tree was waiting. The kingdom was waiting. Not for a conqueror or an avenger, but for something the Twelve Provinces had spent fifty years trying to make impossible.

A prince who remembered. And chose, against all reason and all probability, to forgive.

Kael closed his eyes. The crown hummed on his head. And somewhere deep in the root system of the ancient tree, sap began to flow.