The Silence of Princess Almerys

The Kingdom Before The Silence

Before it was ever called an empire, Aeravalz was a kingdom of modest lands, green hills, and stone fortresses. Its people were hard and loyal. They worshipped the gods of Eluvemar as their ancestors had. And though they feared storms, famine, and dragons in the distant peaks, they believed the gods would always keep the world from true ruin. Yet in the shadows of King Halvar the Stout’s court, something stirred that no sword nor shield could stop: the power of prophecy.  

The Silent Princess

Princess Almerys was born on a night so still that not even wind moved the banners above Charendell. Some said Denebola, goddess of the moons, had stolen all sound to witness the girl’s first breath. As a child, Almerys was gentle, solemn, and distant. She spoke rarely, but when she did, her words were filled with truths no child should know: the names of soldiers who would fall in battles yet unfought, the secrets hidden in noble hearts and even dreams of futures too terrible to name.   King Halvar, a man of iron certainty, believed in stone walls and loyal blades, not in visions. He commanded his court to hush talk of his daughter’s strange gift. Prophecy, he declared, was the province of the gods, not of mortal girls. And so, Almerys was silenced by decree, kept in her chambers like a delicate relic. She watched the kingdom’s seasons pass from latticed windows, her eyes as pale as moonlight.  

The First Prophecy

At fifteen, on the night of the Festival of Moons, Almerys collapsed in the great hall, her body wracked with convulsions. Servants rushed to catch her as she fell. Lightning flickered behind her eyes, and when she spoke, her voice was thunder:
 

“Under the Triple Eclipse, a child will rise,
not of will, but of raw storm.
He shall walk in light not meant for skin,
and the world shall crack with every step.”

Then, her voice fell silent, and she would speak no more. King Halvar scoffed. “A child of storms? A world cracking beneath mortal feet?” He believed no such thing. He ordered the court to forget her words and locked his daughter deeper in the palace. Yet outside the palace walls, whispers grew. Some priests began to record her prophecy in secret scrolls, calling it The First Whisper of Almerys. Others feared she had cursed the kingdom. But for seventy-four years, nothing came of it. The world turned as it always had.  

The Night of the Triple Eclipse

Then the sky betrayed them. On the seventy-fourth anniversary of Almerys’ prophecy, the Triple Eclipse came. All three moons of Eluvemar: Nylu, Lina, and Ralo, crossed paths in perfect darkness. Stars went out, and tides surged in ways unseen for centuries. On that night, in a humble village along the east coast, a boy was born beneath a sky ripped by silent lightning. The midwives said his first cry smelled of ozone, the scent of storms caught between lightning and sky, and wind howled around the hut as though trying to steal him away.   He was unnamed. His parents were peasants, and neither survived the night. The villagers found the hut empty, save for a child glowing faintly under the eclipse’s dying light. No one knew it yet, but the Saint of Ashen Steps had come into the world.  

The Saint of Ashen Steps

At first, he was a quiet child. Wherever he was taken, storms would follow. Crops blackened in his wake. Animals refused to approach him. People whispered that he was blessed, or cursed, by the gods. But as he grew, the power inside him grew faster. By the age of four, earthquakes followed him. Clouds broke into spiralling auroras at his presence. Birds fell dead from the skies. His hair sparked as if fireflies lived in it, and when he wept, rain fell in sheets. The people began to worship him as a living Saint. Pilgrims came, offering prayers, jewels, and desperate hopes. They believed he was the child of Almerys’ prophecy, sent to save or condemn them. He could not speak for himself. He was just a boy, yet his existence was a wound upon the world.   At six, he began to walk. Pilgrims followed. Entire villages abandoned their homes to travel in his wake. By seven, he could not be stopped. No walls held him. No chains could bind him. When an army tried to intercept him, they were reduced to ash by a wall of lightning that split the ground. He never chose to destroy. But with every step, the continent tore a little further. Mountains cracked. Leylines bent like reeds in wind. The moons burned red in the sky. Fires started in places untouched by flame. The Empire’s historians would later call it: The Ashen March.   By the time he was eight years old, he looked nearly nineteen as the magic warped his body, racing time forward as though the world was trying to burn him out before he could consume everything. And as he was walking across Rhycullun, leaving ruin in his steps. Three kingdoms fell, cities turned to glass, rivers boiled away, and entire cultures vanished under storms or quakes. Aeravalz, still a confederation of scattered rulers at that time, realised it faced annihilation. Thus began the first true unity of the Aeravalz bloodlines: a desperate attempt to save what was left.  

The Siege of the Saint

By the eighth year of the boy’s life, all Rhycullun trembled at his passing. Mountains crumbled. Moons wept red tears into the seas. Even the gods themselves, so worshipped in earlier ages, remained silent. It was then that the High Lords of Aeravalz met under the black banners of despair. For all their rivalries, they agreed upon one truth:   “If the Saint walks unchecked, there will be no world left to rule.”   A coalition rallied every legion and every mage who still remained loyal to mortal rule. Together, they forged weapons of metal etched with magic runes, designed to amplify their power. For months, they followed the Saint’s path, abandoning cities in calculated retreats, sacrificing ground to buy precious time as they gathered their strength. The final stand came near the charred remnants of what had been Avimería, once a kingdom of poets and sky-towers, now reduced to molten glass and skeletal spires. The Saint stood alone on a plateau of smoking obsidian. His eyes glowed like dying suns. The winds screamed around him. The followers who once worshipped him lay scattered, reduced to cinders in a blast of power he hadn’t meant to unleash.   The coalition encircled him with armies and wards, chanting prayers to gods who would not answer. Some tried to reason with him. Others tried to slay him. Nothing worked. At the end, it took a group of sorcerer-generals willing to sacrifice themselves. They hurled every ounce of their life force into a single binding spell, fueled by the enchanted metal and ancient invocations older than the gods themselves. When the smoke cleared, the Saint was gone.  

The Ember Cradle

Beneath Charendell Citadel, the fortress-capital destined to become the heart of the Aeravalz Empire, they constructed the Ember Cradle: a prison wrought of metal, layered with countless runic enchantments. Within its walls, no outside magic could endure. Time crawled, thick and sluggish, and the air pressed down like drowning silence. Into this vault they lowered the Saint, shackled in chains forged from the same enchanted metal. As the doors sealed shut, he uttered not a word. He only watched them, eyes blazing like burning stars.  

The Death of Princess Almerys

As the final lock slammed shut upon the Saint’s prison, a cold hush swept the citadel. Nobles wept. Soldiers fell silent. Then a voice whispered: “This was not the war I saw.”   It was Princess Almerys, now an old woman, her hair white as snow, who had barely spoken a single word in seventy-four years since her first prophecy. She rose from her sickbed, skin translucent and eyes blazing with sorrow. She seemed hardly mortal, half-shadow, half-light. Those present said they felt the weight of destiny in the chamber, pressing their hearts like stone. Almerys spoke her Final Prophecy:  

“This was not the war I saw.
The true war comes still,
born of magic, fed by belief,
and ending not in ash, but in silence.
If you love this world,
you must silence the source.”

 

The Last Whisper

     

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The story continues in the article about The Order of Tempered Fate