The castle was silent.
The kind of silence that wasn't peaceful—
—but ominous.
Arianna sat by the fire in their private chambers, absently twirling the ring Damien had placed on her finger the night they were crowned.
Outside the thick obsidian windows, the skies of the Underworld churned, heavy with storms.
Damien was pacing. His movements were restless, predatory. The same man who had once faced his father without flinching now seemed…troubled.
"You feel it too," Arianna said quietly.
Damien stopped, his silver eyes shadowed.
"Something's coming," he said. "Something worse than Lucifer."
Arianna frowned, setting the ring aside. "Worse than the King of Hell himself?"
Damien didn't smile.
"No throne stays empty in the Underworld. Something always rises to fill it."
He crossed to her, sinking onto the rug in front of her, resting his forehead lightly against her knee. His touch was desperate, seeking.
"Whatever it is," he murmured, "we have to face it together."
Arianna slid her fingers into his hair, cradling his head.
"Always," she whispered.
But in the deepest corners of the Underworld, beneath the rivers of fire, beneath the fields of bone—something had awakened.
Something old.
Something that had once even Lucifer had feared.
—
##The Arrival of the Forgotten Queen##
The first sign came with the dreams.
Arianna woke gasping, night after night, drenched in sweat, clawing at the sheets.
Visions of a woman—
a woman with silver hair and eyes like burning coals—
draped in black veils, her voice like knives scraping across glass—
whispering Arianna's name.
Damien woke with her, holding her, whispering reassurances into her hair. But even he couldn't banish the cold that lingered after the nightmares faded.
And then one night—
the sky broke open.
Arianna and Damien rushed to the battlements just in time to see the world fracture.
A tear, a rift of endless blackness, opened above the distant mountains.
From it, figures poured—screaming wraiths, monstrous beasts, things even the oldest generals didn't recognize.
And at their head—
the Forgotten Queen.
The woman from Arianna's dreams.
Draped in tattered robes, a crown of broken thorns on her brow.
Her voice rolled across the land like the coming of winter.
"I have come for my throne," she said, smiling with teeth like razors. "And for the girl who stole what was mine."
Arianna felt the blood drain from her face.
She had no idea what the Forgotten Queen meant.
But Damien—Damien stiffened at her side, his hand tightening painfully around the hilt of his sword.
"You know her," Arianna whispered.
Damien's face was grim.
"She was sealed away centuries ago," he said. "By Lucifer. By all of Hell. She wasn't meant to return."
Arianna's heart pounded.
"But why me?" she asked.
Damien turned to her, his silver gaze haunted.
"Because, Arianna," he said softly, "there's something inside you. Something you were never supposed to awaken."
Arianna staggered back a step, shaking her head.
"No," she whispered. "I'm not— I'm not like them—"
Damien caught her hands, pressing them to his heart.
"You're still you," he said fiercely. "Whatever she wants from you—you are still mine."
Arianna gripped him back just as hard.
But deep inside, something shifted.
Some part of her—small, hidden, ancient—stirred.
And it whispered:
"Welcome home."
—
##The Challenge##
The Forgotten Queen didn't send armies first.
She sent a message.
A parchment nailed to the gates of the castle, written in black blood:
"Give me the girl, and I will spare your kingdom.
Refuse, and watch everything you love burn."
Damien tore the parchment down, his hands trembling with barely restrained fury.
"There will be no surrender," he said.
He called a council of the highest generals.
The castle buzzed with tension—creatures and commanders gathering, everyone uneasy, whispering of the dark magic that radiated from the rift.
Arianna stood silently by Damien's throne, the crown heavy on her brow.
Everyone was looking to her now—not just as a queen, but as the reason for the war.
Damien spoke, voice hard and unyielding.
"We fight. We defend what we have built. We protect our queen."
The generals roared their agreement.
But Arianna's heart pounded in her chest.
Because deep down, a small, terrible truth was beginning to bloom.
What if this war wasn't about Damien's kingdom?
What if it wasn't even about the Forgotten Queen's revenge?
What if it was about Arianna herself?
About the darkness waking inside her?
And what if—when the final battle came—the real enemy wasn't the Forgotten Queen?
What if it was Arianna?
—