The queen lingered in silence for a while, her thoughts clearly burdened by matters she had not yet chosen to share. Ian waited, uncertain whether to speak or remain quiet, until finally she rose from her seat with sudden resolve. She turned to him and spoke firmly, her voice carrying the weight of command though softened by a trace of care. She instructed him to remain within the chamber, to touch nothing and to wait for her return no matter how long it took. There was no further explanation, no hint of what awaited her beyond the door, only the unmistakable authority of someone who had decided quickly and could not be persuaded otherwise. Before he could question her, she moved, her robes flowing in her wake, and vanished beyond the threshold. The door closed and he was left alone with only the quiet crackle of the fire for company. The source of this content ɪs novel·fiɾe·net
Ian stood still for a long moment, staring at the place where she had just been. At last, he pulled a breath and reached for one of the things of his own world he had left. He slipped his phone from his pocket and pressed his thumb against the screen. The familiar glow answered him, but the absence of reception was immediate and crushing. Not a single bar of signal. No message, no notification, no connection to the life he once knew. Ever since he had stepped foot into this world, the device had been nothing more than a relic of what he had lost, a reminder that no bridge existed between the place he had come from and the one he now inhabited.
Still, it was not entirely useless. Ian tapped into the gallery, and a flood of memories appeared at his fingertips. Images, captured moments frozen in digital frames, carried him back to the mundane days he had never imagined he would miss. Among them were the countless selfies he had taken with the woman he had always believed to be his grandmother. Her wrinkled smile, her steady presence, her warmth in every photograph, these had been sources of comfort in his ordinary life, but now, staring at them, they carried a far greater weight.
He swallowed, his chest tightening as the realization deepened once more. His great-grandmother, the woman who had quietly guided his family and lived long enough to become a constant in his childhood, had once been an empress here. A ruler. A sovereign bound to the very throne he was now being told might one day be his. The thought was staggering. He lifted one of the pictures closer to his face, brushing his thumb lightly across the screen as though by doing so he could reach through to her.
"So, great-grandma," he whispered, his voice low, almost a confession spoken to no one but the still air, "you were a powerful empress here, huh? You held all of this once, and now I’m standing in the shadow of it." He gave a faint, humorless laugh, shaking his head at the absurdity of it all. "I can’t even blame you for the mess I’ve stumbled into. You did what you had to do, and now it seems I’ve inherited the consequences, whether I like it or not."
The words carried a strange mixture of affection and resignation. He paused, looking at her smiling face one more time. "I don’t want to be an emperor," he admitted softly. "I just want to be me. I just want my own life back, the simple one I left behind. But..." He let the thought trail off, his eyes lingering on her image with something like surrender. "But destiny arrives all the same, doesn’t it?"
He pressed his lips against the cold glass, kissing the photograph as though it were her cheek. For a moment he closed his eyes, allowing the contact to anchor him, to give him strength. When he lowered the phone again, the weight of the world had not vanished, but the act left him with a fragile comfort, a reminder that even across the vast gulf of time and space, he was not entirely alone.
He leaned back in the chair, the phone resting in his hand, and allowed his thoughts to wander.
After a while, the silence of the chamber was broken by the faint stir of parchment, the same mysterious ripple of symbols etching themselves upon fresh sheets that had been left upon the queen’s table. Ian watched with wary curiosity as not one, but two more messages took form before his eyes, the letters flowing across the surface as though guided by invisible hands. He leaned closer, trying once again to make sense of the markings, but the words were foreign to him, the script curving and weaving in ways his mind could not untangle. He sighed and leaned back, deciding there was little point in straining to understand. The queen had explained enough already, and she would interpret them once she returned.
The queen swept back into the room, her presence commanding as ever, her expression sharpened by the burden of what she had just learned. She crossed to the table without delay and bent over the sheets, her eyes scanning the freshly written words with careful precision. Ian watched her silently, his heart drumming with unspoken questions. When she finally lifted her gaze to him, there was no hesitation in her voice.
"The responses have come," she said. "The remaining queens have spoken, and their wishes match the others. They will not delay. Soon they will be on their way here, the meeting is to be held in this kingdom."