A Prince in Chains
Ashok had never imagined his life would come to this. He was once the heir to the Dravidian Throne. A warrior-prince, shoulders broad and muscled beneath layers of ceremonial gold-plated armor inlaid with emerald and ruby. His skin was the deep bronze of sunlit teakwood, and his long black dreadlocks were always tied with bands of silk in the royal colors: midnight blue and copper. Even now, chained and dirtied, he still wore his ceremonial sash, its frayed edges a bitter reminder of the life he'd lost.
The attack had been sudden. A moonless night, screams ripping through the palace walls, and a mercenary army led by pale-skinned invaders from across the sea. Asheem, the capital of his kingdom, burned from its rooftops as Ashok was dragged from his chambers. That was weeks ago—or was it months? Time had blurred in the darkness of the dungeons and the endless procession of interrogation chambers.
The Tale of the Obsidian Crown
The cavern in which Ashok now found himself was deep beneath the once great city of Asheem. This ancient, forbidden space was carved by his ancestors—in both war and desperation—when the first whispers of the Obsidian Crown emerged in the legends of men. The Crown was no mere artifact; it was said to be a fragment of an older world, a prison for a deity destroyed during the ending of an age. Its power, still untamed, had shaped and cursed the Dravidian line ever since their ancestor, the Mad King Dhiren, first wore it into battle.
"Do you really think your defiance matters?" the silver-haired man sneered, yanking Ashok's head back to meet his gaze. His eyes were voids, blacker than the deepest ocean chasms. "You cling to dying notions of honor and kingdom, but look around you, child. The world is ash and shadow, and you are but a flicker away from nothing."
Ashok smiled then—a slow, defiant grin that made his teeth gleam white against his dirt-smeared face. "If you think me a flicker, you don't know the fire that kindles within me." His words were steady, but his heart thundered. His only edge now was his ancestors’ lessons, whispered from father to son over centuries of clandestine rituals. He would need to remember every word, every movement, if he was to survive what lay ahead.
The First Rift
Without warning, the cavern trembled. Dust fell from the jagged ceiling, and the glyph-patterned floor around them pulsed with light. It began slowly, a faint hum that sent vibrations through Ashok's knees, but the intensity grew until the ground beneath him seemed to twist like a living thing. The silver-haired man stumbled, his blade leaving Ashok's neck just as the first fissure ripped through the floor.
Ashok seized the moment, launching himself toward a nearby pillar. His fingers, calloused and strong from years of combat training, gripped the stone as he ripped himself free from the chains at his wrists. The man barked words of a language Ashok had never heard, and the torchlight dimmed, giving way to bizarre, shifting shadows that screamed as they crawled toward the prince. But Ashok acted on instinct; he tore the obsidian amulet from his neck and slammed it against the nearest glyph, igniting a scream not of this world.
The Unseen Choice
The cavern erupted in chaos. The silver-haired man lunged, his robes flaring like dark wings, but Ashok's movements were fluid, precise—he rolled to the side and darted to the edge of the circle of glyphs. The voices of his ancestors surged in his mind. "Destroy it, and the power will fade. Speak the words, and you will wield a god."
For a moment, everything froze: the shadows halted their advance, the man was poised mid-strike, and even the writhing fissures of the earth seemed to still. The choice was his, and no one else’s. Betray his kingdom’s history, or risk becoming a monster like his ancestors before him. Ashok grit his teeth, the fire in his soul rising—and made his choice.
Epilogue
Months later, storytellers across the tattered remnants of the Dravidian Kingdom would speak of the day the sky broke open and light, brighter than the midday sun, consumed the fallen city of Asheem. Ancient evil had been vanquished, they said, and with it, a prince who had been willing to sacrifice himself for his people.
But in the distant north, where the snow never melted, villagers whispered of a dark figure that traversed the icebound forests in silence. He wore a tattered royal sash of midnight blue and copper, and his eyes, though haunted, burned with an inner light that could never be extinguished.
The Obsidian Crown was no more… but its legacy, as it seemed, was far from over.
Genre: Dark Fantasy
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