Rest and I parted ways years ago.

When I close my eyes, sleep rarely finds me.

I lie awake while the world sleeps.

Night stretches long and thin, an endless corridor of quiet hours. Day arrives without meaning. Life feels like one long, disjointed dream—light and dark blurring together until time itself feels diluted.

I move through it all half-present—breathing, speaking, ruling—

But not fully alive.

Something within me has gone quiet.

And I do not know why.

There is no panic in it. No torment.

Only stillness.

A quiet so deep it feels unnatural.

I do not lie awake from fear. Nor from worry. Nor from the burden of rule.

No. It’s something else. Something deeper.

I lie awake because something in me refuses to submit.

The night holds me in its grip—silent, endless, watching. The fire that once raged in my chest has dwindled to embers, and I lie there feeling the cold where heat used to reside.

Day bleeds into night. Night into day. And I drift between them like a ghost in my own kingdom.

Something in me has withdrawn.

Not dead.

But distant.

I searched for explanations. I searched every tome, every page, and every prophecy. I consulted the seers. Listened to whispers disguised as wisdom.

But the answers always eluded me—each prophecy a riddle, each story insensible, each vision fading before I’m able to grasp its meaning.

Some said my spirit wandered too far from the realm. Some said I transcended the need for the flame. Others claimed God had turned His face from me.

None could tell me why the raging fire within me had dimmed to embers.

For years I endured it, half-alive in the waking world, half-dead in the dream.

Until one evening, whether while asleep or awake I cannot be certain, it came.

Not a whisper.

A command.

Kings never die.

 It did not drift gently into my mind. It struck—hard and unyielding, like iron against bone.

In that moment, something in my soul flickered. Something that had lain dormant for so long, I’d almost forgotten it existed.

And my eyes opened.

I was no longer in my chamber.

I was seated upon a throne.

But there was no splendor here.

Only ruin.

The great hall, a hollow echo of its former glory, stretched before me in decay—pillars cracked, banners reduced to hanging threads, stone fractured and crumbling. Dust blanketed the floor like ash, and the silence pressed in on me, suffocating.

The throne beneath me groaned under my weight, old wood and rusted iron protesting the return of something it had not borne in years.

My robes were tattered, worn with age, their fabric fraying at the edges.

At my feet lay my crown.

Shattered.

Corroded.

Neglected.

It is nothing more than a relic now. A mockery. A memory of an empty promise from the past.

In its broken reflection, I see the truth of what I have become.

For a long moment, I did not move.

I studied it.

Time has claimed my crown.

A fire ignited in my chest, a heat so fierce it rushed through my veins like molten iron. I felt it surge inside me, awakening parts of me that had long since grown cold.

Then I stood.

The throne groaned beneath the shift of my weight, as if surprised to remember it still bore a king.

It splintered as I stepped forward.

The hall shifted. Stone cracked. Dust fell in slow curtains from the rafters. The silence trembled.

I’ve been asleep for far too long.

I bent and lifted the broken crown.

Fire roared inside me—wild, unrelenting, and untamed.

The metal was cold in my hand—but only for a moment.

I want my crown back.

Then the fire answered.

Heat bled from my palm into the fractured metal. Rust blackened, then glowed. Cracks flared like veins of molten gold. The old shape collapsed and reformed.

Not restored.

Reforged.

I want it now.

I was forged in the fire.