Chapter 76: The Fallen King (Part 2)

Zion walked toward the throne, his footsteps echoing across the marble.

When he reached the platform, he climbed the shallow steps and sat down. The view changed immediately.

From here, he could see almost the entire hall at once: the long checkered floor, the broken doors, shattered windows, hanging banners, and tall candelabras lining the walls. Anyone approaching the throne would have looked small against the size of the room.

Zion rested one arm against the chair. "It’s nicer than mine."

He looked around again and tried to imagine what the hall had been like before everything fell apart.

There might have been music here once. People dancing across the floor, servants moving between groups with trays, children slipping through the crowd where they were not supposed to be.

Someone probably laughed too loudly near the doors.

For a brief moment, it was surprisingly easy to imagine.

Then he looked at the bloodstains on the marble. Whatever had filled the hall before was gone now.

He stayed there for a while before his thoughts gradually shifted back toward the dungeon.

"This would make a perfect boss room."

Zion opened the monster catalogue and filtered through the skeletal options, already picturing the encounter before he found the right creature.

An elite skeletal knight could sit on the throne and wait. No pacing. No wandering around the room.

It would remain there until adventurers crossed far enough into the hall, then rise and meet them in the same place the castle’s last defenders had fallen.

Maybe it could carry a broken royal sword or some heavy ceremonial blade that had once belonged to the castle.

He liked the idea of it fighting without retreating or trying to preserve itself. Just holding the room until it could not stand anymore. One final battle where everything else had already ended.

Zion smiled slightly. "That would be cool."

He marked the throne room as a potential elite encounter.

Then his smile faded a little. He would get to see it happen at least once...right?

Zion looked toward the shattered windows. The timer still hovered somewhere at the edge of his awareness, but he deliberately ignored it. There was no point ruining this too.

After a few more minutes, he stood and stepped down from the throne before crossing toward a smaller set of doors behind the raised platform.

Unlike the main entrance, these were still mostly intact. Beyond them waited a much narrower hallway. After the scale of the throne room, the change felt almost abrupt. This part of the castle was quieter and more private.

The walls were still marble, but the decoration had changed. There were fewer banners and military carvings here, replaced by floral patterns, family crests, and small portraits hung along one side of the corridor.

Not kings. But children, women, and couples. The people who had actually lived here.

Zion slowed as he passed them. One portrait showed a young girl holding white flowers in both hands. Another showed an older woman seated beside an open window.

None of them had been slashed or broken. They had simply faded with age.

He continued until the hallway ended at a pair of glass doors leading outside. One had shattered completely.

He stepped through.

A courtyard opened around him. Sunlight poured into it freely. For a moment, he thought he had stepped into somewhere completely different.

The courtyard had once been a formal garden.

White stone paths divided the space into geometric sections while elaborate iron fencing formed smaller enclosures throughout the grounds. Stone fountains stood at several intersections, their basins cracked and dry.

Or mostly dry. One still held a thin layer of rainwater covered in floating leaves.

Zion stepped closer and looked into the fountain. A broken marble figure stood at the center, holding an empty vase over the dry basin.

He considered it for a moment, then opened the environment settings. A simple option appeared.

[Restore Fountain Flow: 20 Essence]

"That’s it? I figured it would be more expensive."

He selected it. A thin stream of water immediately spilled from the stone vase and splashed into the basin below.

It was not much, but the soft, steady sound changed the courtyard almost immediately.

He smiled. "Much better."

Then he continued on.

The gardens here were more overgrown than those outside the castle. Rose vines had climbed halfway over the fences, long grass pushed through cracks in the paths, and several trees had grown large enough for their roots to warp the surrounding stone.

Even so, traces of the original design remained beneath the neglect. Circular flower beds still broke up the paths, marble benches sat beneath vine-covered archways, and several walkways had clearly been angled to frame statues or fountains.

Zion stopped beside one of the fences and dragged it slightly farther to the left. The iron shifted with a faint scrape.

He stepped back. "No. It’s too straight."

He rotated one broken section and pushed another farther inward.

"Better."

Now the path narrowed slightly before opening around a half-dead tree.

He could place something there later. Maybe two skeleton soldiers standing motionless beneath the branches, or something lying among the roots that only looked dead.

Zion left a marker and kept walking. The farther he went, the more the garden changed.

Flowers still grew, but their colors slowly faded. White roses turned pale gray, while red blossoms darkened until they were almost black. The carefully shaped hedges became tangled masses of thorns, and even the marble paths lost their polished surface beneath moss and dark stains.

Zion noticed the shift almost immediately. "This is leading somewhere."

He followed the path. The iron fencing eventually opened around a circular clearing near the back of the courtyard. At first, Zion thought it was another decorative garden.

Until he saw the stairs.

They began beneath an enormous stone arch half-covered in ivy and black roses. Two statues stood on either side. Kings this time, not angels.

Both wore crowns and rested their hands over the pommels of long swords pointed toward the ground. Their faces had been worn almost completely smooth.

Behind them, broad stone steps descended beneath the castle. A pair of heavy doors waited at the bottom, with thin lines of gold still tracing the edges despite their age. Above them, carved directly into the stone, was a crown surrounded by wings.

The royal crypt. Zion felt his excitement return.

"This has to be it."

He approached slowly. Morning light only reached partway down the stairs. The lower steps disappeared into cool shadow, while vines hung from the walls overhead.

Old flowers had been left along both sides of the descent. Most were long dead.

Some had dried inside small stone holders. Others had fallen onto the steps and remained there, blackened and brittle with age.

This entrance felt different from the rest of the castle. The graveyard outside had been improvised out of grief. The throne room had been left behind after the fighting ended.

But this place had been cared for.

Even while the kingdom was falling apart, someone had still taken the time to leave flowers here.

Zion stood at the top of the stairs and looked down.

He could already imagine what waited deeper inside: marble halls, royal tombs, maybe the golden spiral staircase he had been picturing.

And farther below, the point where the castle stopped feeling merely abandoned and started becoming something stranger.

Something less human.

His fingers twitched with excitement.

"Now we’re getting somewhere."

He took the first step down.