The knight stood naked before the fallen curse. The molten glow of its lifeless body still illuminated the surrounding area. Well enough that he could see the dead, their clothes mostly intact.

  He approached the nearest corpse, stripping off armor and charred garments. They fit but hung loose. The Question appeared from the edge of nowhere.

  “You saw its end?” the knight asked, examining the dragon’s corpse.

  “I did,” the Question answered.

  “And you could not have told me?”

  “I could.”

  The knight let out an exasperated huff as he surveyed the melted gold fading into the darkness. If the crown still lay somewhere in the vast horde, he would wither to bone before finding it.

  “Do you know where it is?” he asked.

  “I do,” the Question said.

  “Where?”

  “It is here.” It pulled a golden ring from within its cloak and offered it. “Take it.”

  He hesitated.

  The Question held it closer. The knight took it, turning it over in his hand. It looked plain—part of some larger, more ornate adornment. Where it touched his skin, he felt comfort. A gentle hum rang out from it like a song. Just as it was with his soul-forged blade, he could sense life stirring within the cursed relic.

  It made him uneasy.

  Surely, he thought, the cost for knowledge will be great.

  His fingers tightened around the ring until the edges bit into his skin. He half expected pain, but there was only warmth, inviting and strange. That frightened him more than any threat.

  He loosened his grip. Nothing stopped him.

  It hung free from his open hand. The cavern remained silent. The Question did not move.

  He realized then that no force would drag the crown onto his head. This was not a trap that snapped shut. It was a door left open long enough for him to convince himself he had chosen to walk through it.

  He already had more answers than he sought, but the one he needed eluded him still.

  Where?

  “This is what you’ve come for,” the Question urged. “One final kindness.”

  The insistence did little to ease his hesitation. He thought of the cave—its whispered words. Lies or truth, he could not know. Doubt and hope pulled in opposite directions, like rusted chains under strain. Eventually, something would give.

  He dropped his sword, holding the crown with both hands. Slowly, he lifted it and set it on his head.

  The cold metal touched his brow, and the world stilled.

  Silenced.

  Even then, there was no pain. Only the sudden understanding that everything had already been arranged.

  He knew where the princess was. Distance measured in anxious steps. Empty roads, long forgotten.

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  He knew where Sir Draven had taken her. Knowledge pooling in his mouth like blood. Colder than betrayal.

  Then came the child.

  Eight years old. A laugh he had never heard. The word father spoken without meaning him.

  Then he knew that none of this had been learned.

  Truth had not been uncovered. It was forced.

  It stacked.

  Compressed.

  And then he saw himself.

  Not as a man, but as a function.

  A necessary piece in a story that needed ending.

  A voice spoke without sound:

  This is where it makes sense, it said. This has been enough.

  There was no judgment, no cruelty in it.

  That frightened him most of all.

  He understood then that this voice did not hate him. It did not care enough to hate. It spoke the way the earth pulls—measured, final, and uninterested in debate.

  “No,” the knight whispered. His knees buckled. “I’m not done.”

  That is not the point.

  He saw his end—not as an image, but as a certainty. Suffering written as life. A period waiting to fall.

  “Let me save her,” he said. “Let me bring her home. Let me see my son.”

  That would be indulgent.

  “I can die once it’s done.”

  A pause. Consideration.

  It must be earned.

  The crown crushed inward

  The knight screamed—not in rage, but in refusal.

  “I order you,” he said, voice breaking, “to let me live.”

  The knight screamed once more—short, furious, unfinished.

  He collapsed, a man at his end.

  No past. No name. No heartbeat.

  Dead in a cavern, left for time to devour.

  Buried in his cold flesh, a seed—small and black like an apple’s—split open. A single budding idea emerged, as simple as instinct:

  I order you to live.

  From that single thought, vines unfurled. They stretched, reaching for life, blossoming with new thoughts, new feelings—with memories. Crawling through him. Filling him with not only life but purpose. It rooted deeper with each budding piece of him.

  His mother.

  His guardian.

  Friends and enemies.

  A voice: I order you to live.

  He recognized the voice that carried those words.

  The lips that spoke them.

  The authority that commanded them.

  His heart raced but felt different—heavy and final.

  His sword lay on the ground before him, still burning. The flame now orange. When he placed his hand over the steel, it felt warm.

  He felt the Question’s presence. Impulse pulled him to look, but memory kept his gaze averted. Kept his eyes on his sword.

  “Curious,” it said, pleased. “Unexpected.”

  The knight did not answer. He heard its wings open, casting a gust of wind over him.

  “Look through my eyes. See your end.”

  Purple light bathed him, enticing him.

  “You wear defiance poorly,” the Question continued. “You will still—”

  Steel passed through it.

  For the first time since stepping into the cursed waste, the knight did not hesitate. He did not ask what might follow. This act was chosen without thought.

  The knight swung again, eyes down, taking its leg.

  The Question faltered. It fell to the ground.

  “This is not the end I saw,” it said, confused.

  “You looked too far ahead,” the knight said. “And missed now.”

  The Question attempted to spread its wings, too late to show him.

  The sword came down, driven through its skull.

  The Question did not scream, but ceased asking.

  The knight stood alone.

  His sword rang with a sharp ping as he pulled it free. A single crack—faint as hair—ran from the tip and down one side, reaching the edge roughly mid-blade.

  He noticed the thorn-pierced wounds in his hands had gone and wondered if the crown had healed him or if it happened after the last of his army had fallen and he’d simply missed it.

  There was no sense in dwelling. Time was all he had left, and each moment saw it dwindle. He walked toward the entrance from which he’d come. As he neared, his bare foot landed in a patch of crawling death.

  It burned, but his sword made short work of removing it.

  The blisters left behind did not heal.

  For the first time in his life, he felt a fear so deep and true he worried he would not make it out alive. Time pressed close, sudden and intimate, like a hand on his shoulder.

  He attempted to distract from it by finding shoes.

  He did, but the fear remained—waiting for him right where he left it, at the mouth of the hungry cave.

  His lantern sat on the other side, waiting for anyone to come and take it. He would not make the journey without it.

  He reached an arm in, but the cave did not bite.

  He stepped in. Still nothing.

  Not even a whisper.

  What it had to tell him, it had said. The blood for which it hungered still smeared at the exit where it had claimed a part of him.

  He looked at his foot, lifting it and turning his ankle. The pain, an apparition, came back but faded just the same.

  Cautious, he ascended. Slowly at first, less careful as he went.

  To his relief, the lantern was where he’d left it.

  The flame still burned.

  He lifted it and turned toward the distant kingdom.

  It looked further than he had remembered.