The City of Unfinished Kings

“An ending is not the proof of worth. A life abandoned at the threshold still leaves footprints on the stone”

The city rose from the plain like a broken crown. Its walls were half-built, towers tapering into nothing, their spires jagged as if some invisible hand had stopped midway through the sketch and never returned. Bridges reached out over empty chasms only to end in midair. Statues lined the approach, their faces proud, their robes flowing, yet every head was bare, each crown left unfinished.

I slowed at the edge of the square, my gaze caught on the fractured statues and the walls that stopped mid-rise. Grandeur lingered here, but not the kind that inspired awe. It was the kind that made your chest tighten, like reading a sentence that never reached its end. This city had promised crowns, feasts, and triumphs, but standing in its silence, I could only feel the promise breaking in my hands.

In all that unfinishedness, I realized I wasn’t just seeing the city. I was seeing myself. I felt the silence inside me more acutely here. There was no whisper. No quarrel. Just absence. Without Lina’s voice pressing against the back of my mind, every hollow arch and broken stair struck deeper. It was like the city itself was mocking me with its unfinishedness.

Ashen slowed, his eyes scanning the empty streets. “Feels like a battlefield,” he muttered, his voice low. “But without the corpses.”

He was right. There was no rot, no rubble, no sign of collapse. Only incompletion. The city hadn’t been destroyed, it had been abandoned. Left standing at the threshold of greatness and then forgotten.

We passed under a colonnade where murals stretched along the stone, their paint faded but still legible. I saw coronations frozen before the crown touched the brow, feasts where tables had been laid with food that stopped halfway across the cloth, battles where armies stood poised but never clashed. Scenes held forever in the moment before they mattered.

A chill moved through me. It wasn’t death I was walking among, it was hesitation. And in the silence where Lina should have spoken, should have filled the hollow with defiance or grief, there was nothing.

We turned a corner and nearly collided with a man in robes too fine for the dust he wore. His crown was little more than a circlet of bent wire, one jewel missing and the others dull as river stones. He straightened, smoothing his sleeves as though the gesture alone could restore his dignity.

“You’ve come far,” he said, his voice careful, balanced on the edge of pride and apology. “Few still walk willingly into the city of unfinished kings.”

Ashen’s hand went to his sword, but the man only bowed, shallow and imperfect. “If you seek shelter, or answers, the council will receive you. They are always receiving.”

I glanced at Ashen, then back to the man. He wasn’t whole, no one here was, but he wasn’t hostile. And in Lina’s silence, I felt the weight of choice fall entirely on me.

“Show us,” I said.

He inclined his head and led us beneath a colonnade where incomplete murals stretched along the stone.

* * *

We were led into what had once been a hall of kings. The doors stood three times my height, carved with heraldry whose lines stopped abruptly, as though the chisel had been dropped mid-stroke. Inside, thrones circled a dais, each bearing a figure draped in robes that shimmered like half-woven cloth. They were regal, yet undone. Their crowns were missing their gems and their mantles frayed at the seams. Their voices carried the echo of authority but faltered like broken cadence.

The one nearest rose, a young man with a coronet that stopped at his temple and never closed. His hand lifted in greeting, but the gesture froze short of completion.

“Welcome,” he said, and his voice was rich, though it stuttered at the edges. “You stand before the Council of Almosts.”

A murmur followed, the others nodding with weary dignity: a general whose armor gleamed though his blade had never been drawn; a poet clutching a scroll where the ink bled out halfway through the first line; a woman seated in silence, the plate at her throne carved with only “Queen of—” and nothing beyond.

I stared at them and felt bitterness rise in my chest. “You’re ghosts of failure,” I said before I could stop myself. “Things that never came to be. What good is remembering what was abandoned?”

The council stirred. The prince straightened, his half-crown catching the light. The general’s jaw tightened, his voice clipped and martial, every word an unfinished order: “Do you think value lies only in the ending? A crown never worn can still shape a kingdom. A battle unfought can still scar a land.”

The poet raised her scroll, eyes distant, her tone lilting as if reciting from memory that trailed off mid-line: “Even an unfinished song can echo… its silence louder than any chorus.”

The queen did not speak. But her silence deepened, heavy as stone. When I met her eyes, I felt it press against my ribs like a verdict left unspoken.

Ashen shifted beside me, his hand brushing his sword hilt. He said nothing, but his gaze lingered on me too long, as if he sensed I was no longer alone in my own skin.

Their words rattled through me. I wanted to reject them, but their presence was undeniable, unfinished, yes, but not meaningless.

Ashen’s gaze swept across the thrones, steady but grave. “She’s right to question,” he said softly. “But they’re right too. Even the things that don’t finish leave marks. Unfinished battles still leave scars.”

The council fell silent at that, and their half-formed faces seemed to shift. They were not waiting for judgment, but for understanding.

Their silence pressed in, heavy as the ruined city around us. I wanted to speak, to deny their words, but my throat refused. For the first time since we’d entered the capital, I noticed the ache inside me wasn’t just mine. It was the hollow where Lina should have been.

And then, faintly, like a hand brushing against glass, she stirred. “I left so many unfinished,” she whispered

The council’s voices droned like a tide against stone, speaking of kings who never wore their crowns, of feasts prepared but never eaten, of lives lived only halfway. Their words shouldn’t have moved me, but they caught against something raw inside.

For a long while I thought the emptiness within me was my own, just grief carried forward. But then I felt it: a tremor in the hollow, a stirring like breath against frost.

Lina.

Her voice came faint, ashamed, as though she feared even being heard. “I left so many unfinished. I thought it meant I destroyed them.”

The first answer on my tongue was sharp, unkind. You did. I nearly let it loose, but as I looked at the council of these almost-kings, I saw their half-lived stories still speaking, still mattering. The words I planned on saying broke apart in my throat.

“Unfinished isn’t the same as destroyed,” I murmured instead, though the truth of it hurt.

Her presence shivered, fragile but growing steadier. “Maybe… if they mattered even half-finished, then I didn’t fail them completely.”

I drew a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “And I…” My chest tightened. “…I’ve been so bent on chasing freedom, I haven’t seen any other way to exist. As if letting go meant surrender. As if your way could only be a cage.”

Her reply was not loud, but warm enough to fill the silence that had haunted me since the prison: “Maybe we’re both wrong. Or maybe we need both truths.”

The voices of the council overlapped, some hushed, some firm, all circling the same wound. “You argue as though your quarrel were only yours,” said one, her crown little more than a band of tarnished bronze.

“But every story falters on that choice,” another added. “What to preserve, what to release.”

The council tilted their heads, not at me but at her, the voice threading through my ribs. They heard her. They answered her. My pulse stumbled. I had carried Lina like a secret, like a shame no one else could touch, but here she was, stepping into the world without my permission. If they could see her as real, what did that make me? What was Elyne, if I was no longer the only one speaking with my mouth?

Their eyes turned toward us, the weight of unfinished reigns pressing down like a tide.“Do you think the world itself is any different? Do you think the Master Draft can be reached without first answering this?”

I froze at the name. The words struck like a bell in a silent square. Ashen shifted beside me, his hand brushing the hilt of his sword, as though the sound alone demanded a defense.

The council’s verdict fell like a gavel against stone.

“The Master Draft cannot be reached by those who cling only to freedom, nor by those who cling only to preservation. It requires both the courage to let go and the courage to hold on.”

Their voices were blended, not individuals but a single truth given form. The words rippled through the ruined hall, bouncing from half-built arches and broken thrones, settling into me like ash.

Ashen shifted at my side, but didn’t speak. He had the look of a soldier who knew there was no victory in arguing.

Inside me, Lina stirred. Her voice came quiet, raw. “Maybe I can’t forgive myself. But I see it now. Unfinished doesn’t mean worthless.”

I drew in a slow breath. “And maybe I can’t forgive your choices either. But I understand why you made them. I see now what I wouldn’t admit before: not every ending needs to be clean.”

She wavered, but her tone was steadier this time, touched with something close to humility. “And maybe freedom isn’t just cruelty dressed as mercy. Maybe it’s another way of remembering.”

It wasn’t peace, not yet. But the silence that followed was no longer hollow. It was a truce, fragile but real.

We left the ruined throne room together, Ashen in flesh, Lina in spirit, myself somewhere between. Outside, a single bell tolled from a tower that had never crowned its king. Its sound rolled across the empty streets, a coronation that never happened. For the first time in days, the silence inside me wasn’t empty. Lina hadn’t left, and neither had I. We were still here. Still unfinished. Still walking toward the Draft

Ahead, the road bent toward shadow. The Master Draft was nearer now. Nearer, and darker.