Burning smoke and thick ash filled my lungs.

I could barely see; I could barely breathe.

"Mother!" I called out, as I blindly stumbled through the burning hallways of my castle – a place I knew I would never refer to as such again.

My right hand was heavy with my blood-soaked longsword. It scraped against the floor, dulling the blade, but ready to be lifted at the faintest sign of danger. I had killed more men today than I had in the 25 years leading up to today. Men I knew, men whose side I’d fought by, men whose blood I would never be able to wash off my hands.

"Mother!" I called once more as I pushed the blackened doors of the throne room.

This is where it had all started; not just the fire, but the coup my family had faced.

My eyes were swollen from the smoke, but I still managed to make out the bright blue dress my mother wore. She was standing by our family painting, the one hanging behind the thrones. It had once depicted my parents, my uncle, myself and my sister. Now the flames had consumed everything but my little sister's face.

"Come here Law." My mother called out without turning around.

I hesitated. I could hear the screams coming from the main court, and I could hear the wooden supports cracking under the flames down the corridor I had just come through… But I obeyed my mother.

I crossed the throne room and walked up the few steps that led up to the thrones themselves. Nothing but ash was left from the richly embroidered blue carpet that had covered these steps. My father’s throne was the only one fully intact, unsurprisingly so.

"Here." Mother handed me my crown.

It had burn marks along its sides, covering the gold with ugly smudges of black, but the blue gems ornating it were intact.

"Do you have your ring?" She asked, her eyes still avoiding mine.

I checked my left hand. Between a wound I’d sustained to my stomach, and the adrenaline of the fight, I hadn’t paid attention to the state of any of my belongings, and thankfully my signet ring had not been lost in the battle.

"I do, but mother-"

"Listen closely Lawrence," she turned towards me and I gasped in shock.

Half her face was covered in blood, and one of her eye sockets was nothing more than a dark void.

"Mother! You miscast-"

"Lawrence." She cut me short again. "Listen closely. Your uncle is behind this."

I nodded. I already knew that. The guards that had turned against us knew nothing, but one of the many assassins that’d entered the palace during the commotion was rather talkative under my blade.

"You must find him, and expose him for who he truly is." She spoke again, as she raised a hand and gently caressed my cheek. Or perhaps she was wiping off someone else's blood, it was hard to tell in the dim lighting. "Law, my boy, you must remember who we are.” She continued. Her hand was shaking and it seemed the only thing keeping her alive was her blue blood, and the duty and honour that came with it.  “ We are the Hamonetts, the oldest and purest noble bloodline in all of Avrea. For that reason you cannot kill your uncle, do you understand? You must find another way."

"But mother-" I tried to argue.

Her words sounded too similar to what Father had told me before leaving for the battlefield, and I could feel tears forming at the corners of my eyes. There was so much I had to tell her, but I couldn't force myself to say those words out loud. It would have made everything too real; unavoidable; inescapable.

"Oh Law..." She pulled me in for a hug.

This was it. It was now or never. I knew she was about to do something -

"I love you mother -" I barely got the time to say before I got surrounded by purple light.

I thought I saw her say something to me, a soft but forced smile on her lips, and tears pearling and turning black at the corner of her good eye. But with the teleportation spell underway, and all the tears and ash in my own eyes, I couldn't be sure.

What I did see, in those short few instances before the spell transported me onto the cold cobblestone streets outside, was Mother turning her back to the mural painting and readying herself to fire another spell.

I lay still on the cold ground for longer than I should have. But there was nothing I could do to stop the tears running down from my eyes; there was nothing I wanted to do.

I lay there crying.

My tears started to mix with the droplets of rain that fell from the sky, first only a handful, then more and more until my hair was soaked. I heard thunder in the background, and I wondered if it was the storm, or my mother casting her last spell.

It was only when the last of the blood had been washed away from my blade by the pouring rain that I finally found the strength to get up.

"Your fate will be worse than death," I whispered.

It wasn't a threat. It was a promise. And Baron William Meeden, formerly known as my uncle, had no one but himself to blame.