I Loved You Then

Stone doesn’t breathe, but the Hall of Unremembered Kings did-at least, not the way Taul,

a Black American, expected. When he surfaced from the dark, his lungs filled with damp cold and the metallic tang of old wards, as if the air had been sealed in a tomb and only just cracked open. Somewhere above, chains ticked against iron beams. The sound carried strangely, stretched thin by arches that looked older than the kingdom they guarded.

He lay on flagstones slick with condensation. His cheek stuck to the surface for a heartbeat longer than it should have, and the ache in his ribs reminded him he hadn’t been granted the mercy of a clean awakening. Taul pushed himself up. Every motion flared pain along his side, and the world swam with the afterimage of battle-crimson light, tearing pathways, and Darkar the Great’s laughter swallowed by distance.

Then he saw the floor.

A circle of brass inlaid with runes had been burned away into raw, jagged scars. The spellwork around it had cracked like shattered glass, and in the gaps, pale threads of magic still shivered-thin as hair, too faint to grasp, too wrong to ignore. He reached for one instinctively, and the thread tightened around his fingers like a warning.

"Who-" His voice scraped out. He swallowed, tasting grit and copper. “Where is she?”

Jazim.

The name felt like a door he could still find in the dark, until he tried to say it again and found it snagging in his throat. The syllables came out, but the air around them refused to hold the sound. It didn’t echo. It didn’t settle in any memory. It slid away as if the hall itself had been rewritten to forget.

Taul’s hands shook. He forced them to be steady, scanning the chamber. Rows of empty thrones ringed the interior like teeth. Each throne wore a crown of warped metal, each crown etched with a king’s name. Or it should have. The inscriptions looked scraped clean, letters eroded until they were only shallow grooves. Even the stone portraits-faded reliefs of sovereigns with eyes carved too deep-had blank faces where names ought to be.

He rose fully, wincing as bruises flared. His boots were wrong on his feet; the leather was newer, the stitching unfamiliar. The armor at his chest had been replaced with something that fit too well and was polished too recently, like a body had been dressed without asking permission.

“Jazim Gonzales Alos,” he said again, louder. The hall offered no response.

A guard’s shout snapped through the archways. Footsteps thundered in disciplined rhythm, the kind trained to sound like authority even when terror ran beneath it. Taul turned toward the sound, every nerve tightening. He wanted answers-proof that she existed in this realm, somewhere in the rewritten kingdom. If the name couldn’t reach the hall, maybe it could reach people.

Maybe.

The doors at the far end of the chamber burst open. Torches flared, throwing harsh gold over armor and spears and the faces of men and women wearing the crest of Eastern North-except the crest was altered, reworked to match a history that had moved on without them.

“By order of the Crown,” a woman in a captain’s coat barked, her breath steaming, her sword angled at Taul’s chest. “State your business in the Hall of Unremembered Kings.”

Taul’s gaze flicked past her to the guards behind-too many, too coordinated. He kept his hands visible. “I’m looking for someone.”

“You’re looking for trouble.” The captain’s eyes raked over him, catching on the faint shimmer still clinging to his fingers where he’d touched the broken runes. Her expression sharpened. “You’ve been near the unmaking circle.”

"It-" Taul started, then stopped. He could feel the hall’s refusal pressing against his words, flattening them. He tried again, choosing safer ground. “I need records. Names. Anything.”

“Records?” The captain’s laugh was humorless. “There are no records here. That’s the point.”

Taul swallowed. “Then tell me what this hall was built to protect.”

The captain’s sword dipped a fraction. “It protects the kingdom from those who tear at memory. You’re either ignorant or worse.”

“I’m not here to tear anything.” The thread around his fingers tightened again, burning faintly, as if the magic recognized his attempt to grasp at it. Taul jerked his hand back. Heat licked his skin through the glove. He didn’t have time to interrogate the pain.

He needed a place where his question could land.

“Jazim,” he said, and hated how small the word sounded even as he forced it out. “Does anyone know Jazim?”

The captain blinked once, and the guards behind her exchanged glances-confusion, then something sharper. Suspicion.

“Who?” the captain demanded. “Who did you say?”

Taul felt the shape of the moment shift. He’d asked for a name, and the kingdom had treated it like a curse.

“I told you,” he said, voice rough. “I’m looking for a person. Jazim Gonzales Alos.”

Silence stretched, thick and wrong. The torches hissed as if offended by the air.

...