The Forest of Forgotten Kings
The first thing Elian noticed was the silence. Not the kind you find in abandoned places or high mountains, but a sacred silence—as if the trees themselves were holding their breath. He didn’t mean to stumble into the forest. Actually, he was trying to avoid it.
Elian was a cartographer, a mapmaker, with ink-stained fingers and cracked boots. He traveled not for glory but for curiosity, always drawn to the blank corners of the kingdom’s parchment. And that’s how he found it—the one place no map dared to mark. A forest tucked between two rivers, unnamed, untouched, and... unwelcoming.
The Map That Changed Everything
It started with an old parchment he bought from a blind man at the markets of Tralwen. The map was aged, curled at the edges, and inked in a language no scholar could read. But it had something else—an embossed crown with a sword piercing through it.
Elian knew then this wasn’t a regular forest. And so, with a satchel of ink, bread, and doubt, he walked toward its edge.
Inside the Veil of Green
The trees inside weren’t trees at all—or at least not the kind you find in any natural world. They had bark like marble, and leaves that hummed softly as if whispering to each other in forgotten dialects. The deeper he went, the more Elian felt like he was sinking into someone else’s dream.
Then came the statues.
Dozens of them, stone kings wearing crowns of ivy and robes shaped from roots. Each stood solemnly, eyes closed, weapons rusted, moss growing from their mouths like unspoken words. A sign? A warning? Or guardians?
Voices from the Fog
On the third night, Elian was awoken by the sound of drums. Not war drums, but heartbeats—slow, mournful, echoing from the trees. And then came the voices.
"We ruled, we were forgotten. So we stayed. This is our realm now. And yours."
They weren’t ghosts. Not entirely. They were memories, made sentient by the forest’s magic. And Elian had trespassed into their kingdom.
The Trial of the Last King
The forest demanded a trial—not for guilt or innocence, but for memory. Elian was forced to walk through visions: a battlefield soaked in blood, a coronation at dusk, a betrayal by a brother. None of them were his memories. But the forest made him feel each one, live each one.
And then, the final vision: A young king standing before a great fire, burning every book with his name in it. “Let me be forgotten,” he cried. And the forest obeyed.
Elian's Choice
He was offered a crown. Not made of gold, but of roots and fog. “Wear it,” the forest said, “and you will never be forgotten.”
But Elian did something no king ever did—he refused. He dropped the crown into a pool of silent water and whispered, “Some stories are better left untold.”
The Map Fades
When he left the forest, weeks had passed—or perhaps years. His map was blank again, the crown gone. But his eyes had changed. He no longer sought blank spaces on paper. He now sought the blank spaces in people’s hearts, where forgotten kings still ruled.
And the forest? It waits. For the next wanderer. For the next memory. For the next tale.
📖 Read more enchanted stories in our Fantasy Collection.
0 Comments