Chapter 6 – The King Who Invented Himself

By morning, all seven prophecies are public.

The chosen heirs compare their sacred texts and discover identical ink blots, identical promises, even identical spelling errors. Their fleets surround Rauk’s island. In the capital, people carve my name into walls beneath the word FRAUD.

Rauk puts the cold mask back on and orders me to perform one final prophecy before the court. I expect him to protect the alliance we almost formed in the magma chamber.

Instead he lets the ministers expose me.

They display contracts signed by frightened families who bought futures from me. They bring survivors of skirmishes started by competing chosen ones. Every clever lie acquires a body.

Then the oldest minister produces the first payment ever made to the orphan Kaia Nalu. The intermediary’s seal belongs to Rauk.

He found me before I became an oracle. He funded the seven prophecies to give the islands a common problem he could later solve. My rebellion, reputation, and entire career were components of his throne.

“Tell them it is false,” I demand.

Rauk remains silent.

The volcano accepts silence as truth.

The palace floor splits. Magma writes a second revelation across the stone: no sacred dragon blood runs in Rauk’s veins. He was a foundling who survived the eruption, then built a divine lineage from forged scales and frightened priests.

The king and oracle are matching frauds.

Seven delegations withdraw recognition at once. Rauk’s control over the lava channels fails with the crown’s legitimacy. Outside, the sea bulges around the underwater caldera.

I could expose him further and save myself. Instead I hold the black dragon scale in my pocket, the one that could trap him permanently in beast form, and do nothing.

The mountain does not reward restraint. It erupts.

The harbor rises as a wall of steam. Rauk transforms halfway, wings tearing through ceremonial silk, but the magma no longer obeys him. A fissure opens beneath the court and swallows the throne.

He reaches for me.

I step back.

“Was any part of us not planned?”

His answer is too slow.

I leave him beneath a burning sky while every lie we built becomes lava.