The world accepted the lie because it was easier than the truth.News anchors spoke in reverent tones as images of the collapsed penthouse looped endlessly across every channel. Grainy drone footage showed the ruin still smoldering, black smoke curling like ink into the morning sky. “Both brothers confirmed dead,” the headlines declared. “The age of fire is over.”Across the nation, people reacted in waves --shock first, then curiosity, then exhaustion. Some lit candles in remembrance of “the fallen kings,” others poured drinks in celebration. The younger generation filmed themselves burning counterfeit copies of The Book of Fire, chanting, “No more ghosts.” The city, weary and wounded, wanted closure --not justice. And so the lie became gospel.Government officials held press conferences in crisp suits, speaking of healing and order. Hugo Martinez’s loyalists --those who survived the purge --framed themselves as victims of manipulation, promising a “rebirth” for the

The town sat where the ocean met the dust --a stretch of crumbling coast forgotten by maps and mercy alike. Salt wind corroded everything it touched: paint, bone, memory. The people who lived there were the kind who asked no questions, who measured life in tides and bottles and the distance between storms.It was the perfect place to disappear.The man who arrived one gray morning carried nothing but a duffel bag, a limp, and the quiet of someone who had lost too much to speak of it. He gave his name as Mr. Harlan, claiming to be a retired teacher seeking peace. The local school --a squat concrete building with peeling blue walls --hired him within a week. No papers were checked. No references were called. In this place, belief was currency enough.Harlan --Harold --adapted quickly. He taught literature to a handful of restless teenagers who saw books as relics from another world. He spoke softly, his voice low but firm, and he never raised it even when the power flickered or the s

The decade that followed the fall of Los Reyes became a theatre of imitation. History, it seemed, had not learned reverence but appetite. When empires die, something always crawls from the bones to wear their crown.The city, rebuilt with steel and slogans, glittered again --but its soul remained scarred. Neon lights hid the poverty below; murals of peace masked a thousand quiet wars. A new breed of men emerged from the cracks --gang lords with digital armies, businessmen baptized in corruption, politicians dressed like prophets. They called themselves The New Kings, borrowing the language, the symbols, even the cadence of the fallen.The crown graffiti reappeared first. Rough, uneven strokes of gold paint marked walls once soaked in blood. Some added halos; others, flames. Teenagers tagged REYES FOREVER beside the symbol, not knowing what it once meant --or whom it once condemned. They wore the mark like fashion, not faith.In time, the newspapers began using the phrase “Neo-Reyes

The City’s MythThe city no longer remembers the sound of gunfire --not truly. It remembers the echoes, the myths, the rhythm of fear turned into folklore. Buildings have been rebuilt, districts renamed, holidays invented to commemorate victories no one recalls precisely. Yet beneath all the concrete and commerce, a whisper endures.They call it The Tale of Los Reyes.Children tell it on rooftops at dusk, when the air is thick with heat and electricity flickers in the distance. It changes with every telling. Sometimes the brothers are saints who burned a corrupt empire to save the people; sometimes they are demons who destroyed paradise out of pride. The endings differ too --one says both kings vanished into smoke; another insists one still walks among the fishermen by the sea.In classrooms, the official curriculum calls it The Period of Disorder. The textbooks are sanitized --grainy photos, vague captions, no mention of names. Teachers speak carefully, eyes flicking to the door

They found the writings inside a rusted lockbox, unearthed during the demolition of an old coastal house. The box was small, dented, lined with salt corrosion --the kind used by fishermen to store hooks or tobacco. Inside were a few brittle notebooks, water-damaged but still legible, each filled with the same sharp handwriting that historians knew from The Book of Fire and The King in the Dark.Most of the pages were dated long after Harold’s supposed death.The first notebook opened with a single line written across the inside cover, as if meant for no one but himself:“To build a kingdom is to murder your peace. To destroy it is to find your truth.”The words struck scholars as both confession and prophecy. The ink was faint, the script less rigid than in his earlier works --more human, more tired. Yet the rhythm, the cadence of each phrase, still carried the gravity of a man who once ruled with nothing but words.Historians called this collection The Price of Flame.Each frag