Author

Oscar Alarie

The Three Thrones of the Violet Kingdom

by Oscar Alarie October 20, 2025

Prelude: The Three Thrones of the Violet Kingdom

They say the stars remember what the world forgets.
In the far reaches of the Luminous Belt — beyond the veils of mortal sight — there lies a realm bathed in eternal violet dusk. Neither night nor day reigns there, for time itself kneels before the will of its Queens. This is the Violet Kingdom, cradle of dream and ruin, where the breath of gods still lingers upon the wind.

Long ago, when silence first learned to speak, the Kingdom was whole — one throne, one heart. But as power deepened, so did the shadows within it. The Throne fractured into three, each piece finding a new sovereign: one to command the mind, one to guard the soul, and one to bear the heart.

Thus rose the Three Queens.

Alfirk, the Crown of Clarity — sculpted in wisdom and war, her word a blade that could cut through deceit and destiny alike.
Errai, the Keeper of Echoes — born of starlight and sorrow, her gaze pierces both the past and what has yet to be.
And Segin, the Blooming Flame — fierce in mercy, terrible in love, her spirit burns brighter than the heavens she governs.

Together they hold the Kingdom in balance. Apart, they are the storm that unravels it.

For when one Throne trembles, all creation feels its quake.
And so the story begins — not in peace, nor in chaos,
but in the trembling breath between both.

The Three Thrones of the Violet Kingdom

Book I: The Throne of Alfirk — The Crown of Clarity

by Oscar Alarie October 20, 2025

The Obsidian Spire rose higher than any mortal mountain, its surface polished to a mirror-dark sheen that reflected no light, only the stars. At its summit sat Queen Alfirk — robed in woven dusk, crowned with knowledge carved from celestial stone. Her gaze could pierce illusion, deceit, even time itself. Under her rule, the Violet Kingdom became a realm of harmony, precision, and unshakable order.

Or so it appeared.

Every law, every gesture, every breath was governed by design. The streets were silent, spotless, obedient. Children learned not to dream too loudly. Artists painted within sanctioned palettes. And beneath the stillness, a quiet rebellion brewed — not of swords and fire, but of thoughts forbidden to take shape.

Alfirk believed truth alone could sustain peace. But when she began to see visions — distortions in the symmetry she so carefully maintained — she realized her gift of sight had become something else. Faces shifted in mirrors. Stars whispered in languages older than her crown. And deep below, the rivers of memory stirred — Errai’s domain.

To preserve her reign, Alfirk sealed the borders of her realm and forbade the naming of the other Thrones. Yet the more she denied them, the louder the echoes became. Her people spoke of forgotten sisters, of ancient unity now fractured.

One night, under a rare eclipse that stained the sky violet-black, Alfirk descended from her Spire for the first time in a thousand years. There, in the reflection of a still pond, she saw not her own face — but three.

The revelation shattered her composure. Her “clarity” had been a cage. Her truth, a lie she had written upon the stars. For the first time, she understood that order without connection is not peace, but isolation — and that to see clearly is not always to see rightly.

As dawn broke, she whispered a forbidden name — Errai. The sound of it cracked the silence of her empire. The first tremor of collapse began.

The Age of Violet had awakened.

The Three Thrones of the Violet Kingdom

Celestial Novellas

Book II: The Throne of Errai — The Keeper of Echoes

by Oscar Alarie October 20, 2025

When the walls of Alfirk’s silent empire cracked, the first sound to escape was a song — low, mournful, and ancient. It drifted through the violet mists like a pulse, waking the sleeping rivers and stirring the roots of memory buried beneath the soil.

Far beyond the Obsidian Spire, deep in the marshlands where reflection and reality traded places, ruled Queen Errai — the second sister, the Keeper of Echoes. Her throne was not carved of stone but grown from living crystal, its veins carrying whispers from every corner of the realm. The air around her shimmered with the voices of the lost — ancestors, wanderers, and those whose names had been erased from Alfirk’s histories.

Errai heard them all. And in every echo, she found truth that Alfirk had chosen to forget.

Where Alfirk valued stillness, Errai thrived in resonance. She understood that memory was alive — that the past was never gone, only unheard. Yet the ceaseless murmuring of the echoes came with a cost. For each truth revealed, she carried its sorrow. Each whisper of betrayal or regret etched itself into her skin like living script.

When Alfirk’s name crossed her chamber of mirrors, Errai paused. For centuries, her elder sister had sealed their bond, silencing all remembrance of their shared beginning. But the echoes, freed at last, began to weave her memories back together. She saw flashes of a time before the Thrones — three sisters beneath the violet auroras, bound by purpose rather than pride.

Her heart wavered. The echoes urged her to rise — to reclaim the harmony Alfirk had fractured. Yet to do so meant embracing the full chorus of pain and beauty alike.

So Errai summoned her harp of living silver and plucked a single string. The sound rippled across worlds, reshaping the mists, carrying both grief and grace. Her people woke from generations of forgetfulness. The forgotten returned.

But as her music spread, another note joined — darker, colder, commanding.
From the shadowed reaches of the forest, a voice not of memory, but of will.

Segin had awakened.

And unlike her sisters, she remembered everything.

The Three Thrones of the Violet Kingdom

Celestial Novellas

Book III: The Throne of Segin — The Veil of Memory

by Oscar Alarie October 20, 2025

Long before Alfirk raised her Spire or Errai gathered her echoes, the world was unshaped — a sea of violet mist that hummed with the first light of creation. And from that light came Segin, youngest of the three, the flame that gave the world its motion.

While Alfirk ruled through sight and Errai through sound, Segin ruled through memory itself. Her realm was the root beneath all others — the archive of beginnings, endings, and everything the world dared forget. She did not command armies or seek worship; her power came from remembrance. Every truth hidden by her sisters, every shadow buried beneath centuries of silence, she held within her.

When Alfirk’s silence shattered and Errai’s song spread through the lands, Segin stirred beneath the world’s crust — her eyes opening to the tremors above. For ages, she had watched, patient and unseen, as her sisters tried to sculpt perfection and preserve pain. Their quarrels had twisted the balance of the Violet Kingdom, fracturing what once was whole.

Rising from the roots, her armor shimmered like obsidian laced with stars, her crown of thorns woven from memories too sharp to forget. She did not weep for the broken order. She had expected it. For where there is light and sound, there must also be shadow — and she was that shadow made flesh.

Segin walked the forgotten roads, gathering those left behind by Alfirk’s laws and those haunted by Errai’s voices. To them, she promised truth — not the soft kind that comforts, but the kind that transforms. “The past,” she said, “is not a chain. It is a blade. Wield it.”

When the three sisters finally met beneath the violet auroras once more, the air rippled with the power of all they had created — and all they had denied. Alfirk sought redemption, Errai sought reunion, but Segin sought only balance.

She lifted her hand and tore the veil between their realms, releasing light, sound, and memory into one unbroken current. The world shuddered — then began again.

The Thrones of the Violet Kingdom dissolved into myth, their power diffused through generations. Some say the auroras that paint the night sky are the last remnants of their reign — Alfirk’s light, Errai’s song, and Segin’s shadow dancing forever together.

Yet sometimes, when the night turns deep purple and the stars hum softly, the old whispers return. Three thrones. Three queens. One kingdom that remembers.

The Three Thrones of the Violet Kingdom

Celestial Novellas

Epilogue: The Map of the Violet Kingdom

by Oscar Alarie October 20, 2025

They said no such lands ever existed — no record, no ruin, no trace.
But that was before I found the map.

It was pressed between the pages of an old atlas in a forgotten library, its ink faded to a bruised violet hue. The parchment shimmered faintly under candlelight, as if the ink itself still breathed. Three markings stood out among the ghosted contours of the continents — Alfirk, Errai, and Segin — drawn not as cities, but as constellations inverted onto the earth.

At first, I thought it a scholar’s fantasy. But the coordinates, though ancient, matched nothing in any known geography. No mountains, no seas — just empty stretches of unnamed wilderness.

I traced the lines anyway. Something in me needed to.

The first trail led north, where the air grew sharp and cold. I found a valley of black glass that reflected no sky — only me. I felt as though someone, somewhere, was watching. When the wind passed through, it whispered clarity, and I knew I stood where Alfirk once reigned.

The second mark took me to the marshlands. Every sound echoed twice, once in my ears, once deeper — in the chest, in the bones. I found no ruins, only reeds humming with a music older than language. When I whispered her name, Errai, the marsh fell silent, as if it remembered.

The third lay beyond the veil of a forest so dense it swallowed light. My compass spun until I stopped trusting it. I walked until my lantern dimmed and saw — faintly — a crown of thorns carved into the trunk of a dying tree. Beneath it, the roots glowed faintly violet. The air thrummed like a held breath. Segin.

When I returned to my tent, the map had changed. The ink had bled outward, forming a ring around all three regions. And at the center — a faint inscription I swear was not there before:

“The world remembers, even when we do not.”

I burned the map that night. But sometimes, when I close my eyes, I still see that violet glow behind them — and I wonder if the Queens are truly gone… or simply waiting to be remembered again.

The Three Thrones of the Violet Kingdom

Intrigue Novellas

The Whittemore Portraits – Part I – The Basset Hound

by Oscar Alarie October 11, 2025

The portrait hung in the west hall of the Whittemore Estate, between the cracked marble bust of Lord Alfred and a tapestry depicting a hunt that, by all accounts, had never actually occurred. Visitors often paused there—not for the marble or the tapestry—but for the dog.

A Basset Hound, cloaked in deep velvet, a small crown resting crookedly between his long, drooping ears. His name, according to the brass plaque below, was Sir Reginald of Whittemore.

To most, it was an eccentric indulgence—a noble family so lost in wealth they’d commissioned a full Renaissance-style oil painting of their pet. But to the house staff, and the few who’d lived there long enough, Sir Reginald’s story was not just legend. It was inheritance.

The last Lord Whittemore had been a recluse, a widower who’d filled his cavernous home with books, clocks, and dogs. He trusted no one, except the hound who followed him from room to room, whose steady eyes seemed to listen when the old man spoke. “You’re the only one left who understands,” he would murmur, running his hand along the velvet folds of the dog’s ear.

When he died—alone, in the library—Sir Reginald had been found beside him, silent and still, as if keeping vigil. The painter who later captured that loyalty swore the dog’s eyes had changed with the light: soft and mournful by day, yet watchful, almost sentient, by night.

Years passed. The family line dwindled. The estate changed hands more times than anyone could count. Yet no caretaker had ever been able to move the painting. Those who tried claimed it “watched” them, or that they heard claws clicking on the wood floor behind them when no dogs were present.

One night, a new curator named Evelyn stayed late, cataloging the library for a museum sale. Around midnight, the power flickered. She lit a candle—and that’s when she saw it. The air shimmered faintly in front of the portrait, like heat on a road. The crown gleamed.

She stepped closer. The painted hound’s eyes, rich and brown under the artist’s chiaroscuro brush, seemed alive in the candlelight. The crown wasn’t painted gold at all—it was brass, dulled by time, fixed to the canvas surface with the tiniest nails.

And then she realized: it wasn’t nailed to the painting. It was nailed through it.

Somewhere behind the frame, a slow, muffled sound began—a scraping, a low whine, like breath through a closed door.

The flame trembled. Evelyn took a step back.

The plaque beneath the portrait caught the light just long enough for her to read the engraving anew.

“He waits where loyalty cannot die.”

Intrigue Novellas

The Whittemore Portraits – Part II – The Labrador Retriever

by Oscar Alarie October 11, 2025

The second portrait hung opposite Sir Reginald’s, the pair forming a strange symmetry at the end of the corridor. While the Basset Hound sat in solemn regality, this Labrador radiated warmth — or at least, it had once.

Painted in the same Renaissance oil style, the brown tones of the dog’s coat glowed faintly even in the corridor’s gloom. He rested on a velvet cushion, though his posture was less formal than Sir Reginald’s — head tilted slightly, eyes bright, as if listening for a command that would never come.

The plaque beneath read simply:
“Captain.”

House records said the painting had been commissioned by Lady Eleanor Whittemore after her husband’s death at sea. Captain had been his hunting companion, but rumor claimed the Labrador waited at the manor’s gates for three days after the shipwreck — until the dog was found lying in the snow, frost clinging to his fur.

Lady Eleanor refused to bury him. “He’s still waiting,” she had said. “He just hasn’t been called yet.”

It was said she locked herself in the west drawing room with the painter, demanding that every stroke capture Captain’s loyalty, his hope. The final portrait glowed with life — so much so that the household servants whispered she’d traded something of herself to achieve it.

When she died, the staff found her seated before the painting, one hand resting on the gilded frame. The room smelled faintly of salt and rain, though the windows had been shut for months.

Since then, visitors swore that on stormy nights, when thunder rolled across the valley, the scent returned — wet fur, sea air, faint traces of lavender oil. And sometimes, the faint scratch of claws echoed down the hall, followed by the sound of waves where there could be none.

Years later, when the estate was converted into a private museum, a restorer discovered a faint shimmer beneath the paint. Under infrared, another figure appeared — a man in naval attire, standing behind the dog, his hand reaching down toward its head.

But the hand stopped short. A single inch of empty canvas separated them.

The curator who uncovered it refused to retouch the piece. “The painting isn’t unfinished,” she said quietly. “It’s waiting. Just like he was.”

Across the hall, Sir Reginald’s portrait seemed to darken by a shade that night, as if the two paintings were speaking again — one mourning, the other remembering.

Intrigue Novellas

The Whittemore Portraits – Part III – The Golden Retriever

by Oscar Alarie October 11, 2025

The third painting wasn’t hung with the others. It rested at the top of the grand staircase, facing the main landing as if greeting anyone bold enough to climb that far into the house.

The subject was a Golden Retriever — painted in radiant golds and soft umbers, his fur almost aflame under the portrait’s heavy varnish. He sat beside a grand piano, head lifted slightly, ears perked toward something unseen beyond the frame.

The plaque beneath read:
“Harper.”

No title. No dates. Just a name.

Records showed that Harper had belonged to Margaret Whittemore, the youngest of the lineage and the last child to be born in the house. She was said to be a prodigy, a pianist who could mimic any melody after hearing it once. It was Harper who sat beside her during long evenings at the keys — the dog’s tail thumping to each note, his eyes fixed on her hands as though guarding the sound itself.

When Margaret was seventeen, she disappeared. Vanished from the manor overnight. No signs of struggle, no note. Only the echo of her piano, still warm when her parents found the bench empty at dawn. Harper was never seen again either.

The painting appeared three months later. No one knew who commissioned it.

Unlike the other Whittemore portraits, this one carried light. The artist had painted sunlight spilling through the fogged windows behind her golden companion, catching dust motes mid-air like fragments of a song frozen in time. And though Harper’s face held no sorrow, his gaze was directed not at the viewer, but slightly upward — as if looking toward someone standing beside him, unseen.

When new owners of the estate first reopened the staircase decades later, they reported faint piano notes drifting through the halls — a slow nocturne, steady and mournful. The sound always came from the upper floors, always ending abruptly when someone reached the landing.

It wasn’t until a storm in ’72 that the mystery deepened. A bolt of lightning struck the estate’s east wing, scorching the walls near the landing. The fire crew arrived in time to save the portraits, but the plaster behind Harper’s frame cracked under the heat.

When the wall was removed for repairs, workers found a narrow door sealed shut from the inside — a servant’s passage long thought bricked over.

Inside was a small stool, a collapsed piano bench, and a faded ribbon.

The air smelled faintly of lavender and sea salt.

Intrigue Novellas

The Whittemore Portraits – Part IV – The English Bulldog

by Oscar Alarie October 11, 2025

The portrait of the English Bulldog hung in the manor’s smallest room — the smoking parlor. It was an odd choice. The space was narrow and low-ceilinged, filled with the stale scent of tobacco that had somehow survived the years. The painting itself, however, felt strangely alive.

The Bulldog sat squarely on a tufted velvet chair, his posture commanding despite his size. A deep burgundy robe draped over his shoulders like that of a gentleman at rest, his jowls sculpted in layers of shadow and soft light. Behind him, the faint outline of book filled shelves, dimly lit by the flicker from the fireplace, depending on where one stood.

The name plaque read simply:
“Bartholomew.”

Unlike the others, Bartholomew’s story was well-documented. He’d belonged to Gregory Whittemore, the estate’s patriarch during the turn of the century — a man both respected and feared for his temper. Gregory had been known for his love of cigars, whiskey, and quiet dominance. He trusted no one except Bartholomew, who, according to staff, followed him everywhere and growled at anyone who dared to speak too loudly in his presence.

After Gregory’s sudden death in that very parlor, his will left strict instructions: the Bulldog was to be “immortalized in paint” before burial. Yet when the artist arrived, Bartholomew was gone. Vanished, like Margaret’s golden Harper years before. The painting was completed anyway, based on sketches and memory.

But there was something off about it. Visitors described the dog’s gaze as unsettling — too direct, too knowing. His painted eyes seemed to follow movement, not in the typical parlor-trick way of old portraits, but with awareness, like a creature assessing whether you were threat or kin.

A century later, when restorers attempted to clean the canvas, the varnish refused to lift. Even solvents failed to dull the sheen in Bartholomew’s eyes.

It was during one of these cleanings that an apprentice noticed something unusual under the right armrest of the painted chair — a small, smudged reflection. Enlarged under light, it revealed a hand resting on the armrest. A human hand, painted so faintly that it had escaped notice for decades.

The next day, the apprentice reported hearing scratching behind the panel wall where the portrait hung. When she returned with the head conservator, the sound stopped, leaving behind only the faint smell of cigar smoke and the soft crackle of cooling ash.

By the following morning, a new note had appeared beneath the painting, scrawled in charcoal across the plaster:

“Four still wait. Two yet to come.”

No one ever admitted to writing it.

And upstairs, the piano began to play again — the same haunting nocturne, steady and unbroken this time, as if someone, or something, had finally found the rhythm.

Intrigue Novellas

The Whittemore Portraits – Part V – The French Bulldog

by Oscar Alarie October 11, 2025

The French Bulldog portrait was the smallest of them all — only twelve inches high, its frame gilded in delicate floral motifs, more jewelry than art. It hung beside the servants’ entrance, half hidden behind a curtain of dust and cobwebs, as if it didn’t want to be seen.

The subject, however, was impossible to ignore once found. The little dog sat upright on a grand settee; the light spilled across his coat in pale amber tones. His head tilted slightly, ears sharp, eyes full of alert curiosity. He wore a velvety cloak, a crown and a small silk ribbon tied neatly at the neck.

The plaque beneath read:
“Beau.”

No one knew who Beau had belonged to. The records had gaps — entire pages missing from the Whittemore family register during the years the portrait was likely painted. The date on the back of the canvas was smudged, the signature half-removed.

What the house staff did know was this: every time the moonlight reached that corridor, the faint sound of nails on wood echoed through the hall. Not frantic scratching — a rhythmic, gentle patter, as though something small was walking just out of sight.

One winter evening, the caretaker, a quiet man named Simon, found the frame slightly askew. Thinking it had loosened, he reached to straighten it — and froze. The ribbon around Beau’s painted neck was no longer blue. It was red.

He told no one.

Over the next few weeks, Simon began noticing other changes. A faint pawprint in the dust near the back stairs. The smell of fresh paint in rooms untouched for years. And one night, when he passed the French Bulldog’s portrait after midnight, he heard a whisper — not a voice exactly, but the sound of breathing from within the wall.

That was the same week the curator found the note beneath Bartholomew’s portrait: Four still wait. Two yet to come.

Simon hadn’t known what it meant then, but when the ribbon turned red again — darker this time, as though soaked — he began counting.

Sir Reginald. Captain. Harper. Bartholomew. That made four. Beau was fifth. One yet to come.

He pulled the painting from the wall the next morning. Behind it, the plaster had cracked in a perfect circle, and beneath that, a hollow cavity large enough to fit something small. Inside lay a folded scrap of linen and, resting on it, a key. Its handle was shaped like a dog’s head.

When he touched it, the piano upstairs began to play. Not the nocturne this time — something new. A brighter melody, unfinished, hesitating between major and minor.

Simon turned toward the stairs.

And as he climbed, every portrait in the house seemed to exhale, their painted eyes glinting in the half-light, as though the house itself was waiting for him to unlock the final door.