The Silence of the Throne (Revised)

For centuries more, she served the new line of kings. Then, ninety years ago, the world simply stopped. The king, his family, the guards, the servants—they all vanished. The necromantic curse that fell upon the royal line was swift and absolute, but from within her gilded cage, it was merely an inexplicable silence. The bustling palace grew quiet. The dust began to settle. The chain, magically bound to the throne, still held her fast.

Her purpose, the only reality she had known for a millennium, was gone. Her power had no vessel; her duty had no master.

The mother of nobles and priestess of a healing god was left alone in a decaying tomb, a prisoner of a throne that was now not just empty, but cursed. She waits, a creature of perfect conditioning, for the fundamental law of her universe to be restored. She waits for a ruler. And after ninety years of silence, her first sight of another living soul prompts the only question her existence allows her to ask, her mind reaching back through the drowned centuries to the grandest title she can remember:

"Are you the new king? ...No... an Emperor. Are you my new Emperor?"