The crowd roared like thunder around the execution platform. Torches flared in the cold gray air, casting angry flickers across the jeering faces. The square reeked of sweat, smoke, and blood-old and new. Chants crashed together, clashing like waves: "Justice!" "Kill the tyrant!" "End his reign!"
The king knelt at the center of it all, his wrists bound in rusted iron, the platform boards soaked with the tears of those who came before him. His once-royal cloak hung from his shoulders in filthy shreds, fluttering like a dying flame. He kept his head down. He didn't want to see their faces-those who hated him. Not yet.
Above him, on the wooden steps, stood the young leader of the revolution. Straight-backed, still as a statue, his black eyes locked on the condemned man below. He wore no crown, but something in his silence demanded loyalty stronger than any bloodline ever had. The people called him a hero. A savior. A light in the dark.
And the king hated him.
Not with rage, but with something worse-envy. Bitter, choking envy.
He closed his eyes and exhaled, not to calm himself, but to retreat. The world faded, and he was a boy again.
A memory surfaced.
His mother, draped in crimson silk, sat in her chair of thorns beside the fire. "If you ever cry," she told him, sipping wine from a goblet shaped like a skull, "do it in secret. Kings don't bleed. They make others bleed for them."
He remembered nodding. He was six.
His father was worse. A towering man with a beard like a lion's mane and a voice that silenced rooms. "Kindness," he once snarled while throwing a servant down a staircase, "is the root of rebellion. Uproot it." The lesson was clear.
He remembered the cold halls, the guards who avoided his eyes, the way his laughter as a child would die in his throat the moment he saw his father's silhouette. He was taught to command before he could write, to punish before he could forgive. Each tutor who tried to teach compassion disappeared within a week.
He learned early: mercy was weakness, and love... love was a weapon others used to destroy you.
And so he became what they wanted-a perfect mirror of cruelty. He conquered not just lands, but hearts, turning trust into fear. He ruled through fire, through hunger, through whispered threats. And in time, he forgot he was ever a boy at all.
Until now.
The platform trembled beneath him. The people shouted louder. Spit landed near his knees. He blinked back to the present.
The rebel leader stood just a few steps away. So young. So defiant. So clean.
The king looked up, his eyes burning.
His fingers, hidden beneath the frayed sleeve of his robe, brushed against the ancient ring. A relic from a darker time-gold etched with symbols no scholar could read, pulsing faintly like a heartbeat. His father had once whispered its secret to him during a night thick with smoke and wine: "One life for another, if the moment's right. One soul for one soul."
The king had never dared use it. Not until now.
The executioner raised his axe. The crowd fell into a breathless silence.
Time slowed.
The king looked up into the eyes of the rebel leader-eyes sharp as flint, burning with justice. So sure. So certain.
He hated that certainty most of all.
A whisper slid from the king's lips-words older than language. The ring flared with sudden, silent light.
Then the world turned sideways.
He gasped. His vision twisted, blurred, then snapped into place.
He was standing now.
The weight of chains was gone. His back straight. His hands clean.
He looked down-and saw himself. His old body. Still kneeling.
The rebel's black eyes now stared back from a stranger's face.
The executioner swung the axe.
The blade fell like thunder.
The head hit the wood with a wet thud.
Gasps erupted from the crowd-but no one screamed. No one ran. Why would they? The tyrant was dead.
Or so they believed.
The new "king," standing where the rebel had stood, let a slow smile creep across his face. He turned to the lifeless body on the ground.
"Thanks for the opportunity," he said, voice calm, almost grateful. "I'll continue the path you made for me."
But the severed head twitched.
The mouth moved.
"That's not me!" it croaked, hoarse and broken. "That's not-!"
The sound was lost beneath the crowd's cheers.
No one listened.
The people saw what they wanted to see: their leader victorious. Their king, at last, defeated.
But the ring still glowed faintly on the finger of the man they now called a hero.
And the tyrant smiled behind borrowed eyes.
As the executioner lifted the bloodied axe and the crowd roared its triumph, the man once known as Vaelric stood tall in Kaelen Dareth's youthful body. He blinked slowly, letting the wave of adoration crash over him like a tide. A smile curled at his lips- practiced, charming, and now so fitting on this new face.
"Kaelen!" they shouted.
"Savior of the people!"
"The tyrant is dead!"
He turned and began descending the wooden steps, every movement smooth, every gesture perfectly measured. Hands reached out toward him-grimy, trembling, grateful. He clasped them with strength and grace, nodding, smiling, repeating soft phrases like "We did this together" and "A new dawn begins."
It was almost too easy.
The people saw what they wanted to see. The hero triumphant. The king slain. Their pain vindicated.
Yet, as he moved through the crowd, a few faces didn't beam with joy. Not fully.
A grizzled soldier-Kaelen's longtime comrade-watched with narrowed eyes.
"Strange, he's... quieter than usual," the man whispered to another.
A young woman who had fought beside Kaelen in the early uprisings tilted her head.
But they dismissed it. Who wouldn't seem changed after killing a tyrant?
The king-reborn in his enemy's flesh-welcomed them all. He offered handshakes, a few brief embraces, and even a bow to an old farmer who wept at his feet. Every gesture made him stronger in their eyes.
When it was done, when the square had begun to empty and the blood had been washed away, Vaelric-now Kaelen-walked alone through the shattered remains of his old palace. Burnt tapestries. Smashed thrones. He passed the place where his father once sat and paused only to laugh.
Eventually, he climbed to a quiet balcony above the city. The cold morning wind tugged at his cloak as he stood, alone, watching the horizon.
The sun was rising.
It painted the rooftops gold and turned the broken streets below into rivers of light.
He exhaled slowly, and for a moment, his face softened-before the grin returned.
"Funny," he thought. "The sunrise was always the symbol of an era ending. A tyrant falling. Evil dying."
He looked down at his youthful hands. At the ring still glowing faintly on his finger.
"But this time..."
The grin widened.
"...it's just the beginning."