An irony lost on the man who had once been its beating heart
But fate, in all its cruelty, refused him the dignity of final rest.
His soul didn't drift into peace. It didn't scatter into stars.
Instead, it clung to something. Someone.
A vessel as broken as he was.
A boy who had chosen to leave this world behind.
Then, the silence shattered like brittle glass.
Elliot jolted awake.
Air punched into his lungs, raw and unfamiliar, like fire.
He gasped as if dragged up from drowning.
His eyes flew open too fast, and pain shot through them, hot and sharp,
like they were being torn from his skull.
He winced, hands flying to his face.
Everything ached.
His vision swam.
The ceiling above was cracked, stained yellow with damp.
Peeling wallpaper curled like old skin.
The air stank of blood, sweat, and something sour.
Beneath him, a pool of blood.
Thick. Warm.
Still fresh.
"Where… am I?" he rasped.
"I… thought I died. On the battlefield…"
The words barely left his mouth before the pain returned.
Worse this time.
A low, thrumming pulse built behind his eyes until it roared.
He screamed through clenched teeth, hands pressed to his temples.
But it wasn't just pain.
It was intrusion.
Memories surged forward.
But they weren't his.
A name surfaced: Lance.
A noble boy.
Small. Sickly. Mocked. Unwanted.
A child cast out by the very family that should have sheltered him.
He saw flashes—
A woman's face contorted in pain, then softened by peace.
Her blood soaked through his fingers as she slumped forward,
a blade through her chest.
Her arms still wrapped around him, even in death.
Her killer—
his father.
Elliot staggered as more poured in.
Laughter turned to screams.
Hands that once caressed became cruel.
A life barely begun, snuffed out by despair.
Sixteen years of loneliness.
Sixteen years of silence, sorrow, and the desperate attempt to be enough.
Memories that weren't his,
but pain that seeped into every corner of him like ink into parchment.
Two broken souls,
shattered in different ways,
now forced to become one.
He gripped his head, chest heaving.
He didn't know where Lance ended and where Elliot began.
"Who… am I?" he whispered.
His voice was raw. Softer now. Almost afraid.
"I was supposed to die with them."
His breath trembled.
"With my people. My knights. My—"
The words stuck in his throat.
His sister—
the one he used to sneak pastries to just to see her laugh.
Gone.
Her laughter, once a melody in the castle corridors,
was now a ghost in his chest.
His mother—
the one who brewed herbal teas and fussed over his sleeping habits.
Who taught him that a ruler must carry both sword and soul.
Gone.
His knights.
Men who called him brother.
Who bled beside him.
For him.
All of them… gone.
Velharis—
burned to ash and memory.
Even his father, distant and cold, likely dust by now.
And yet Elliot remained.
Alive. Somehow.
Trapped in someone else's skin.
He tried to stand.
The moment he moved, his legs buckled.
The floor rushed up fast. He hit it hard.
Groaning, he dragged himself upright again,
every limb trembling.
He crawled toward the bathroom, inch by inch.
A mirror hung askew on the wall,
its surface split by a jagged crack down the middle.
He reached for the sink, steadying himself.
Then he looked.
The reflection was wrong.
Alien.
Gone was the white hair that marked his bloodline.
Gone were the blue eyes that once held a kingdom's gaze.
Now, black eyes stared back.
Dull. Endless.
Hair dark and matted.
A scar curled around the neck like a noose.
He touched his face.
It didn't feel like his.
It wasn't.
"I died with them," he whispered.
"I should've died with them…"
No tears came.
Even grief felt exhausted.
He sank to the cold tile, knees scraping the floor.
The silence around him wasn't peaceful.
It was suffocating.
But somewhere, buried deep beneath everything,
a spark flared.
Not hope. Not yet.
But something close.
Maybe it was guilt.
Maybe pride.
Maybe the sheer, stubborn refusal to stay dead.
Whatever it was, it whispered:
Get up.
So he did.
Slowly.
Shakily.
He stood.
"I won't die again," he said, voice steady now.
"If fate cursed me to live…
then I'll make that curse bleed."