Kaels POV:
It's funny, isn't it?
How beautiful the world can be when you're given a second chance.
The way the morning sunlight cuts through the glass windows of my classroom, warm and golden. The laughter of classmates spilling across the halls, the lazy sway of trees outside the building, their leaves painted in silver-green as the wind strokes them.
Life here feels almost… unreal.
Like a dream I wasn't supposed to have.
Sometimes, when I sit by the open window, feeling the sunlight glaze across my face, I forget the weight of the mark hidden beneath my wrist. The sigil that glows when my past claws its way back into memory. The mark of my curse… and my blessing.
Because I wasn't always this boy.
I wasn't always free.
I was something else before something less than human.
I was a toy.
The thought alone twists inside my chest. But I can't deny it; it's the truth of my past life. Back then, in the Kingdom of Viridion, strength was everything. Power was worshipped like a god, and those who had none were crushed under the boots of nobles, enslaved for their pleasure and their vanity.
And me?
I was weaker than most.
Which meant I wasn't just crushed I was used.
I remember the first time the King's daughter laid her eyes on me.
Her name was Princess Calyra.
Hair like a flowing cascade of molten gold, spilling past her hips, and eyes the deep blue of sapphires set in silver. Her body… gods, even now when I close my eyes I can see it an hourglass figure draped in gowns that clung to her curves, her breasts pressing against silken fabric as though even the threads struggled to contain her. She smelled of roses and wine, a fragrance that made men weak-kneed.
She made me weak.
But not in the way I ever wanted.
That day, she summoned me to her chamber. Velvet curtains drawn tight. The faint glow of amber lamps flickering against the polished stone walls. She was lounging across her bed, legs bare, crossed carelessly, her lips stained with crimson.
And with a smile half playful, half cruel—she whispered, "Kneel."
I did.
Because what else could I do?
From that moment on, I wasn't a boy.
I wasn't even a servant.
I was her toy.
She used me when her nights grew restless, when the weight of her royal crown pressed too heavy on her pretty little head. And she wasn't gentle. She was never gentle. Her hands roamed, her lips pressed, her body pressed mine into the mattress until I could barely breathe. She took pleasure in watching me squirm beneath her, in stripping the last of my dignity away with every moan she forced out of me.
And yet, the cruelest part?
Was how beautiful she was while she broke me.
Her skin glowing like porcelain, her laughter echoing like a song, her breasts heavy against my chest, her thighs tightening around me whenever I gasped. The world would have worshipped her as a goddess.
But I
I knew her as my tormentor.
And she wasn't the only one.
The noble heiresses of Viridion were no better.
Each one draped in jewels, their gowns revealing more than they concealed, their lips painted in temptation. They treated me like a plaything passed between their hands.
Lady Veylis, tall and raven-haired, whose curves swayed like fire each time she walked, loved to press her heel against my chest and watch me beg.
Duchess Marienne, with skin the color of sunlit bronze and breasts that spilled like ripe fruit, made me lay beneath her and called it worship.
Even the Queen herself, in moments when the King grew cold, summoned me. Her touch was silk, her whispers poison.
Each night, I was drained not of strength alone, but of my very self.
And while I was humiliated, broken, forced to endure their lust and games, my people the powerless, the unmarked were enslaved. Dragged from their homes each dawn, forced to build towers and temples for gods that never came, for nobles who reveled in their suffering.
And my sister…
My only sister, Elira.
She was taken from me before the worst of my torment began. Sold like cattle to a so-called feminine goddess. A deity cloaked in seduction and shadow. I never saw her again. But I felt the emptiness each time I was dragged back to the chambers, my body pressed against silken sheets, my moans turned to cries.
The gods were cruel.
The women were crueler.
And me?
I became numb.
Numb to their lips trailing down my chest.
Numb to their laughter as they stripped me bare.
Numb to the way their breasts pressed against me, their hips grinding, their voices moaning my name as though I were theirs.
I was a body.
Not a soul.
And yet… I endured.
Because deep down, I clung to a sliver of hope that one day, someone would see me not as a toy, not as a slave, but as a man.
That hope came in the form of a woman named Seraphine…
.....
(Kael's Voice)~Entrenched
It cling
It is strange, how the body remembers what the mind begs to forget
Here, in this second life, sunlight warms my skin, yet beneath the warmth I can still feel their hands. My breath rises in freedom, yet some nights I taste the perfume of Seraphina sweet, cloying, the fragrance of roses steeped in venom.
The world around me is innocent in its beauty. Birds sing as though cruelty never existed. The wind carries laughter from children who have never been broken. But within me lies a theater of shadows, and the curtains never close.
I was their entertainment. Their toy. Their practice of power masked in play.
The king's daughter Seraphina was the first to teach me that seduction was not always a gift, but sometimes a weapon sharpened against the weak. She was beautiful in a way that was unfair, almost obscene. Hair like flowing gold, eyes like crushed sapphire, lips forever moist as if she had just tasted something forbidden. She moved with grace that seemed ordained by the gods themselves, yet her touch carved scars into me deeper than any blade could.
When I was brought into her chamber that first night, my wrists bound with silk that felt softer than breath, I thought for a moment that fortune had turned its face toward me. She laughed as I trembled, not from cold but from the shame of wanting what I should have resisted.
"Do you see," she whispered, her voice pressing into my ear like velvet dipped in flame, "how easily the lowborn bend?"
Her heirs surrounded us, daughters of noble blood, each one a reflection of a different cruelty dressed as beauty. Veloria, with hips that swayed like they commanded the very air. Althea, slender as a blade, her eyes always sharp, cutting into me as though my flesh were parchment to be inscribed upon. Myra, soft curves and honeyed lips, who giggled sweetly as she pressed humiliation into my skin, as if affection could be poisoned.
I was not touched by one, but by all. Together they painted me in shame, in sweat, in the trembling of a body that refused to betray desire even as my soul fractured.
Seraphina, the leader, pressed her nails down my chest slowly, dragging trails of crimson fire. She spoke of power, of how men were weak and women divine, of how the gods themselves demanded that the low bow before the high. And as her lips hovered above mine, never granting the mercy of a kiss, I learned the truth: desire was not always gentle it could be crafted into chains.
And oh, how cruelly beautiful those chains were.
I still remember the laughter that echoed after they were done with me, the sound that clung to my skin like ash. They left me drenched, both in sweat and in their perfume, lying upon sheets stained with the silence of my dignity.
Every day, the weak were summoned. Some to labor in the fields beneath the burning gaze of the sun. Some to be paraded before the temple of the Goddess of Chains, where chants rose like smoke, prayers to a deity that had never answered. And some, like me, to be humiliated not for service, but for pleasure.
The people called it divine order. I called it the slow murder of the spirit.
But what drowned me deeper than my own shame was my sister.
She was younger, fragile as moonlight upon still water. Her laughter had been my shield once, back when we were children playing in alleys, dreaming of freedom. Yet even she was not spared. I watched her sold, traded as though her worth could be measured in coin. I remember the day the carriage took her away, her eyes wet not with tears but with the stunned disbelief of betrayal. She reached for me, and I for her, but between us was the chain of our blood's curse: we were born powerless.
That was the day I stopped dreaming.
That was the day the heirs took greater delight in reminding me that I was alone, that my body was theirs to toy with, that my silence was part of their entertainment.
Veloria would lean close, her lips brushing against my ear, whispering things that made my skin burn with both shame and desire. "Tell me you want this," she would tease, dragging her finger along my thigh. And though every part of me screamed in denial, my body betrayed me, hardening, trembling, aching beneath their gaze.
They laughed when I moaned. They laughed harder when I broke.
Every moment in that palace was a dance of cruelty dressed in silk, every touch both seductive and damning. Seraphina would tilt her head, lips curled in amusement, as if I were a painting she had commissioned solely to mark my collapse.
And yet, here I am reborn.
The sun warms me now, and I tell myself I am free. But freedom feels like an illusion when every breeze carries the ghost of their perfume, when every whisper of silk across my skin recalls the night Seraphina pressed her body against mine, her breasts firm against my chest, her voice dripping venom disguised as sweetness.
They did not merely touch me. They rewrote me.
I carry them with me, even now.
And perhaps that is what terrifies me most how a man broken by humiliation can still hunger for the hands that broke him.
.....
Some memories are not recalled, they erupt.
They wait beneath the skin, beneath the pulse of the veins, until some careless sound or smell cracks the surface, and then they come flooding like a storm.
That is how the night of the Red Chamber returns to me.
Seraphina summoned me without reason, and as always, refusal was not a word that existed for men like me. I remember the guards smirking as they delivered me, their torches glowing against marble walls carved with scenes of conquest kings kneeling, queens triumphant, men stripped bare as trophies of war. Even the palace walls laughed at my fate.
Inside the chamber, the heirs waited. Draped in silks of crimson and gold, they lounged as though their bodies were altars, and I was the sacrifice.
Seraphina sat higher than the rest, legs crossed, her gown parting enough to reveal the smooth ivory of her thighs. Her smile was not sweet it was sovereign. She didn't need to raise her voice; her silence commanded more than any scream.
"Undress him," she told the others, though her eyes never left mine.
Althea obeyed first, her fingers cold as she tugged at the knots of my garments. She did not touch me like a lover, she touched me like an executioner sharpening her blade. Myra giggled as cloth fell from me, clapping her hands softly as though unwrapping a gift. Veloria circled me like a predator circling prey, her nails dragging along my skin, leaving trails that burned even in their lightness.
They whispered things that made my ears burn. Words meant to break a man from the inside out.
Seraphina finally rose, moving toward me like a lioness with no need to hide her hunger. Her hand cupped my face, forcing me to look at her while my body betrayed me again, trembling with shameful arousal.
"You hate that you want us," she whispered, her lips brushing so close that my breath caught. "That is why you will never be free."
And she was right.
Even as they mocked me, even as they reduced me to something less than human, my body responded with urgency I despised. Every moan was both a cry for mercy and a confession of desire. They turned my weakness into spectacle, my shame into their theater of laughter.
That night they did not simply use me. They displayed me.
The chamber doors were not closed. Servants passed by, glancing, whispering, smirking. The heirs made certain my humiliation was never private. Seraphina wanted the world to see what divine blood could command and what powerless flesh could not resist.
When it was over, they left me sprawled upon the velvet floor, breathless, broken, consumed by a fire I could neither extinguish nor embrace.
Veloria leaned down one last time, her lips pressing a mockery of a kiss to my cheek. "You'll dream of us," she murmured. "And you'll hate yourself for it."
And gods help me, she was right again.
Now, in this new life, I walk among strangers who do not know my name, and yet my every step is haunted by theirs. The world believes I am free, reborn, unshackled. But freedom is not freedom when the past whispers in your blood.
Even now, I wake in the night with sweat upon my skin, my body aroused as though summoned back to the palace. I see Seraphina's sapphire eyes in the darkness, hear Veloria's laughter in the wind, feel Althea's blade-like touch along my ribs.
I hate them.
And I desire them.
And I hate that I desire them.
This is the paradox they left me with—a prison without walls, chains forged not of steel but of memory.
But this time this life I swear it will not be so.
The gods, or fate, or whatever cruel hand guides the cycle of birth and death, gave me another chance. Seraphina's comes close enough to me.. too clingy i felt to my skin, her lips brushed mine not with cruelty but with trembling affection, pressing her head to mine and a crystal just older than their kingdom—to my wrist. A sirgil burned beneath to my flesh glowing like fire. They placed me back into the world, not as a slave, not as a toy, but as something else. I do not yet know what I will become but I know what I will not.
I will not be theirs again.
And if Seraphina still lives in this age, if Veloria and the heirs still wear their beauty like daggers, if their bloodline still thrives then let them tremble. Because I have walked through fire once, and though I was burned, I rose again from the ashes.
In this life, the chains will break.
In this life, I will be the one to laugh.
And in this life, they will know what it is to kneel.
The night air around me now is soft, almost forgiving. The stars scatter like silver dust across the velvet sky. I lift my gaze, and for the first time, I allow myself to imagine something dangerous 'vengeance, yes, but also power. A hunger that is no longer just for their touch, but for their surrender.
I can almost see it: Seraphina, no longer sovereign, but stripped of her crown. Veloria, her laughter turned to pleading. Althea, trembling under the weight of her own cruelty returned. Myra, her sweetness soured into regret.
The thought alone is enough to steady me.
I was broken once. But even broken men can sharpen themselves into weapons.
And I am sharpening.