Rex flipped a page, the paper crackling under his thumb. Another chapter. Another half-baked cliffhanger.
His shrink's voice echoed in his head: "Find a story. Sink into it. Let your mind go somewhere else."
At first, he'd scoffed. Reading? Him? He wasn't the bookworm type.
But what else was he supposed to do in a concrete box with nothing but a buzzing light and the occasional rat? The shrink had been right. Stories kept the walls from pressing in, kept his thoughts from circling back to… other things.
Still, he never finished them. Not one. He'd tear through chapters, laugh at the absurdity, roll his eyes at the tropes... and then just… stop. Move on to the next. Like clockwork. Always leaving the story dangling, unresolved, unfinished.
Kinda like his life.
A clang rattled the bars. "Hey, Rex. You decided on your last meal yet?"
He didn't bother looking up. "Yeah. Pussy."
The guard groaned. Another muttered, "Sick bastard." Boots scraped as they walked off, leaving Rex alone again with the book in his lap.
His eyes traced the lines, but the words blurred. All he could think was that he had less than twenty-four hours left to live. And what was he doing with them? Not praying. Not begging. Not reminiscing.
Reading a story he wouldn't finish.
He chuckled, low and bitter. Figures.
The hum of the ceiling light buzzed louder than the words on the page. He shut the book and let it rest on his knees, staring at the faint stains on the concrete floor. The stink of bleach never really covered the blood. Not his. Not this time.
He wasn't some sloppy killer. He'd been careful. He'd always been careful. But all it took was one mistake. One pair of eyes in the wrong place, one survivor who shouldn't have been breathing. The papers called him a monster. The cops called it justice served. The shrink called it compulsion.
He called it survival.
Rex leaned back against the wall, chains rattling as he moved. Cold steel cuffs hugged his ankles, linked to the iron ring bolted into the ground. The sound had been background noise for so long he barely noticed anymore. Prison wasn't a cell to him; it was just the natural end of the road.
"You had a good run," one of the guards had told him once, smirking through the bars. "Could've been bigger if you were smarter."
Smarter. He almost laughed at the word. Smarter had kept him out of the chair for years. Smarter had let him pick his targets carefully... always the kind of filth no one would miss. Dealers, pimps, predators, the leeches that bled the streets dry.
No one said thank you. No one cared that half the bodies he left behind deserved worse.
They only cared that Rex finally got sloppy.
He couldn't help himself. The bigger the rot, the harder it was not to cut it out. That's what did him in.
And now here he was, shackled, counting down the hours. His last night alive. And what was he doing?
Reading.
The shrink had slipped him the book like it was some grand parting gift. "Keep your mind somewhere else, Rex. Somewhere better."
Better, huh? This was a ridiculous story about kingdoms tearing themselves apart, crowns won by blood, betrayals stacked on betrayals, and a king he remembered as a joke.
He'd read the first chapter. That was enough.
Rex smirked and throw the book away. "Guess we're both screwed."
Sleep came anyway, fitful and shallow. Strange, really... he knew damn well that the next time they put him to sleep, he wasn't waking up.
So when his eyes snapped open again, he was stunned. He wasn't in the narrow cot where he'd been rotting. He wasn't in his cell at all.
He was standing in some vast chamber, walls glittering with banners and braziers. People packed the hall, dressed like rejects from some Pride and Prejudice knockoff... frills, lace, powdered wigs, the whole ridiculous mess. Except… this wasn't some tea-party costume drama.
Because front and center, a man with wild blond hair and bloodshot eyes was driving a sword into a woman who shrieked and clawed at his scalp, tearing bloody lines across his skin.
Watching them, Rex couldn't help but think of home... his neighborhood, the way block wars started over nothing and ended in blood. Same desperation. Same hunger. Same stupidity.
But he couldn't move. Not a twitch. All he could do was watch, like his body had been written out of the script. Maybe that was fine. Maybe this was just the last dream he'd ever get, and his dream-self knew the lines better than he did.
On the throne sat an old man with a crown polished too bright for his sagging head. Bald on top, a patchy brown beard dangling from his chin, eyes sunk deep and raw from sleeplessness... or madness. He kept sniffling between words, each slurred like he was drunk on his own decay.
"A king," the man wheezed, "shouldn't be betrayed by his own people. You… you're not fit to wear the crown."
The blonde one, the prince, screamed back. Begged, shouted, voice cracking under the strain. He tried to climb the steps, hands out like the throne was a life raft. He didn't make it past the second step before steel split him open.
Rex wanted to laugh. That fast. That ugly. Just like the streets... one wrong move, and you're meat.
Then came the rest. Two men in fine coats, their bravado cut short the second they shouted defiance. Guards turned on them quick, steel flashing. They dropped like anyone else.
The room hushed, silence filling every gilded corner. One by one, heads turned toward him. Toward Rex.
And in that moment, he almost wished his dream had the decency to play the cliché... drop him there naked, pants around his ankles, the whole humiliating bit. That would've been the cherry on top, a fitting punchline for the bastard's last dream.
But instead, someone's voice rumbled through the hall.
"Before crown and court, you shall choose. Will you name another to bear the crown and die as their most loyal hand? Or will you take the crown for yourself, and live as the one who chose no king, but became one?"
The words rang strange... too sharp, too familiar, like someone had carved them into Rex's skull long before this night. They jolted him awake inside the dream.
And then she moved.
Not him. Not the blonde prince sprawled dead on the steps. Someone else. A smaller figure slipping past behind him... a woman. Copper hair catching the firelight, freckles across pale skin, gray eyes fixed steady on the throne. She walked with no hesitation, as if she already knew how this ended.
She knelt, both hands wrapped tight around a dagger that seemed older than the hall itself. Its blade glowed, etched with symbols Rex couldn't read, the kind of writing that felt wrong even from where he stood frozen.
Then she looked at him.
The glance hit harder than the king's words. Not in his head this time... in his chest, a blow that stole his breath. And when she spoke, the sound cut through the silence like a verdict.
"Be who you are."
No fanfare. No speeches. Just steel driven into her own heart. The dagger sank deep, and her blood sprayed in a hot arc that spattered against Rex. He didn't flinch. Didn't blink. He'd stood in worse storms. But still... something gnawed at him.
Because the name echoing in his skull wasn't one he recognized. And the pain searing through his chest wasn't some phantom... no, it felt like the current itself, the jolt of the chair, chewing his nerves apart while he sat strapped down in that other world.
"Sini Reinhardt," the king's broken voice declared, half grief, half awe. "Such a loyal kingmaker you've had, Aurex Valemont."
Rex's eyes weren't on the ridiculous bald bastard in a cape, parading around with a crown too shiny for his own head. His gaze locked on a different red... the pool spreading from the kneeling woman's body. Copper hair. Gray eyes. A name still burning in his chest.
"A… king must know his loyal subjects will always place him first," the crowned fool droned, voice thick with pomp. "So he should not call it tragedy, but order… As it should be."
Rex almost missed the hand clamping onto his shoulder. The touch jolted him, broke through the muffled haze like a fist to the jaw. Suddenly the noise slammed into him all at once... the roaring crowd, cheering, clapping, drunk off gore. Men in lace cuffs and powdered wigs tearing meat from bones while blood still steamed on the floor. Women in gowns sipping wine as if nothing in this circus was out of place.
And the hand... real, solid, squeezing harder. Pain. Not dream-pain, not phantom current. Actual flesh-on-flesh pressure. Rex froze, not because of the grip, but because the shoulder it grabbed was wrong. Too narrow. Too soft. No density of years of training. This wasn't his body.
The man yanked him forward, and with a shove from liveried butlers, Rex stumbled up the stairs. From higher ground, the scene opened before him, wider, grander, uglier. A hall drowning in wealth, gleaming chandeliers, gold filigree crawling across every wall. More ridiculous than the gaudiest palace he'd ever bled someone out in. And he'd killed a president.
"I hereby declare Aurex Valemont as the next King!"
The hall erupted. Cheers roared so loud they broke into static, a high-pitched ringing that drilled into Rex's skull. But it wasn't the noise that rattled him... it was the name. Aurex Valemont.
He knew that name. The washed-up drunk of a king. Bald, bloated, toppled by his own brood in a trial just like this. That was in the last damned book he skimmed before the needle was meant to drop him.
Probably just a dream, he told himself. His brain recycling scraps of what he'd half-read. Aurex wasn't even the protagonist... just a plot point, a drunk monarch, a gap-toothed grin, and opinions no one cared about.
Hell, he couldn't even remember if the guy showed up again. Rex had read the first chapter, then skipped to the final page, pretending he'd finished it when all he did was bluff his way through the middle.
But he didn't have time to think it through... because the crown was already being torn off one fool's head and shoved down onto his.
Rex's eyes flicked to the previous king, and the man didn't look defeated... he looked broken. Lost. His lips moved, stuttering, slurring, words sloshing together. Most of it was nonsense, but a few cut through the ringing. "…run… trap…"
Rex wanted to laugh. Like it could get any more of a trap than this?
They draped him in a cape... thankfully not the same red rag as shiny-head wore... and shoved him into the throne. The damn thing wasn't even cold like he expected, though it gleamed like it had been forged from solid gold.
Then came the props. One butler shoved a sceptre into his hand, gold and gaudy as sin. Another pressed a massive goblet into his grip, carved with an intricate design... some poor bastard being strangled by twisting vines, face locked in silent agony.
For a moment, Rex wondered if dreams could drag on this long... too vivid, too sharp, the pain in his chest still pulsing like an aftershock. He refused to look down, to where the woman had collapsed in a heap at his feet, blood pumping out in waves. Gore wasn't new to him, but for some reason… this time he couldn't make himself face it.
"The era of Nazid has ended!" someone who looks like a priest roared, voice wet with drink. "Now our kingdom shall be known as Aurex... in honor of our new king, Aurex Valemont!"
The crowd erupted, powdered wigs and silk sleeves thrashing like they were fans at a sports game, not nobles at a coronation. Their cheers shook the walls, hollow and unreal, and Rex wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it.
Then something caught his eye.
On the golden sceptre shoved into his grip, a shimmer of red. Not the cape... it draped heavy across his shoulders. Not blood either... blood dulled and darkened. This was different. A gleam. Alive.
He stared harder, and the reflection stared back.
Black hair. Red eyes burning like coals. A face that wasn't his.
Not Rex.
They kept calling him that name. Aurex Valemont.
It couldn't be the same Aurex he remembered... the washed-up drunk, the gap-toothed king with a harem, doomed to be toppled by one of his own bastard heirs in a trial just like this. That was all Rex knew. That was all the book ever gave him.
But this wasn't a dream. He was standing in the final trial of the King's Gambit.
The face in the reflection wasn't some bloated relic. It was young. Black-haired. Red-eyed. A crown newly pressed onto his skull.
This wasn't that Aurex anymore.
This was him. Rex.
Not the reader on death row.
But the king at the very start of his bloody story.