The throne room reeked of iron, incense, and the sweat of nobles pressing in like vultures around a carcass. Torches spat sparks that danced over polished marble, throwing grotesque shadows that licked the gilded pillars. Every cheer, every jeer, felt like a nail being driven into Lucian's chest.
He knelt at the center, arms bound, every muscle trembling under the weight of years of betrayal. Twenty-five years old, yet he looked decades older: shoulders sunken, chest hollowed, veins dark beneath waxy skin. His hair clung limp, thin as cobwebs, framing hollow gray eyes that had seen too much, suffered too much, and now burned with hopelessness.
The court laughed.
Isolde's body lay sprawled at his feet. Her apron was a dark crimson river, her throat torn in a violent, jagged line. Lucian's stomach twisted violently, bile rising, and yet he could not cry, could not scream. She had been the only one who had ever truly cared for him — her warmth now a macabre contrast to the icy laughter echoing from the dais.
Sebastian stood before him, tall, golden, flawless. His silk robes gleamed like fire, his smile sharp and cruel. He crouched close, tilting Lucian's chin with the tip of his blade.
"You always looked at me like I was your savior," Sebastian said softly, venom hidden behind honeyed words. "Little brother, did it never occur to you that every touch, every smile… every medicine… was mine to control you? To break you?"
Lucian's throat burned. His cracked lips whispered, Why?
Sebastian's laugh was low, intimate, a snake in the dark. "Because you were weak. Because the world would not mourn you, so I had to savor every ounce of your suffering myself." He pressed the blade to Lucian's chest. "Do you remember the taste of it? The slow burn in your veins? Every meal, every sip… I ensured that death never forgot you."
The words coiled in Lucian's mind, each syllable a twist of fire in his chest. The memories surfaced unbidden: teachers striking him at Sebastian's command, servants snickering as he bent under invisible weight, the poison coursing through his veins for years, and Sebastian smiling, always smiling, like a painter admiring his canvas.
And now, there was only the steel.
The blade plunged.
Pain detonated in every nerve. Muscle tore, ribs groaned, blood gushed, filling his mouth with copper. His scream caught in his throat, choked, broken, drowned beneath the roar of the crowd. He felt every fiber of his being tearing, yet he could not move. His body betrayed him, collapsing to the marble, soaking in the warmth of his own death.
Sebastian crouched close, whispering with deliberate cruelty. "See how fragile you truly are? All your years, all your hope… wasted. Even your death belongs to me."
Lucian's last sight was Isolde's lifeless eyes, staring at him from the blood-soaked floor. The last sound, Sebastian's triumphant laughter, echoed like a hammer in his skull.
Then, darkness.
Death should have been silence. Instead, it was a cacophony of pain.
Lucian fell through endless black, his body dissolving in threads, flesh unraveling, bones splintering and reforming over and over. He screamed, but sound was meaningless — only sensation remained: the taste of iron, the smell of rot, the pressure of invisible hands pulling at his skin.
Whispers slithered along his mind, like knives scraping bone:
Weak. Useless. Disposable.Loved only by fools.Forgotten before you were born.
He tried to anchor himself to memory. The warmth of Isolde's smile. The first day Sebastian had smiled at him. But each memory twisted, poisoned, taunting. Even recollection became torture.
Flesh tore from his bones. Veins boiled. Pain layered on pain until it became sensation itself — a living, breathing entity. Yet the bitterness of poison lingered in his throat, a memory of every slow death he had endured. Metallic, acrid, creeping into his stomach and lungs, forcing him to relive every meal, every sip, every betrayal.
The shadows approached. Thick, oily, alive. They wrapped around him, squeezing, folding him into their cold embrace. They whispered in his ears:
We remember. We obey. We wait.
Lucian tried to scream, tried to fight, tried to dissolve into nothing. But the darkness did not allow it. Instead, it fed on his rage, on the white-hot fire of betrayal, bending it into something stronger, sharper, hungrier.
"I don't want to die!" he thought, mind splintering into frantic shards. "Not yet… Not until they all burn."
The shadows coiled, tightening like a fist around a heartbeat. They responded. They lifted him. Pulled him. Reformed him.
And then — the world came back.
He gasped, lungs clawing at the cold night air.
His chest rose without pain. His hands — small, fragile, trembling — clutched at his sides. The taste in his mouth: metallic, bitter, familiar. He recoiled, throat twisting, stomach threatening to reject it, yet it burned him no more. The body that should have shattered under the poison's memory remained intact, whole, and alive.
He staggered toward the mirror.
A boy of ten stared back. Pale, silvery hair clinging to a face too delicate, too soft. Skin almost translucent, veins faintly visible beneath. Hands like porcelain. Shoulders narrow, chest slight.
But the eyes — his eyes — burned with storm-gray fire, a hatred far beyond a child's comprehension.
The reflection trembled, then smiled faintly, venomously.
He remembered. Every meal, every whisper, every blow, every laugh of the court. Every smile of Sebastian that had been a lie. Every hand that had held him close while killing him slowly.
"I came back," he whispered, voice steady despite the body it issued from. "And this time… I will not be broken."
Shadows in the corners of the room seemed to pulse in recognition. They stretched, curling, reaching toward him, eager to obey.
Lucian raised a trembling hand. The darkness flowed into his palm like living ink, thick, cold, and hungry. He pressed it to the stone floor. The shadows rippled outward, testing him, responding to the unspoken command of rage and grief.
The bitterness of the water lingered on his tongue — a reminder of every toxin Sebastian had ever slipped into his life. It should have curled his stomach, made his pulse race in fear, but it did not. Instead, it tasted like fuel, like something that fed the fire in his chest.
His first thought was clear, sharp, unflinching:
Sebastian… you stole everything. But I remember. And I will take it all back.
The child in the mirror was small, fragile, and pale. But the mind inside him, scorched by betrayal and death, was a weapon waiting to be wielded.
Not this time.