Why me? The question clawed at the fragile, fracturing remains of Devin's sanity as he sprinted through the suffocating darkness of the castle's hidden corridors. Why would God let this happen?
The answer, however, was already painted in visceral detail across the stone walls of his home. It was Count Sapien. It had to be. The timing of the invasion, the sickeningly sweet smell of the venom, the sheer, unadulterated brutality of the beasts—they were his experiments. The Count had stood in their great hall just hours ago, a pale harbinger of the massacre that was now drowning the royal family in their own blood.
Devin dashed blindly through the narrow, serpentine pathways built into the very bones of the fortress. These were the same dusty, forgotten tunnels that he and Bridget used to play hide-and-seek in as children. He remembered the sound of her innocent laughter echoing off the damp masonry.
Now, every sharp turn he took, every long shadow that stretched across the floorboards, brought crippling, intrusive flashes of her broken, mutilated body lying in the guest wing. The phantom scent of her ocean-blue dress, now soaked in thick crimson, threatened to paralyze his lungs. But the primal, biological urge to survive forced his bare, blood-stained feet to keep moving. He had to get out.
He threw his shoulder against the final wooden panel, bursting out into the cool, unforgiving night air.
He stumbled into the main courtyard and froze.
The castle's main gate was completely decimated. The massive iron portcullis, a marvel of Northern engineering meant to withstand siege engines, had been torn asunder. The jagged, ruined metal bars were still attached to their massive hinges, bent outward like the ribs of a slaughtered animal. They were grotesquely decorated with the fresh, dripping blood of the royal guard.
As Devin staggered forward, his feet slipping on the slick cobblestones, a deafening explosion erupted from the upper levels of the palace.
The shockwave knocked him to his knees. He spun around, his breath catching in his throat.
It was his room.
The epicenter of the massive blast was the very bedchamber he had fled from just moments ago. A fiery shockwave blew out the towering stained-glass windows, sending a lethal rain of razor-sharp, glowing shards cascading down into the courtyard. The flames spread slowly at first, a creeping, hungry orange beast that began to consume the ancient stone, before erupting into a roaring inferno.
Devin knelt there, a helpless, hollow shell, watching the only home he had ever known burn to the ground.
Cold realization washed over him. They hadn't just come for his father to usurp the throne. They hadn't just come to cripple the kingdom. They had targeted his chambers specifically with explosives.
They wanted the anomaly. They wanted the boy with God's blood.
Then, piercing clearly through the chaotic roar of the collapsing masonry, Devin heard a scream.
It was a sound of pure, unadulterated terror, stripping away all royal decorum. He instantly knew who it belonged to.
"Mother!"
Devin whipped his head toward the perimeter of the blazing courtyard. There, illuminated in the flickering, hellish light of the burning castle, he saw her.
Queen Eleanor was battered. Her elegant royal nightgown was torn at the shoulders and covered in dark soot, but she was alive. Her wrists were bound tightly behind her back with thick, blackened iron chains. She was fighting, digging her bare heels into the dirt, but she was being violently dragged toward a heavy, armored carriage that bore the obsidian crest of Cypris.
"Mother!" Devin shrieked, the sound tearing at his vocal cords.
He pushed himself off the cobblestones and ran. Hot, desperate tears streamed down his face, his screams blending with the chaotic din of his dying kingdom. In that moment, he didn't care about the Holy Gene. He didn't care about the laws of succession, or the terrifying reality that he was an unarmed seventeen-year-old boy rushing headlong into a slaughterhouse.
She was all he had left.
"Let her go!" Devin roared, his legs pumping furiously as he closed the distance.
But before he could reach the carriage, a colossal shadow detached itself from the gloom and stepped directly into his path.
It was a Cyprian soldier, but like the others, the venom had warped him into a towering nightmare. His muscles bulged obscenely, threatening to shatter the dark armor strapped to his chest. He looked down at Devin, his eyes the same vacant, fathomless obsidian as the beasts inside the castle corridors.
In his massive, clawed hands, the brute wielded a long, crude, mechanical sword.
Devin's eyes darted to the weapon. The sharp edge of the heavy blade had been replaced with horrific, grinding, rough-hewn teeth. It didn't look like a knight's weapon; it looked like the merciless, rotating face of a lumber chainsaw, built purely for butchery.
Before Devin could even open his mouth, before he could demand his mother's release or attempt to dart past the behemoth, the soldier swung the massive weapon.
There was no dramatic clashing of steel. There was no heroic parry. There was only the sickening, mechanical roar of the blade.
The serrated teeth cleaved effortlessly through Devin's left collarbone.
It didn't slice cleanly. It gnawed. The mechanical, jagged edge chewed through his pale flesh, shattering his clavicle and tearing through dense muscle as it carved a deep, diagonal trench all the way down toward his heart.
The agony was beyond human comprehension. It was a white-hot, blinding fire that instantly eclipsed the burning of his home. Devin's mouth opened in a silent, breathless scream.
The towering beast grunted, brutally yanking the heavy sword back out. Thick chunks of Devin's own flesh and shattered rib bone followed the jagged teeth, splattering wetly onto the cold cobblestones.
Devin's legs gave out instantly.
He collapsed to the ground, a crumpled, broken heap of a ruined prince. The world around him immediately began to dim. The vibrant, chaotic oranges of the courtyard fire faded into a muted, fuzzy, suffocating gray.
He could hear Queen Eleanor screaming his name from the carriage, pulling frantically at her chains, but the sound was distant and hollow, as if he were sinking deep underwater. Blood pooled rapidly beneath his ruined chest, warm and terrifyingly vast.
Devin rolled his head back, staring up at the smoke-choked night sky. His lungs filled with fluid.
With his final, fleeting breath, he muttered to the uncaring stars above, "Why... God?"
Then, his heart stopped. There was nothing but the void.
But the nothingness did not last.
Almost immediately, Devin awoke. But this was no peaceful afterlife. This was no gentle release from the horrors of the mortal realm. All the agonizing, excruciating pain that his dying brain had mercifully shut off came flooding back into his new, spectral body all at once.
It was a torrential downpour of sheer agony.
Devin screamed, clutching violently at a chest that was no longer torn open, but still felt every agonizing ghost of the serrated blade tearing through his heart. He gasped for air, tears streaming down his face—tears that felt incredibly thick and heavy, almost turning red with the dark tint of blood.
He slowly opened his eyes. He was no longer lying on the cold, blood-soaked cobblestones of Trangdar.