Pluck.
The solitary, mournful note of the bone lyre vibrated through the freezing air.
Melodius leaned casually against the cold, towering expanse of the Obsidian Gates.
He slowly closed his eyes, tilting his head back to bathe his pale face in the fading moonlight of Athervale.
The high-altitude winds whipped through his dark, unkempt hair, carrying the metallic scent of fresh blood and ash.
For a fleeting second, the deafening sounds of the battlefield melted away, completely swallowed by the ghost of a memory.
He could see the image of a ten-year-old boy with golden eyes, turning his back and disappearing into the rushing veil of an artificial waterfall.
Melodius opened his pitch-black, void-like eyes, staring up at the night sky.
A thick, bruised storm cloud was slowly dragging itself across the moon.
As the silver light was steadily choked out, deep, jagged shadows crept across Melodius's face, veiling him in absolute darkness.
A single, thick drop of dark blood escaped the corner of his eye, tracking a crimson line down his pale cheek.
A bright, impossibly wide smile spread across his face, stretching the skin over his cheekbones.
"It's finally time..." he whispered to the wind, his voice a haunting, romantic caress. "For us to meet again... [ ]."
SKREEEEEEEECH!
The ear-splitting, multi-layered roar of the Flesh-Titan shattered the quiet intimacy of the song.
Melodius lowered his face, his smile remaining fixed as his bloody fingers resumed their frantic, rhythmic dance across the silver strings.
Pluck. Thrum. Pluck.
Down in the mud, the Titan shrieked in agony as Aurelius's broadsword cleaved cleanly through its massive, amalgamated knee.
Aurelius moved like a force of absolute nature.
A colossal, rusted gauntlet fused with sharp rhino horns slammed down toward him, but Aurelius was already gone.
He vaulted backward with terrifying, kinetic grace, his dark mantle armor absorbing the shockwave as he rolled and snapped into a flawless combat stance.
He raised his head.
His piercing golden eyes locked directly onto the "face" of the monstrosity.
It had no true eyes. Instead, there was a hollow, sunken void packed with twitching viscera and a myriad of unmoving, dead elven eyes glued haphazardly together.
"It's ugly."
Aurelius murmured the words softly, the calm, aristocratic disgust in his voice a jarring contrast to the time he had called the Whispering Hollows beautiful.
He gripped the heavy leather hilt of his broadsword tightly.
"Such a shame... That such a beautiful heaven houses ugly monsters like you."
The atmosphere around the Crown Prince suddenly warped.
The air itself began to crackle and pop with immense, terrifying tension.
The pitch-black metal of his dark mantle armor began to glow.
It shifted from deep obsidian to a burning, furious, reddish-gold, radiating a heat so intense the falling rain hissed into steam before it could even touch his shoulders.
He looked like a dying sun, burning its own core to ignite the dark.
"I... Aurelius Tamaskrit..."
Golden sparks violently arced off his armor, searing the mud beneath his boots.
"...Will eradicate your ugly existence which taints the serenity of this place."
Then, Aurelius did the unthinkable.
He opened his gauntlet.
THUD.
The legendary broadsword slipped from his grasp, embedding itself deep into the bloody earth.
He dropped his weapon.
The Titan did not hesitate.
With an inhumane, gurgling wail, the monstrosity launched a tidal wave of fused limbs, rotting tentacles, and jagged steel directly at the unarmed Prince.
Aurelius did not flinch.
He did not raise his arms to defend himself.
He simply stood there, an immovable burning star, and allowed the mountain of corrupted flesh and metal to completely swallow him whole.
High atop the Obsidian Gates, the music died.
Melodius froze.
His void-like eyes widened in absolute, paralyzing shock. His bloody fingers hovered rigidly over the bone lyre.
"[ ]!!!"
Melodius screamed the name into the night, the sheer, frantic panic in his voice tearing his throat raw.
He hadn't expected this. Aurelius had just walked into the maw of death of his own free will.
Far above the slaughter, hidden within the absolute highest and most secure boughs of the Whispering Hollows, the air was cold and sterile.
A tight circle of ancient, robed wise men surrounded Elven King Aelroth.
They were staring down into the glowing, rippling waters of a massive scrying pool, observing the battle at the gates.
The chamber was gripped by absolute, suffocating silence.
The only sound was the gentle drip, drip of condensation falling into the magical water.
"Wha... What just happened?"
One of the royal advisors finally broke the quiet, his voice trembling violently with sheer disbelief.
"Did he just... walk into the Titan? Like that?"
"Yes... He did," another advisor replied, his eyes wide and unblinking.
"But why?" a third elder questioned, gripping his wooden staff until his knuckles popped. "Why would he just walk into the maw of death? And a painful one to begin with?"
Dead silence.
Because no one in the room knew the answer.
They slowly turned their heads, looking toward King Aelroth expectantly, desperate for tactical insight.
They were met by nothing but stone-cold silence.
They should have been cheering. They should have been celebrating the fall of their greatest threat.
Instead, they were paralyzed by utter, creeping dread.
Never in their wildest, most feverish nightmares did they dare to imagine the Death Crusader, the untouchable Crown Prince of the Tamaskrit Empire, voluntarily walking into a meat grinder.
"We... We won..."
One of the Elven wise men finally forced a semblance of a nervous, breathless laugh.
"We defeated the traitors... The invading Tamaskrit Empire never stood a chance against the hidden weapon of our Proud King Aelroth!"
He laid the flattery on thick, desperately trying to break the tension.
"Yes... We have shown them the wrath of the elves," another chimed in, finding his courage. "We have taken their Crown Prince!"
Slowly, the chamber erupted.
Nervous laughter shifted into genuine celebrations and loud congratulations. The council members clapped each other on the back, growing more and more confident as the scrying pool showed the Titan completely absorbing Aurelius's glowing form.
Everyone was celebrating.
Except King Aelroth.
The Elven monarch stared down at the rippling water, his face a grim, unmoving mask of stone.
He wasn't disturbed by the terrifying act of Aurelius surrendering. He wasn't even disturbed by the grotesque Flesh-Titan his nephew was piloting.
In the midst of the cheering council, a deep, sickening feeling of dread anchored itself in his chest.
A horrifying sense of Deja Vu.
He had heard that name before.
[ ].
And wherever he had heard it, it wasn't a name that belonged to an insignificant foot soldier. Not anymore, at least.
Aelroth knew the unsettling, terrifying aspect of his nephew better than anyone alive. Even Melodius didn't fully comprehend the depths of his own curse.
And this wasn't the first time the boy had spoken that name.
Aelroth's memory violently drifted backward, ripping him away from the scrying pool and plunging him back into the freezing, damp dark of the dungeon from just moments ago.
He remembered kneeling on the filthy stone, soothing the broken, sobbing Melodius with the false promise of the throne. A promise Aelroth never had the slightest intention to fulfill.
He remembered how Melodius's hysterical rage had just... stopped.
The boy had slowly looked up at Aelroth, his face suddenly perfectly calm, painted with a bright, terrifyingly serene smile.
"Ok, my dear uncle..." The memory of the voice sent a chill up Aelroth's spine.
"I would defeat the enemy kingdom... For my lovely uncle..." Melodius had spoken with a broken, childish innocence that unnerved the King far more than when the boy was trying to claw his eyes out.
"But uncle, you have to promise that you will play with me and... [ ] later."
In the memory, Melodius tilted his head.
The angle was unnatural, bone-cracking, and completely wrong. He stared at Aelroth with eyes that were utterly devoid of light.
"Deal?? Uncle Sloth?" Aelroth shuddered.
Standing in the warm scrying room, violent shivers ran through the King's body that had absolutely nothing to do with the invisible miasma or the bone-biting cold of the dungeons.
Something deep inside his ancient warrior instincts had screamed at him in that cell.
It had screamed at him to run. To draw his blade, behead his twenty-five-year-old nephew right then and there, and march out to confront the Crown Prince of Tamaskrit himself.
Aelroth knew he was more than capable of handling the Seven Princes. He wouldn't emerge unscathed, but he could win.
But the allure of keeping his own hands clean... the allure of not risking his own life... made him hesitate.
The domestic bliss of a family and a peaceful throne had turned him soft, dulling the ruthless, barbaric warlord he had been centuries ago.
"What is it, Uncle Sloth? Will you play with your dear nephew and his best friend... [ ]?"
Aelroth knew absolutely nothing about the name [ ].
He had simply assumed it was a hallucination. A phantom born from the shattered fragments of Melodius's isolated, broken mind. A ghost from a childhood that was ripped away when he used to be the Crown Prince.
So... Aelroth had nodded.
He had plastered a carefully crafted, fake smile onto his face in the dark.
"Yes, my dear nephew... Uncle Aelroth will play with you and your friend... [ ]."
Melodius had smiled back.
The smile was wide, maniacal, and deeply psychotic.
"Thanks, Uncle Sloth..." Melodius had whispered, his tone dropping into a low, deadly register that promised absolute ruin.
"You won't regret it... I promise."