Arthur stood at the window.

  The glass was old, warped by enchantments that had curdled over centuries.

  Moonlight fractured through the panes, casting silver webs across the floor.

  He didn't turn on the lamps.

  The dark felt like a weight he had earned.

  He had a habit-a rhythmic, self-inflicted ritual-of looking back.

  Not at the crowns, but at the silence.

  He closed his eyes.

  His heart rate thudded, a dull hammer against his ribs.

  He waited for the sensation of his pulse to reach his lips.

  It didn't.

  That part of him was still quiet. It had been quiet for twenty years.

  [MEMORY: TWENTY YEARS AGO]

  Seraphine used to be kind.

  Then the "Wasting" came, and she started smelling like a cellar.

  Her skin turned the color of a guttering candle, waxy and translucent.

  Arthur was seven.

  He didn't understand what "magical decay" meant; he just knew that when she looked at him, he felt like a bug under a glass jar.

  One morning, she sat at the breakfast table and smiled.

  "I feel better," she whispered.

  His mother wept.

  His father cheered.

  Little Arthur sat very still.He looked at her eyes.

  They were wide and bright, but they didn't move right.

  They stayed fixed on the pulse in Arthur’s neck.

  He thought if he didn't move, if he became a statue, she wouldn't see him.

  He was wrong.

  That night, the air in his room turned to lead.

  Arthur woke up, but his body stayed asleep.

  He tried to kick the blankets off, but his legs were stone.

  He tried to twitch a finger, and nothing happened.

  Fear didn't arrive as a thought; it arrived as a cold sweat that pooled in the hollow of his collarbone.

  Seraphine was there.

  She sat on the edge of his bed. The mattress didn't even dip under her weight.

  "Shhhh," she crooned. Her breath felt like a draft from a tomb. "You don't want to wake them, do you? We’re playing a new game."

  Arthur tried to scream.

  His jaw wouldn't unhinge.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  His tongue felt like a piece of dead meat in his mouth.

  Then came the fire.

  It wasn't a burn; it was a million tiny, rhythmic stings.

  He looked down when he was finally allowed to move again.

  In the moonlight, he saw them: black threads, thin as hair, sewing themselves into his skin. They moved with surgical precision, stitching geometric patterns across his wrists.

  He didn't know why.

  He just knew it hurt.

  He thought if he cried, she would stop.

  He let out a choked, jagged sob.

  Seraphine didn't flinch. She raised a single finger to her lips.

  "Zip."

  Arthur’s mouth snapped shut.

  The skin of his upper and lower lips knitted together with an agonizing, invisible tug.

  He tried to pull them apart, but the flesh was fused.

  He clawed at his face, his fingernails drawing blood, but the stitch held.

  He was screaming behind a wall of his own skin.

  "Be a good boy and keep your voice down," she said, her tone as calm as a prayer. "Or I'll do the eyes next."

  [PRESENT]

  Arthur’s eyes snapped open.

  He lifted his hand to the window, his fingers trembling.

  For a heartbeat, he expected to see the black thread waiting to be pulled.

  The stitches were gone-absorbed into the marrow of his being-but the phantom itch remained.

  He didn't wonder about the boy he used to be.

  That boy was buried under layers of silk and duty.

  A soft knock echoed.

  "Enter," Arthur said. The word was cold, clipped, and perfectly formed.

  His mouth worked fine now, but he still felt the pull of the thread every time he spoke.

  "Lord Malakor is ready, my Prince," a maid whispered from the shadows of the doorway.

  Arthur didn't turn.

  He watched his reflection in the warped glass.

  He looked at the hard, calculated lines of his face and felt nothing.

  He wasn't a person anymore; he was a weapon that had been shaped by a seamstress.

  ---

  Kai woke to the smell of dried blood and old dust.

  He tried to inhale, but his lungs hit a wall of fire.

  He rolled onto his side, his vision swimming in strobing flashes of purple and red.

  He saw a splintered table leg.

  He saw a smear of blood on the floorboards that looked like a bird with a broken wing.

  Rowan.

  The name hit him, but it felt distant, like a story he’d read in a book a long time ago.

  "Ah... dammit..."

  He crawled toward the cracked mirror leaning against the wall.

  He needed to see.

  He needed to know if he was still in there. The face looking back was a ruin-pulp and bruises—but it was the eyes that were wrong.

  They were dull-empty.

  A flicker of light interrupted his blurred vision.

  [ABILITY IN LOCKDOWN]

  [TIME BEFORE USAGE: 05:13:26]

  The text didn't just float; it pulsed with a low, intrusive hum that vibrated in his teeth.

  It felt hostile. Like a jailer checking the bars.

  "You there?" Kai rasped.

  He waited for the itch of madness.

  He waited for the Jester’s jagged, manic laughter to fill the silence.

  Nothing.

  The silence was a violation.

  He thumped his chest, desperate for a spark, a flicker, anything.

  "Ow! Motherfu—"

  He slumped, gasping. The 1% passive heal was a joke. It didn't stop the throbbing; it just kept him conscious enough to feel it.

  He felt naked. He felt stitched into a reality he couldn't control.

  Then, the sound arrived.

  A key turning in the lock. The heavy, rhythmic thunk of the bolt sliding back.

  Kestrel.

  Kai looked at the door, then back at the blood on the floor. He tried to stand, but his legs gave out.

  He was trapped in the wreckage of his own failure.

  The door began to swing open.

  The light from the hallway spilled in, and Kai realized with a jolt of cold dread that he couldn't even hide the mess.