The air in the room didn't just get cold; it got wrong.
Kyle's eyes were the problem. They didn't just turn black; they turned an impossible, bottomless, ink-spill black that didn't reflect light—it swallowed it.
Yet, somehow, they made the dingy, windowless room look brighter, as if the darkness in his eyes was so absolute it pushed all the normal shadows away.
Benny froze. He was a professional jerk whose whole life was about making quick, painful decisions. But those eyes? Those were the eyes of a creature that knew what happened after the universe died.
Don't be an idiot, Benny. Don't rush this, a cold, tight voice—his own—whispered in his head.
He was worrying, though. Worrying hard enough to chew on the inside of his cheek.
This whole situation was a certified Grade-A freak show. He was supposed to be scaring Kyle, maybe breaking a finger or two, then forcing him to sign the papers—the ones that would hand over his granddad's stupid, rusted-out junkyard to the family.
Kyle was an easy mark, a soft-shell shrimp.
But now, Kyle looked like a black hole wearing a human suit.
Benny had seen weird stuff before. He was the weird stuff.
He could suck the water right out of the air—or a person, if he was really in a nasty mood.
But this? This was like watching a cosmic factory spill its guts into a nineteen-year-old kid.
A strange, shimmering energy, the color of old oil and new lightning, was pouring into Kyle.
It was too much, too fast, and Kyle looked like he was loving it, all stunned and wide-eyed right before the weirdness began.
He's the villain, Benny. Always has been. He's supposed to be killed. End of story.
"I won't let the process finish," Benny muttered, the words barely audible over the low, electric hum the energy was making.
"I must strike. My family will cover the dead of this... whatever he is."
His hands twisted. Not a complex movement, just a quick, violent wringing motion, like squeezing the last drops from a filthy rag.
The air around him suddenly felt like standing next to an open freezer door.
Benny's power, that cold, liquid energy, seeped out. It was a visible, sickly gray fog that immediately hit the humid air.
Tiny water vapors in the room—the breath they'd both expelled, the damp from the floorboards—condensed instantly, forming thick, silvery streams.
The pressure built. With a sharp, sudden THWOOMP, a massive stream of pressurized water burst from the floor directly under Benny's sneakers.
It didn't just lift him; it propelled him up like a rocket shot straight to the ceiling.
Mid-flight, spinning like a panicked top, Benny worked. The water he'd gathered was his tool. With sharp, focused mental commands, he molded the tons of freezing-cold liquid into a brutal shape: a massive, ugly war hammer.
It wasn't smooth or elegant; it was blocky and meant for smashing.
And then, as he peaked his ascent, he swung.
The hammer's trajectory started. As it descended, the sub-zero energy Benny kept pumping into it did its job.
The water froze in a flash. It didn't turn to normal ice; it became a dark, dense, nearly black material, harder than granite, slicker than oil.
"Eat this, you little space-for-brains weasel!" Benny roared.
The hammer, a frozen meteor of pure condensed cold, pounded down onto Kyle's head and shoulders.
The impact was a disaster. It wasn't just a thud; it was a seismic, room-shaking KRAK-THOOM.
The floorboards buckled, the single hanging lightbulb exploded in a burst of sparks, and dust rained down from the ceiling like gritty snow.
Upon contact, the frozen hammer shattered. It exploded into a trillion particles of ice dust that vanished instantly, leaving a cloud of cold steam and the catastrophic damage it had wrought.
Kyle wasn't just hit; he was pounded like a cheap tomato dropped from a skyscraper.
He crumpled instantly, a limp doll of shattered bones and ruined muscle. Blood, thick and shockingly red, spread across the stained, grimy floor in an expanding, wet puddle.
He was barely breathing. A wheezing, rattling sound. Then, with a sickening, wet cough, he spat out a mouthful of blood and teeth.
"F-ck," Benny gasped, landing heavily on the ruined floor, his legs nearly giving out. He stumbled back two steps. "That... was not enough to kill him."
The cost of that single, massive attack was staggering.
It felt like he'd emptied his own personal energy tank. His head swam, his lungs burned, and the cold, darkhaze of his power was completely gone.
He was running on fumes, a tired, jumpy lump of a man who just blew his entire paycheck on one stupid lottery ticket.
Now he's vulnerable, Benny thought, whatever that power was, it'll cost him too.
He's flatlined, just like me.
Then, a new sound cut through the ringing silence. It wasn't loud, not at first. It was a whisper.
A very, very clear whisper.
"Hey. Do you have any idea of what you have just done, you filthy little puddle of dirt?"
The voice grew in volume with impossible speed. It went from a whisper to a shout in a fraction of a second, but it wasn't just volume; it was power.
The sound waves themselves felt wrong, heavy, like physical blows. It carried a strange, resonant frequency, a deeper, fundamental noise that seemed to rattle the very atoms of the room.
Benny gasped, clutching his head. He felt a sudden, sharp, agonizing stab of pain in his molars, then his ribs.
The voice was literally causing his bones to fracture by just hearing it.
He trembled, sinking to one knee. This was not Kyle. This was something else. Something regal and utterly enraged.
"You will regret a thousand times for hitting me," the voice boomed,
"A thousand years of picking up peasant droppings with your teeth! That is your penance!"
Kyle's ruined body shuddered. Slowly, impossibly, he began to move.
He pushed a bloody hand against the floor and tried to stand. He failed, his arm collapsing with a wet, grinding crunch.
But then, the black energy that had seeped into him flickered, then flared. It wasn't pouring in anymore; it was working.
The hideous wounds—the gashes, the shattered bones, the blood loss—began to knit together. The rate of healing wasn't just fast; it defied physics. Muscles reformed.
Bone fragments dissolved back into whole, seamless structures. The massive, pulpy ruin on the floor was quickly being replaced by a functional, if wobbly, human body.
In wobbly steps, still slick with his own drying blood, Kyle stood up. But he wasn't Kyle.
The way he held his head, the way his impossibly black eyes glared down at Benny—it was a stranger.
"I am your fucking King, you maggot!" the new presence roared, the sound echoing like a brass horn blast in the small room. "I am King!"
The transformation was chilling. Benny, the thug, the water-bender, was shaking so hard his teeth clicked. He had seen the energy, the lightning-oil, enter Kyle, and now Kyle was gone, replaced by this shrieking, arrogant monarch.
King ? King Arthur ???
Benny refused to be turned into a stain on the floor for some ancient, stuck-up ghost.
He gritted his teeth and summoned the last scraps of his power. He couldn't make a hammer, not again, but he could make a tool.
He condensed the last of the available humidity, this time focusing it on his left arm. It formed a long, straight, razor-sharp sword of solid, clear ice.
He didn't waste time making it pretty. He raised it and stood in a low, protective stance, his gaze locked on the King-thing.
"Kyle! I know you are in there, you stupid, rotten cabbage!" Benny yelled, trying to pierce the spell, trying to find the weak, normal boy underneath.
He pointed the freezing blade at the King-thing's chest.
The new Kyle didn't flinch. He just sneered.
"I am not Kyle, you fool," the voice boomed, full of contempt.
"And today is the day you will learn the power of the one true King of Albion! The power of Arthur!"
The King-thing, this Arthur, theatrically raised a bloodied hand to the air, ready to summon whatever ancient, mythical power he thought he had.
Benny didn't give him the chance to finish the pose.
Pose all you want, you historical waste of space!
With a desperate, animalistic cry, Benny lunged and slashed. His ice blade was perfectly focused, driven by terror and adrenaline.
The arm was severed clean off. It dropped to the floor with a wet thwack, hitting the dried blood with a sickening bounce.
Benny didn't wait to admire his work. He was shaking, horrified, but focused. He had just disarmed, literally, a king—a magically possessed one, no less. But the job was done.
"What... what the F-CK!" King Arthur shrieked, staring in utter disbelief at his now-stumped shoulder.
The kingly voice was instantly replaced by pure, stunned teenage shock. "Where is my power?! No one—NO ONE—has ever cut my hand off so cleanly like that! I'm the bloody King!"
The outrage was spectacular, but the shock had broken his focus. The black energy flickered again, but this time it was clumsy, slow.
It started the healing process, making the raw, bloody wound immediately seal and the severed arm regrow from the shoulder in a slow, almost sickeningly visible surge of muscle and skin.
That moment of clumsy healing was all Benny needed.
"Later, you dusty old grandpa ghost!" he yelled. He launched a small, pressurized jet of water at the ceiling as a distraction, creating a localized fog bank.
He didn't wait to see the King's reaction. He turned, sprinted for the door, threw it open, and fled for good.
Inside the ruined room, the new Kyle—King Arthur—exhaled, a long, shaky breath.
"Huuuh," he muttered, watching his fully regenerated hand clench and unclench. It felt real, but the raw, magical exhaustion was immense.
"At least... I won't have to fight him at my weakest. That peasant was a brute."
The initial kingly indignation was gone, replaced by a deep, cold, terrifying confusion.
He slowly looked around the bombed-out room, seeing the ruined furniture, the massive hole in the floor, and the mess of blood that had been his own.
The first question, the truly gnawing one, echoed in the ancient, kingly voice, but with a new, fearful tremor:
"Where... where am I?"