The last echo of my laughter still rang in the cage, like a venomous serpent hissing through the bars.
I laughed, still, endlessly.
I laughed because it was all I had left.
A broken, piercing laughter, sharpened by madness and pain—my scream of survival in this theater of shadows, where I was nothing but a toy.
King Maelrath, wrapped in purple, watched me with dark, hungry eyes.
The entire court waited, breathless, hanging on my every twitch.
— Fool, the king murmured, soft and dangerous, make me laugh. Until my guts burn and my guards collapse.
I didn't need to be told twice. I was already on stage, whipped forward by the madness that consumed me.
— Why does the moon cry, Majesty? I shouted, staggering, wild-eyed.
— Because she can never touch the sun—just as I will never touch peace!
Loud laughter. Coarse voices. Cruel howls through the thick air.
I saw their gazes—vipers—drinking in my suffering, my madness.
— More! roared Duke Veyron, his eyes gleaming with hatred.
— Make him laugh 'til he screams! ordered Lira, her contemptful grin stretching wide.
Day after day, I was the show, the torn puppet still giggling.
I tottered on the fragile thread of reason, performing my number until my throat burned with blood.
Each joke was a blade.
Each laugh, a dagger.
My teeth clenched. My lungs shrieked.
But still, I laughed.
One day, Kael approached with his usual cruel smirk.
— You really think laughter hides what you are? he sneered.
I spat in his face, breath ragged.
— I am the fire beneath the ash. The fool who dances on his torturers' graves.
He chuckled.
— You'll never be more than a broken puppet.
Laughter is a sweet poison that keeps me alive.
But beneath this mask of madness, I burn.
I am no longer a man—but a scream.
A scream no one hears.
I am a shattered reflection of a cruel world.
Each laugh is a tear.
And still, I laugh.
Because if I stop...
They win.
And me?
I'm not dead yet.
But the end of the play came.
One day, in the heart of the court, as I delivered some grotesque joke, I saw the king frozen.
His face darkened. His eyes no longer glimmered.
— Fool, he said coldly, you no longer amuse me.
Silence fell like a guillotine.
They dragged me from the cage, my body broken, my mind flickering.
They dragged me into a cold room, damp, with walls of black stone.
They chained me to the wall.
My wrists. My ankles.
Muscles stretched. Skin raw.
Galdric, the executioner, entered. His smile was a blade.
— The king wants to see how far the Fool can go, he whispered.
The torture began.
Cold needles pierced my fingers, sank into my palms.
Each stab was a hammer blow.
Each drop of blood, a voiceless scream.
Then came fire.
A burning torch licked my open wounds.
My flesh twisted, melted beneath the flame.
I screamed.
The chains bit into me.
I screamed until my voice broke.
And still, they didn't stop.
The blows came like a symphony.
Wooden clubs. Screeching whips. Iron claws. Flaming pincers.
Each moment drew me closer to the abyss.
Pain is a cruel master.
It tears me.
It pulls me from life.
But in that pit, I still stand.
My screams are the last breath of the man I once was.
I am a shadow.
A wounded flame.
The Fool cries—but the Fool endures.
Hours stretched into centuries.
Time lost meaning.
I fell into a dark void.
I awoke in an even crueler nightmare.
Thin, cold wires were attached to my limbs.
I felt every tug, every controlled movement, every stolen gesture.
I had become the perfect marionette.
The king entered, cloaked in funereal purple.
— Behold, Your Majesty, the Fool dances at your command, a guard announced with a wicked grin.
My head was heavy. My limbs stiff.
But in my madness, a spark lit within me.
They pulled me.
Made me move.
Forced grotesque gestures from my frame.
I recited jokes. Shouted curses. Laughed on command.
But none of it was me.
My body was no longer mine.
Stripped of will.
Slave to mechanical madness.
But my mind burned.
Beneath the strings. Beneath the cage.
A flame still flickered.
The court laughed.
Adored this macabre show.
My broken voice tried to reclaim itself—but it was only an echo.
Then, one day—
Silence.
The king no longer laughed.
His icy gaze struck me like lightning.
He rose slowly—like a verdict carved from stone.
— It's time to end this.
I felt the blade fall.
The Fool died.
But the fire never went out.
In madness... I had found truth.
Life is a cage.
And death...
The only freedom.
I sank into the dark.
"Thereis no more pain. No more flesh. Only the memory of torment and theecho of laughter."
His last breath left his burned lips.
His body hung disjointed, suspended by snapped strings like a puppet from a closed theater.
But Ashen...
Ashen wasn't dead.
Or rather: he was dead... but still thinking.
Am I still something? Am I a memory? A fever?
A fever that thinks, breaks, stretches into eternity?
They killed me.
The king. My family. The court. The laughter.
The cage. The wires in my muscles.
The blood.
My own laughter.
Is this what it means to be mad?
A void stretched out before me.
Black. Dense. Without horizon.
And yet, at the center—a table.
Round. Of gray stone. Cold. Eternal.
Motionless within a shifting nothingness.
Around it, forty-four chairs. All occupied.
Masked, deformed faces.
Some cried while laughing. Others laughed while screaming.
Some sat broken, like shattered dolls.
Forty-four...
The number of madness.
Forty-four fragments of a soul shattered when the mind can no longer be whole.
Was this my new home?
Ashen stood. Naked. Transparent. Or perhaps clothed in suffering.
His reflection did not exist.
There was no light.
And yet, he saw everything.
One chair was empty.
Across from the highest throne, where a figure stood with arms crossed, watching.
— Sit, it said.
The voice had no age. No gender.
It echoed like a thought forgotten upon waking.
Ashen stepped forward.
— Why am I here? he whispered.
— Because you crossed the unthinkable.
Because you laughed through agony.
Because you were the Fool... to the end.
He sat.
And thus began a silent monologue, heard only by him.
Or perhaps by the world, misunderstood.