Chapter Six: Keal's Last Night — Dark Redemption
The courtyard was swallowed whole by shadows, the moon a faint, sickly gash in the thick veil of clouds. The air hung cold and stale, thick with the scent of damp stone and the bitter tang of long-forgotten blood. Not a single whisper, not a breath—everything was still, as if the entire castle held its breath for what was to come.
Lucian moved like death itself, a specter birthed from misery and pain. His steps were soundless, each footfall melting into the darkness as his eyes fixed, unblinking, on the figure unmistakable in the muted gloom.
Soldier Keal.
The man who had broken Lucian's world. The man who had crushed hope beneath the heel of cruelty. The man who had been the first to tear apart his family — slamming his mother into the depths of despair and agony, whose heavy hand had shaped so many cruel nights for them all.
Keal's silhouette was broad and unforgiving–cloaked in leather patched with the scars of years spent as an instrument of merciless brutality. The unmistakable wolf-cut scar near his ear caught the faint moonlight, a jagged wound that mirrored the violence in his soul.
Lucian paused, heart pounding with a fierce, growing storm. The demon inside him bared claws sharper than steel, thirsting for retribution.
But it was not just rage. It was justice — carved from blood and shadow.
With a slow, deliberate breath, Lucian extended his hands—long, pale fingers curling like claws ready to rend the world apart.
Blackness spilled forth: an inky tide that coiled and writhed as though alive, tendrils of pure darkness lashing the air with cold malevolence. It moved with a mind of its own, hungry and cruel.
Keal spun, sensing death before it touched him. His snarling mouth opened, ready for defiance, but it was too late.
The shadow wrapped around his arms first, binding with chains woven from night itself — impossible to break or see through.
A savage thrill coursed through Lucian's veins as the cursed darkness dragged Keal close.
Kneeling behind the trembling man, Lucian's breath ghosted against his ear, voice ice-cold, dripping with a cruel tenderness.
"Tell me, Keal..."
His claws extended slightly, sharp and grinding like shattered glass.
"What kindness is there in beating a sick woman?"
Keal's lips curled with twisted bravado, even in chains, but his eyes flickered with uncertainty.
Lucian's voice sharpened.
"If you don't have a heart for mercy…"
His claws shot forward from the shadows, elongated and cruel, sinking deep into Keal's chest without pause.
The man's breath hitched in a strangled rasp.
Lucian's fingertips found his heart with terrifying precision.
Slowly, savagely, he ripped it from the man's flesh.
Warm, dark blood splattered across the cold stone in glistening droplets that reflected the faint moonlight—the final exhalation of a corrupt soul.
Keal's body convulsed violently, shuddering as life drained away like water slipping through fingers.
The guard's desperate eyes locked with Lucian's one last time — pools of fear and disbelief drowning in the abyss.
Lucian pulled the heart out fully, holding it aloft as if it were a token forged in the fires of vengeance.
A savage whisper escaped his lips:
"You had no heart to spare for my mother… so you don't need the one in your chest."
He clenched his fist, squeezing until the life inside ceased utterly — a symbol that once beat with cruelty now silenced forever.
Then without hesitation, Lucian tossed the lifeless organ aside. It landed with a sickening thud on the stone, the blood painting the cold tiles like a morbid heraldry.
Rising into the still air, Lucian's voice was cold thunder, low and deadly:
"One is gone…"
His eyes flicked toward the distant silhouette of another soldier deeper in the castle walls.
"…Next. Raphael. I'll make him think twice before ever laying a hand on me again."
The demon within roared, a primal scream deep in his soul:
Let us out! Kill them!
But Lucian swallowed the roar, his smile thin as a blade's edge.
This was only the beginning.
Lucian stepped back through the shadows and vanished from sight — a judgment cloaked in midnight's silence.
Behind him, in the place where Keal's blood still soaked the earth, a dark message was etched into the stone. The words seared in a crimson script that pulsed with eerie life:
"Justice wears my face now."
The echo of those words hung long in the air—an ominous promise for all who dwelled in the king's domain.
As Lucian disappeared into the night's embrace, the cold wind whispered through the battlements, carrying with it a dark, spectral laugh.
Far above, in the grandeur of the palace's highest tower, unseen eyes gleamed with cruel satisfaction.
"Let the game begin," a voice rasped—the devil's voice.