A bell shrieked somewhere beneath the rafters — a thin, urgent note that split the palace hush. An aide burst into the chamber, cloak streaked and face drained of color.
"Your Majesty—" he gasped. King Gemma was already on his feet before the sentence finished; Queen Namerie at his side like a shadow. They moved through the hall, a tide of silk and haste, and the palace answered with the sound of a place unmoored — running feet, shouted names, the staccato of orders.
From the far end of the atrium came a different sound: the dull thump of a litter being borne, the soft slap of leather, the ragged panting of those who carried it. They emerged not with ceremony, but in ruin.
Physicians stumbled ahead of the litter, their hands and sleeves caked in blood — not only the bright glint of fresh cuts but darker stains that spoke of attempted healing gone wrong. Their faces were ashen, eyes rimmed and hollow.
One held a cloth to his mouth, fingers red to the knuckles. Another dragged a splinted arm where bandages hung loose and soaked; surgical tools clinked against a leather satchel, smeared and abandoned in haste.
They parted the crowd like men who had seen a storm's aftermath. Behind them, eight attendants bore the litter between them. The boy on the litter was small beneath the heavy robes; the silk that should have gleamed with gold thread sagged, saturated with spreading, unforgiving stains.
His face was pale and slack; any trace of breath was gone. Knives' wounds marred the fabric at his chest and flank, cruel and precise.
The physicians moved in front as if to make way, but there was no dignity left in their steps. One of them — younger, shoulders trembling — let out a sound that was half prayer and half confession. His voice was small and raw: "We did all we could."
The declaration hung absurdly fragile against the roar of the crowd. King Gemma's cloak rustled as he stepped forward. For a moment the world narrowed to the litter and those red-streaked faces. The queen's hand tightened at his sleeve; someone nearby began to cry out, a sound that wound through the hall and splintered into a thousand broken notes.
They carried the young prince along, borne between the stained hands of servants and the darkened coats of physicians, and the palace — so long a place of measured rituals — tilted on the raw hinge of one truth: he was dead.
Not the fourth prince Aiden, but the eighth prince, Arin Darkdorm, barely eight, decapitated in his own chamber.
The litter passed, leaving behind it the coppery stench and the physicians' red-stained hands. The king's throat worked, but no words came. Queen Namerie's nails pressed crescent moons into his arm; the hall quaked with cries, servants clutching one another, guards barking orders that shattered into shards of sound.
And then — before Gemma could speak, before the grief in his chest found air — another commotion struck from the far side of the atrium.
The sound of frantic slippers on stone. A shrill scream.
"Make way! Make way for the princess!"
Through the scattering crowd, attendants stumbled forward bearing another burden. Karelian Darkdorm thrashed against the arms that carried her, limbs jerking, mouth foaming with spit and blood. The second princess — her silks torn, her braid half-unraveled — was wracked with violent spasms.
Her head snapped back as if some unseen hand had wrenched her spine. Her eyes rolled white, teeth clenched until a crack rang out. A physician ran alongside, clutching a small bundle of glass vials, one already shattered in his palm. "She's seizing — hold her still, hold her still!"
The attendants lost their grip; the princess nearly slipped from their arms, her body jerking so violently her heels struck the tiles with a hollow clap. Foam flecked her lips pink, a soundless scream clawing from her throat.
The chamber doors were flung open ahead — lamplight flaring from within the healers' quarters. "Inside, now! Treatment chamber — quickly!"
Her convulsions shook the bearers themselves. A thin trail of blood marked the floor where her wrist scraped against a servant's buckle.
King Gemma stood rooted, forced to watch his daughter's body carried past him like a broken thing, her seizures rattling through the vaulted hall. Her mother trailed in tears — high, unguarded, a raw mother's terror.
The second princess vanished through the treatment chamber doors, attendants slamming them shut behind with a heavy, echoing boom that left the atrium in stunned, ringing silence.
And the king, still wordless, felt the palace crumble beneath him twice in the span of a single night.
The echo of the treatment chamber's doors had barely settled when another stir rippled down the corridor — not the chaos of healers, but the cold, deliberate tread of guards. Their boots struck the tiles in grim unison, a rhythm that made the gathered servants flinch back as if the sound itself carried doom.
Between them came a bier hastily draped in black cloth. Blood seeped through the fabric in slow, glistening blooms, refusing to be hidden. The smell arrived before the sight — copper, thick and unclean — and when the guards emerged fully into the atrium, the air seemed to falter.
"The third prince…" someone whispered, trembling. The words spread like contagion through the hall.
The cloth shifted as the bier was lowered. His body was unmistakable — Orion, once delicate and confident, now nothing but a pale husk, already cold to the touch. His robe was torn jagged at the chest where the knife had gone in, a dark puncture spreading into a grotesque blossom of red. Worse still was the slash across his throat, so deep it looked almost surgical, gaping as though life had been poured out in one merciless sweep.
A guard who had carried him turned away, retching into his gauntlet, while another knelt stiffly, refusing to meet the king's eyes. The bier bearers stood frozen, as if stillness might undo what they had revealed.
The hall filled with suffocating silence, broken only by Queen Namerie's strangled gasp — too sharp to be grief alone, too raw to be disbelief alone.
Now three fates lay before the king in the span of heartbeats: two sons dead by blades, a daughter convulsing behind sealed doors.
The weight pressed down until even the torches seemed to gutter.
The corridors shook with chaos as King Gemma pressed forward, Queen Namerie trailing at his side, veil slipping loose in her haste. She shuttered words as they walked.
"My son… I can't… I haven't seen the… fifth prince since dawn."
Servants and guards stumbled back to clear a path, whispers rising into frantic fragments.
"Aethereia, save us—"
Before he could reach the atrium doors, a knot of attendants emerged. Their pace was hurried but heavy, as if the burden they bore was too cruel to carry. A long bier was lifted between them, veiled in a hastily thrown pall of deep blue cloth. Blood had already soaked through the fabric in broad, dark stains, dripping in rivulets down their arms as they moved.
They came from inside the atrium.
"Make way — make way —" one of them choked, voice cracking as he staggered beneath the weight.
The king halted, breath locked in his chest. Something in the shape beneath the cloth twisted his gut with dread. He lifted a hand, and the procession froze at once.
"Uncover him," Gemma commanded, voice low, iron dragged against stone.
The attendants hesitated, eyes darting to one another in silent plea. At his second command — sharper, cutting through the clamor — one obeyed. Fingers trembling, he drew back the cloth.
The sight beneath stole the air from the hall.
It was **Aiden**.
The prince's ceremonial robe was soaked through, its white silk stained scarlet in great cruel blooms. His hair clung damp against his temples, jaw slack in unnatural repose. But it was his face that turned the air to glass.
Both eyes were gone.
The sockets were hollow, raw and blackened, the flesh around them torn and glistening. Streaks of blood ran down his cheeks like grotesque tears. The delicate symmetry of his features had been erased by horror, leaving behind a ruin where a boy had once lived.
A low, wordless sound shuddered from the queen — part wail, part prayer — before she collapsed against a lady-in-waiting. King Gemma's fists clenched at his sides until the knuckles whitened, his stare fixed unblinking on the ravaged face of his son.
The attendants shifted uneasily, still bowed under the bier, as if the corpse itself accused them for carrying him so late.
"Cover him again," the king rasped at last, though his voice trembled at the edges.
The cloth was drawn back over Aiden's ruined face, but the image had already carved itself into every watching mind.
And with that, another heir was carried past him into the darkness of the palace, leaving silence and the metallic stench of death in his wake.
TBC…