Meanwhile the scene shifted once more to the royal study, bathed in its familiar golden light coming through warm lanterns yet somehow, the warmth was gone. What once felt comforting was now drenched in an atmosphere of silence just like after a scream.
zzzz—kkzt—zzzzzzKKRK—
zzzz—kkzt—zzzzzzKKRK—
The screen shimmered with static, and the world quivered like a thread stretched too tight.
The King and Queen who only moments ago had been in their elegant calm, speaking gently of their daughter and youth, were now frozen, unnaturally still, like statues draped in velvet. Their eyes, once warm with thought and memory, had gone glassy, reflecting the golden lantern light without recognition. Their lips, caught mid-curve of conversation, now looked painted on and false, as if someone had taken their breath and sealed it away in a locked chest. They seemed as marionettes left dangling without strings.
Then it had happened so suddenly and they moved as if they'd been like this all along, not frozen in eerie stillness just moments ago. Slowly, subtly, the change in tone unfolded like something unseen had slipped into their minds and whispered a different truth.
The Queen's smile faded with the quiet certainty of someone who suddenly remembered something terrible. Her hand trembled where it rested on her other arm. The King's eyes, once tired but kind, now burned with a grim clarity, as though some veil had been torn away, revealing a reality he could no longer ignore. Without a word, he rose abruptly from his desk, his movement sharp and purposeful, as if driven by a decision already made.
"It's him," he muttered, his voice hollow, barely more than a breath.
"The cursed one… the emperor from the center of the continent, the one said to have set his eyes on every kingdom within his reach."
He didn't need to say the name. They both already knew it, as if something new had been coded into their minds, lying dormant until now, suddenly booting to life with terrifying clarity.
"Drayce Vortalis."
The Queen flinched, the name felt like ash on her tongue.
The King began to pace to and fro in the chamber, his hands trembling slightly from the weight of memory twisting itself into something darker. He spoke not so much to her as to the echo of truths long buried and now clawing their way to the surface. The memory was rewriting itself in their minds. He stopped mid-step, eyes clouded with dread.
"They say his sword can cut through the wind itself. That his armies are not made of men, but devils clad in flesh itself. That he rides into battle without hesitation, without fear, without mercy."
The Queen sat down in a nearby chair slowly, her silken gown whispering against the floor. "Then he is no man. He is nightmare given form."
The king stopped at the far window, looking out. Beyond the hills, the moon hung too still. And he continued to speak with grim and low,
"And it began when he was just fifteen," he said, in a voice edged with dread.
Her eyes widened. "S-so young…"
"Fifteen and already drenched in blood. His kingdom then barely more than a backwater province, was weak and unnoticed. But he didn't build it with gold or trade or diplomacy. No. He carved it into an empire with blade and fire."
He turned slightly, his jaw now clenched with the weight of an uncertain future,
"They say he murdered his own uncle, then king. He cut out his heart while it was still beating. Crowned himself king before the blood dried. From that day on, war was the only language he spoke. Terror, the only currency he dealt in."
The Queen shook her head slowly, "And his uncle's people? Did they not rise against him?"
"They did," the King answered grimly. "But he drowned them all. Fields were red for miles and the river choked with the fallen. Their defiance was silenced in a single night."
He clenched his jaw, voice dropping lower, almost bitter with awe. "No one had courage to stand against him after that bloodbath."
He paused, his eyes now fixed on something far beyond the chamber walls.
"They say he doesn't fear death, my queen nor hell, nor even the end of the world. To some, he is the end. Ruin given human form. A shadow born in fire. Lucifer's first-born, they whisper. He has no heart. He cannot be reasoned with. And wherever his eyes fall—"
He turned back to her, voice catching, cracking like dry wood.
"—he burns it to the ground."
The King's voice dropped, almost like a whisper.
"My queen… I need to believe there's someone out there."
He paused, as if saying it aloud gave the thought weight.
"Someone who can stop him."
His gaze met hers raw, desperate.
"Yes. Someone who can make that monster bow his head."
And in the space between his words, the static returned. Soft at first, then layered, rising steadily, mechanical and harsh.
zzzzKKT—kkkrrrk—
A fractured voice crackled through the invisible threads of reality.
"I like this one."
Not a voice, exactly. More like a whisper wearing a grin. A glitch in the air. As if something, someone was watching. And rewriting the story to suit its own whims.