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Inspiration has been flowing like ink on paper for me here–I’m pondering a name reveal sometime later in the story. For now, however, we’ll keep the suspense and refer to him by male pronouns. (This snippet immediately follows the last)

He knew where he was like he knew the breath in his lungs, the scream of his Sword, the curved lips of his Daughter, the pursing of his own. The giants surrounded him, faces forever etched into a stern frown.

And he heard them speak.

Foolish child, they hissed, thinking that the sssssstain of your ssssssins can be washed away by the sanguine blood of your tears.

He sucked in the words that he did not wish to say and knelt instead, feeling them poking and prodding underneath his armor.

You wish to sssssave your kingdom, they continued, but there are only one of two paths. Choose wisssssely, or else the world will come crumbling around you.

Unshed diamonds of a tear lingered at the corner of his eye, yet he waited. Waited for them to speak, waited for all to be made known to him in due time.

He knew that they reveled in his torture, knew that they had never meant for him to be King. He had invaded his elder Brother’s dreams–a Dreamstealer, they called him, a twister of Fate–and he had won every Battle that his Brother had ever fought in that realm.

It had been an accident. He swore on the Altar for that, and yet they cackled.

His Brother died only a month later, fighting a Battle that he was doomed to lose.

And so he grasped the Crown, yet so he brought the Vengeance upon his own, a ticking time bomb waiting to burst into splinters of the Past.

Spectre’s lips brushed against his ear and put an end to his blessed reverie.