PART II: Change
After a grueling week tormenting Nex, Tazan, and Actaeon in their uniquely twisted ways, Alexander chose brutality as his method. He took particular pleasure in whipping Actaeon—and especially Nex—shouting Nex's slave name with perverse delight:
"Know your place, Servus! Do not dare look at me with defiant eyes when I command you to bury the dead—or leave their corpses to rot! You will do exactly as you're ordered, slave!"
Alexander erupted into laughter as Nex complied without resistance. This cruelty was his revenge for being humiliated when Nex bested him in front of Abigail and Aunt Sarah. Alexander considered Nex—and everyone else besides his sister, father, and adoptive mother Lucy—as inherently beneath him.
Abigail's cruelty came in carefully orchestrated waves.
Her first wave appeared gentle. Abigail treated them kindly—but condescendingly, as if caring for pets. Her kindness, however, was sincere, and she even shared duties with Tazan caring for the infant. To her, this felt merciful. She pitied Nex, born a prince yet cursed by his own father with a name tied to Death itself.
To compensate, she allowed Nex to eat—not at her table, but at least in her tent—offering whatever Actaeon had hunted: deer, boar, fish, and occasionally cattle stolen from nearby farms and slaughtered for her indulgence.
The camp was strategically placed by Abigail between a small lake where swans swam gracefully and dense woods intersected by a flowing river, providing ample resources.
But Abigail's second wave of cruelty arose when she deemed them ungrateful. Her punishments targeted their souls, forcing them to witness and participate in each other's suffering.
One rainy evening, Actaeon returned drenched and shivering at the tent's entrance. "I caught a deer," he announced hoarsely.
"Enter," Abigail commanded sharply, not even looking up.
Actaeon immediately noticed Nex crouched shamefully, avoiding eye contact. He quickly averted his gaze, hoping to spare them both from Abigail's wrath.
While Alexander's brutal lashes marked their bodies, Abigail scarred their souls. She'd earlier forced them to kill deserters, breaking their spirits thoroughly.
"Well done, Actaeon. Now return to your tent," Abigail ordered coldly.
"Where's the child?" Actaeon asked cautiously. "Infants cry relentlessly unless comforted. Only Tazan can calm him. Spare yourself the nuisance, Your Majesty."
Abigail turned, ready to summon Alexander to punish Actaeon's insolence, but caught Nex secretly slipping extra food into his belt, intending to share it with Actaeon and Tazan.
Her smile twisted into something dangerously artificial. "If the baby cries, I'll summon Tazan. Actaeon," she approached with narrowed eyes, "I've changed my mind. I have another task before you rest."
She whispered something cruel into Actaeon's ear. He clenched his fists, jaw tightening with suppressed anger, yet obediently exited without a word.
Seeing an opportunity to help the feverish Actaeon, Nex hid extra potatoes and roasted boar meat in his clothing.
Abigail quietly allowed this, later bringing Nex to a hidden vantage point, forcing him to watch Actaeon execute deserters from the Battle of the Swamps.
There were five in total:
Two childhood friends who fought desperately before being killed.
A father and son pair who stoically accepted death to spare their family.
Lastly, a boy nearly Nex's age.
Actaeon's hands trembled less with each execution—until he reached the boy. At that moment, his grip visibly wavered. Afterward, however, his hands never shook again.
Under Abigail's cold gaze, Nex witnessed Actaeon's transformation from hunter's son to reluctant killer, finally becoming the emotionless executioner the twins had desired.
Tazan, meanwhile, was mostly ignored by Alexander due to intimidation, assigned only menial tasks: fetching firewood, hauling Actaeon's prey, carrying wine barrels, and goods. Tazan's torment came indirectly from drunken guards stumbling back each morning, hurling insults—especially toward his grandmother—and striking him with bottles.
Though the twins rarely directly harmed Tazan, he fought daily to restrain himself from slaughtering his tormentors. Each insult against his family ignited fury, briefly causing him to lash out with immense strength, followed immediately by fear of consequences.
Abigail's favored punishment for Tazan's resistance was forbidding him from caring for the infant. Instead, she forced him to sit helplessly outside her tent, listening to the baby cry through the night, knowing Tazan dared not intervene.
After a week of such misery—Alexander's brutality, Abigail's psychological torment, Actaeon's forced executions, and Tazan's helplessness—they finally had one day free from tasks and punishments.
They sat numbly inside the slave tent alongside two others: a disgraced diamond miner who'd assaulted a noble, and a northern man sold into slavery since his childhood by his parents.
Nex lay on his stomach, wounds preventing him from sitting upright, while Actaeon drifted in and out of feverish consciousness.
When Tazan entered, tears streaming silently down his cheeks, Nex weakly lifted his head. "What's wrong, Tazan?"
"They insulted my grandmother," Tazan whispered bitterly. "When I fought back, Abigail punished me by forcing me to listen again to the baby's cries."
Nex's expression twisted in rage and despair. Unable to endure more, he grabbed Actaeon's hidden knife, trembling as he rose. But before he could reach Abigail's tent, the knife slipped from his shaking hand. The fear of taking a life—even hers—paralyzed him.
Helpless, Nex dropped to his knees, tears cascading freely down his cheeks. This was his first cry since surrendering the duel with Prince Damon. Overwhelmed by shame, grief, and powerlessness, he felt utterly unworthy of his princely title.
His birthright, once a mark of pride, now seemed like a curse—not because of his ominous name or dark hair branding him the "Prince of Death," but simply because he belonged to a royal lineage capable of creating such cruelty.
Within that single, harrowing week:
Nex had grown ashamed of his heritage, feeling reduced to a broken animal.
Tazan had become terrified of his strength, fearing it brought only further suffering.
Actaeon had grown numb, his heart cold and indifferent from relentless killing.
Each had lost something irreplaceable, forever changed by the cruelty inflicted upon them by the twins.