POV: King Theron
The pain was eating me alive again.
I sat on my chair in the darkness, my hands burning like they were on fire. Every nerve in my body screamed. Every beating felt like a knife cutting through my chest. This was my life now—this and only this. Pain. Endless, suffocating pain that had swallowed eight hundred years of my life.
Eight hundred years.
I tried to remember what life was like before the curse. I tried to remember feeling anything except pain. Nothing came. It was all blank. The curse had burned away every good memory, every moment of peace, every second when I didn't want to destroy everything around me just to make the pain stop.
A servant stood in the corner of my throne room, shivering.
"Please," she begged. "Your Majesty, I was only—"
I didn't let her finish. I raised my hand, and my curse triggered. It was like releasing a flood. Death energy poured out of me like water, and wherever it touched her, she withered. Her skin shrank. Her scream cut through the air and then stopped. Within seconds, she was nothing but ash on my floor.
I felt it again—that short moment of relief. That second when her death energy flowed into me and the pain eased, just a little. Just enough to tell me that the pain could be less, even if it could never be gone.
But the comfort died as fast as it came, and the burning came back. It was worse this time. It always was.
I stood up, angry, desperate. I needed something. Anything. The curse was getting worse, not better. Every year it got more powerful, more painful, more impossible to stop. I'd been King for eight centuries, but I was nothing now. Just a shell that hurt all the time.
My wife appeared in the doorway. Queen Helena. She wore expensive silks and jewels, and her face was blank with fear. She never looked at me anymore. Nobody did. They all saw the curse first—the way my hands glowed with death, the way my eyes burned silver, the way everything I touched turned to ash.
"The Council is waiting to speak with you," she said quietly. "They say it's urgent."
I didn't answer. I didn't care about the Council. I didn't care about anything. There was only the pain and the constant, desperate need to make it stop.
"Leave," I told her.
She left, and I was alone again. Alone with the burning. Alone with the curse.
I walked to the edge of my castle, to the highest tower. Below, the human world spread out like a toy kingdom. Tiny towns. Tiny people. All of them small and unimportant compared to my power, compared to my pain.
I could destroy it all. One wave of my curse-power, and everything below would wither and die. Everyone would turn to ash. The thought brought a twisted kind of comfort. If I couldn't have peace, at least I could give the world a reason to fear me. At least I could make them understand what suffering felt like.
But that peace was a lie, and I knew it. Destroying the world wouldn't end the pain. Nothing could end it. The goddess of death had made sure of that when I refused her all those centuries ago. She wanted me to suffer forever, and she'd succeeded.
I stood in the darkness, waiting for nothing, expecting nothing, suffering everything.
Then something impossible happened.
A sound floated across the air. It came from somewhere far away, from the mortal places below. It was a voice—a woman's voice, singing. Not just any song. This was something ancient, something magical, something that didn't fit in the normal world.
I froze.
The voice was like the ocean itself. It was like water and moonlight and every beautiful thing that had ever existed. The song was a lullaby, old and strong, and it wrapped around my mind like chains made of peace.
For the first time in eight hundred years, the pain stopped.
Not weakened. Not lessened. Stopped.
I couldn't move. I couldn't move. I could only listen to the voice, and as I heard, the curse inside me grew quiet. The burning vanished. The agony that had defined my entire life simply... disappeared.
It was the most frightening moment of my life.
My knees went weak. I grabbed the tower's edge to keep from falling. Tears—tears I couldn't remember ever crying—ran down my face. I was immortal. I was powerful. I was a king who had ruled for eight centuries. But this voice, this impossible voice, brought me to my knees.
The song continued, and with each note, I felt something crack open inside me. Something I'd locked away so deep that I'd forgotten it existed. Hope. Real, dangerous, impossible hope.
The song was teaching me something. It was telling me that pain didn't have to last forever. That peace was possible. That maybe, just maybe, life could be more than pain.
Then the song ended.
The quiet hit me like a physical blow. The pain rushed back, but it felt different now. Worse. More powerful. Because I'd tasted peace, and now I knew what I was missing. Now I knew that peace was possible. And that knowledge made the curse unbearable in a whole new way.
I roared. The sound came from deep inside me, from the cursed part of my soul. My roar shook the entire house. Windows smashed. Servants screamed and ran. The tower I stood on cracked, and stone began to crumble.
But I didn't care.
I needed to hear that voice again. I needed to understand what it was. I needed to know if it was real or if I'd imagined the whole thing—that my desperate, suffering mind had made an illusion to torture me further.
I turned away from the edge and walked back into the house. I moved like a storm, destroying everything in my path. Guards tried to stop me. I didn't even see them. I just felt them turn to ash as my curse released itself without control.
"Find her," I yelled at whoever could still hear me through the chaos. "Find the singer. Find whoever made that sound. Find her now, or I will kill everyone in this palace and start with the towns below."
My guards scattered, scared and obedient. They knew I wasn't making empty threats. I'd done worse for less.
I stood alone in my throne room, hands shaking, mind running. That voice. That impossible, beautiful voice. It had to exist. It had to be real. Because if it was real, that meant I could find it. That meant I could hear it again.
That meant maybe, just maybe, the eight hundred years of pain could finally end.
Hours passed while I waited for my guards to return. I sat on my throne, fighting the pain that had come roaring back twice as strong now that I knew comfort existed. My fingers drummed against the backrest, leaving scorch marks in the stone.
Finally, a captain appears at the doors. His face was pale, and he moved carefully, like he was approaching something dangerous. He was right to be afraid.
"Your Majesty," he said, keeping his distance. "We found the source of the singing. It came from a village called Millbrook, about two days' trip south of here."
"A person?" I asked. "Male or female?"
"Female, my lord. A traveling bard. She performed at the neighborhood tavern tonight. The guards at the village said she has blue hair and— " I didn't wait for him to finish. I stood up, my curse-power rising around me like a dark storm. " Prepare my best horse. Give me men. And find out everything about this bard. Her name. Where she came from. Where she's sleeping tonight. I want her spot exact."
"Yes, Your Majesty. But—"
"What?" I snapped, my temper already gone.
"There was an incident tonight. A drunk man struck her. She ran from the bar. She's staying at the town inn, but the owner says she'll probably leave at dawn. She might be gone by the time you arrive."
The thought of her leaving, of losing the chance to hear that voice again, made my curse burst outward. The captain turned to ash where he stood.
I didn't care. There would be more captains. More guards. More helpers.
But there would only ever be one sound like that. One voice that could stop the curse. One voice that could bring relief to eight hundred years of pain.
And I was going to find her, even if I had to burn down the entire world to do it.
I felt it then—something moving inside me. Something dangerous and intense taking root. This wasn't just about stopping the pain anymore. It was about needing her. Needing to hear her words. Needing her to be mine and only mine.
The guards who were still living ran to prepare my horse. Within minutes, I was riding through the night toward the town of Millbrook. The horse beneath me screamed as my curse-power burned its back, but it kept running because it had no choice.
I had no choice either. The pain had control of me now, using desperation as its tool.
And I was riding toward a blue-haired girl who had no idea that her voice had just destroyed an immor
tal king's mind.
She had no idea what was coming for her.