There was no light at the end of his life. Only sounds violent, fractured, unfinished, like a world choking on its own lies.
The first bullet tore into his left shoulder, not by accident, but by design. Someone wanted him alive long enough to understand. Heat exploded through flesh, then faded into a cold so sharp it felt deliberate. He staggered, not from pain, but from calculation.
Three men.Not five, as there should have been.
One behind the desk.One at the door.And one, the most dangerous, too calm for a man pointing a gun at his own king.
He smiled, or perhaps he merely showed his teeth. In his world, the difference between a grin and a threat had always been negotiable.
"So this is how it ends," he said, his voice drowned beneath the next gunshot.
There was no anger in him. Anger was a luxury for fools. What remained was certainty bitter, absolute:
Power never dies because of enemies. It dies because of trust.
Blood spread across the concrete floor, warm, metallic, familiar. The air stank of gunpowder and inevitability. As his body collapsed, his mind remained alert, cataloguing faces, memorizing trajectories, planning retribution that would never come.
Then darkness claimed him.
Not sleep.Not oblivion.
A darkness dense with pressure, as if reality itself had clenched its jaw and swallowed him whole.
******
He woke to the sound of breathing that was not his own.
Slow. Shallow. Fragile.
The ceiling above him was not stained concrete, but pale stone curved into graceful arches, carved with unfamiliar symbols, ancient markings that felt older than any sin he had committed. Soft light spilled through a high window, filtered by stained glass depicting a winged figure raising a sword toward the heavens.
He tried to move.
His body refused.
Not because of bullet wounds, there was no pain like that. Instead, weakness pressed in from every direction, a helplessness that made each breath feel too large for the chest that drew it in.
Chest… too small.
He looked down.
The hands resting atop the silken sheets were smooth. Too smooth. Fingers slender, nails clean, skin unmarred by scars. No knife marks. No burns. No reminders of a violent life.
When he spoke, the voice that emerged from his throat was wrong.
Young.
"Where… am I?"
The door opened slowly, as though afraid of disturbing something sacred. An elderly woman entered, her steps careful, her robes plain. When she saw his open eyes, the color drained from her face.
"Blessed Light…" she whispered. "His Highness is awake."
His Highness.
The title landed heavily, not with honor, but with absurdity.
He tried to speak again, but his mind fractured under a sudden flood of images. Names. Faces. Prayers. Bells. Fear that did not belong to him. Memories forced themselves forward like a river reclaiming a broken channel.
Cael Arthava.
The name did not introduce itself—it returned, settling into place as if it had always been waiting. A child. A third prince. Born beneath the shadow of prophecy. Weak. Unwanted. Quietly prayed over, quietly prepared for disappearance.
He closed his eyes.
Not to rest. To think.
If this were a dream, it was cruelly precise. If this was hell, then hell had grown unimaginative. And if this were a second life
His lips curved faintly.
"They gave me the wrong body," he murmured.
"Or perhaps… the wrong world."
*******
The days that followed passed in a silence that felt deliberate.
He was not chained. Not questioned. Not threatened. Instead, he was smothered in gentleness—the kind reserved for things expected to break.
Servants spoke in hushed tones. Physicians avoided his gaze. Priests lingered too long in prayer, as if words alone could seal a crack they were afraid to acknowledge.
From fragments of overheard conversations, one truth surfaced again and again:
No one expected him to live long.
Not because of illness, though the body was frail, but because of a prophecy.
A vision spoken before his birth.A sentence that shaped every decision made about him.A future declared inevitable.
He heard it clearly one night, through half-drawn curtains, while two priests believed him asleep.
"…the Prince of Darkness," one whispered.
"…if he reaches adulthood, Eldervale will fall," said the other.
"The Light doesn't err."
He nearly laughed.
In his former life, they had called him destruction as well. Not because of prophecy, but because he earned the name. Cities went quiet when it was spoken. Deals froze. Loyalties bled.
The difference was simple.
In this world, they feared him before he had done anything at all.
Fate, he realized, was nothing more than fear given sacred grammar.
----------
On the seventh night, he sat alone in the massive bed, its grandeur mocking the smallness of his body. Candles burned low at the edges of the chamber, their shadows splitting and crawling across the walls like figures unable to agree on a single shape.
He closed his eyes and let the two lives collide.
One world of guns, money, betrayal, brutal, honest in its cruelty.Another of crowns, prayers, prophecies, and beautiful, sanctified lies.
When he opened his eyes, his voice was barely louder than breath.
"If you want destruction," he said, speaking to the walls, to the gods, to the unseen machinery of destiny itself, "you should not have given it to me."
Outside, the bells rang—three slow tolls.
Not a death knell.Not yet.
He lay back, staring at the ceiling etched with symbols of light and protection. Beneath the weakness of this body, his mind had already begun to move—measuring, waiting, recalibrating.
He would not fight the prophecy. He would understand it . And then he would decide whether this destruction deserved to exist.
And if it did
He would ensure the world could never again call it an accident.