The Path of Ruin

Chapter 49 - 49: The False King

Kael blinked slowly at first. He saw the dark clouds dissipating from the gray sky, then the pale silhouette of the sun struggling to bring its light to the ground.

"Ugh..."

First, he turned over, then he tried to get up with the support of his arms. While thinking about what had happened, he looked around.

He was in the center of town. The clothes he was wearing looked somehow... burnt. But they were also wet. Not only his clothes, but the whole town was wet when he looked at it now. It was as if it had rained for hours, hard and heavy, faster than he had ever seen in his life.

But that was not all. Some houses had collapsed, some were literally... smoothly cut. There were a few bodies around, either drowned or killed with the same smoothness as the buildings.

His eyebrows furrowed, his eyes squinted for a moment. And then... he froze.

'Ah...'

Everything before he fainted rushed into his mind. His eyes quickly scanned the surroundings, looking for two familiar figures. And he found one rather quickly.

Tharon was standing where he had been, right in the center of the clearing. He was panting, the light blue glow in his eyes gone, replaced by his original color of yellow. His left arm was missing, cut off as smoothly as everything else around him. There was also a slash across his chest, running diagonally from his shoulder to his waist.

Kael swallowed. This time, his eyes

He bowed his head, closed his eyes.

His mind went back months, to that moment in the palace... to the seconds he was in the king's chambers.

The words he heard then replayed in his mind, then how the mark on his neck had disappeared.

And... he murmured in a voice so low that almost no one but himself could hear him.

"I, Kael, by my authority as sole king of the Kingdom of Arcanoa, free you from your slave status."

He repeated exactly the words of the previous king.

But... nothing happened.

And Kael realized the mistake he had made.

'Heh...'

As his lips curled upwards, only one thing crossed his mind.

'I'm... not a real king, right?

What was in his chest, just above his heart, was not even a blessing.

It was a curse because he was not royalty, because it rejected him.

But... he was not entirely wrong.

After all, he had something that only the kings of Arcanoa should have.

He raised his head, looked into Tharon's pale eyes again. And... correcting himself, he repeated.

"I, Kael, by my authority as the false king of the Kingdom of Arcanoa, free you from your slave status."

A pale, yellowish light surrounded Tharon after his words. The mark of slavery on his neck turned crimson, as if it were on fire, just as it had been on his own a few months before. And then... it vanished into ashes.

Tharon fell to his knees. Tears appeared in his eyes as his whole body gradually lost what strength it had.

"False king, huh..."

He bowed his head, mumbling only two words as his hair fell in front of his face.

"I... thank you..."

He had dreamed of this moment all his life. Every time he fought, every time he grew stronger, every time he came back from the dead, it was so that he could taste this feeling.

The absence of the chains around every fiber of his body... made him feel as if he could breathe freely for the first time.

Now, he could die.

Now... he could leave this world in peace.

But as he waited to breathe his last in silence, he heard the voice echoing loud and clear in his ears, the voice of the 'false king' before him.

"And I... apologize."

'Ah...'

He felt a momentary pain. Not what his body already had, but a different kind of pain.

His world suddenly turned upside down. And then once more. He even saw his own body a few times, how strange it was...

But he didn't care.

In his last moments, he thought of only one thing.

'Was the price of freedom... death?'

Still... it wasn't a bad feeling, freedom...

It was worth dying for.

*(A/N: This chapter might have been a bit confusing. Because everything happened a bit too fast. But don't worry, you will understand everything much more clearly in the following chapters. Who Tharon really is, why he was a slave, Kael's situation, and much more. For now, thanks for reading as always.)*