The chains dug into his wrists like hungry mouths, biting deeper with every shudder of the cart. Rain fell in sheets, mingling with the dried blood on his skin. Around him, the forest whispered—mocking, uncaring. Just like the nobles who'd laughed when his mother begged for mercy. Just like the guards who spat on his food and cursed his name.
Kael Veylor.
That was the name the palace never said aloud. A mistake. A sin. A bastard born from lust and silence.
He remembered her hands. Once soft. Then cracked and trembling. The day she sold him to the robed man with eyes like rotting milk, she never looked back. She just whispered, "It's your fault. You ruined me."
The cart stopped. Torches flickered in the rain. A voice barked, rough and sharp:
"Bring the subject inside."
They dragged him out. Mud swallowed his feet. A door creaked open, and darkness swallowed him whole.
He screamed for hours.
Days.
Weeks.
Pain became breath. Suffering, his heartbeat. They carved sigils into his flesh, poured cursed mana into his eyes until he saw time shatter and bend. Until he heard voices whispering from the walls.
Until he forgot his name.
But then—
He remembered.
The laughter.
The cold.
The throne he would never sit on.
And something bloomed. Not hatred. Not vengeance.
Purpose.
One night, when the sorcerer slept too deep and the guards drank too much, the boy with the cursed eyes opened the iron doors… and hell followed him.
The facility burned.
Screams echoed into the night.
And from the flame walked a boy with blood on his hands and children trailing behind him—eyes wide, terrified, saved.
Years passed.
They called him the Demon's Apprentice. The Dark Flame. The Fallen Heir.
But when he returned from exile, clad in obsidian armor, crowned in black thorns and shadow, they gave him a new name.
The Dread King.
And with twelve broken souls behind him—his Thorns—he began the war.
Not for revenge.
Not for glory.
But for a kingdom that would never throw away its children again.
Let them call him monster. He would become the god of monsters if that's what it took to protect them.