Everyone could likely guess what happened afterward.

  The reports came in waves, like the tide washing ashore bits of wreckage. Men stationed across the ties began interceptiers fleeing the battlefield—broken shells of soldiers, haunted and trembling, their eyes hollowed by what they had seen.

  They were all from the rebellion’s army, every st one of them, and their stories painted a picture that no one wao believe.

  It began as soon as Burn arrived.

  When interrogated, these deserters couldn’t stop shaking, couldn’t stop repeating the same thing: terror had a voice, and it beloo the king.

  Burn had stepped onto the battlefield alone. His deep, dark voice, weighted with mana, struot just their ears but their very bones. It vibrated in their middle ear ossicles, as though the air itself was spiring with him.

  "If you return Duke Leodegrance’s body," he had said, the words low and measured, "I will spare your lives."

  But their first prince seemingly refused, prompting that dark voice t through the ranks—even to the person standing at the very back of the line, who shook in horror.

  “So be it, then.”

  At that moment, the front liners of the rebellion army’s vision were halved. Steel spears, heavy shields, horses, fgs, limbs, iines—but mainly brains—were cracked open, the tops of skulls toppled from their heads to the ground.

  The sed liners froze. Thehird liners. Then the fourth. Doubt. Silence. Realization. Screams of terror. People falling to their backs, bolting away, deserting, leaving their ons behind.

  The fifth liners saw the age and did the same. The sixth, the seventh, the eighth. Everyone screamed.

  Then it happened again.

  Brain soup. Red. The ground. Eyeballs. The smell—the wind carried it to the back of the line. Failed bdders, untrolble bowels, soiled pants. The red. The thick, red.

  The man at the horizon was just alone.

  ***

  At some point, Man had settled into a chair, leaning forward with a full mug of warm chocote in her hands, listening ily as Burn finished his story. The man sat across from her, legs crossed, leaning back with one hand massaging his temple like he was trying to rub the guilt out of his skull.

  He had killed is that day. tless soldiers who had dohing more thahe orders of their rebellious anders.

  From anyone else’s perspective, Burn would undoubtedly be cast as the monster of the battlefield, his as spoken of in hushed tones and with accusatres. But Man didn’t just hear the story—she saw it. Burn had allowed her to look directly into his memories, to relive it all from his point of view.

  It wasn’t just the story of a monster. It was the perspective of one.

  “It’s getting cold,” Burn reminded, his voice cutting through the silence.

  Man raised her eyebrows and gave him a small smile, then silently sipped her chocote.

  “Is it good?” he asked, watg her carefully.

  Instead of answering, she stood, approached him, aled herself on his p. She handed him the mug. He took it without protest, tasting it with a thoughtful nod before handing it back to her. She didn’t drink it. Instead, she pced it ly oable.

  “It’s te,” she said softly. “We tihe story tomorrow.”

  Something flickered across Burn’s faething unguarded and fleeting—but he smoothed it over with a practiced smile. “You already know it’s not finished.”

  Man tilted her head, a wry smirk tugging at her lips. “Killing thousands of enemy soldiers might debatably be worse thaing two se beings, but I don’t think that’s what you’re calling worse thaing two se beings.”

  Burn caught her wrist whearted to rise from his p, pulling her back down into his arms. The width of his palm easily spahe small of her back, holdiill.

  “We couldn’t find Aroche’s body at first.”

  After finishing t—ign the man’s st, desperate revetion that Burn wasn’t Arthur’s real sourned his focus to finding Aroche. He interrogated t’s closest men, anyone who might know where the Duke’s body was. But most refused to speak.

  It wasn’t clear at first whether they genuinely didn’t know or if the truth was so horrific that they feared Burn’s wrath would seal their fate if they spoke it aloud.

  It was the sed.

  Burn had them gathered—t’s loyalists, their families, anyone who might have answers. Pced them all in the same room, where their loved ones could see everything. He gave them a simple ultimatum: talk, or watch as I torture you—and make your families witness it until the eually, one of them broke.

  Aroche’s body had been hacked into pieces.

  Ao the pigs.

  At first, Burn refused to believe it, thinking it was just another lie, a spiteful story crafted from their hatred for him. Or maybe it was true.

  Again, it was the sed.

  They eveified the exact pigpehey had discarded Aroche’s body, and the two pigs that had feasted on him. Those same pigs—brought to the battlefield as living rations—had been pilged from a nearby vilge.

  Burn had eaten living beings before. One shaped like a fish. One shaped like a horse. Both had spoken to him. Both had begged him not to sughter or e them.

  But this was somehow worse.

  The weight of it made him lightheaded. Nausea ed in his stomatil he reached out blindly fahad, steadying himself on the knight’s unwavering form.

  That night, Burn was vinced sleep would never e for him again.

  And by m, he had made up his mind.

  He gathered the two pigs iion, taking them to a locked room. Inside, he prepared himself: a sturdy table, a butcher knife, a long, slender bde, and a pristiher apron.

  No one followed. No one dared.

  ***

  Outside the locked room, the atmosphere was something no one had ever experienced before—and none of them ever wao again.

  The knights stood vigil in a grim sileheir faces pale and eyes distant, statues of eternal regret. Gahad, ever the paragon of steadfastness, stood straight, his jaw ched so tight it might crack, hands csped behind his back like he was gripping the hilt of an invisible sword.

  Bedivere, usually the picture of unshakable fidence, sat slumped on a wooden stool, his massive frame caved in like a felled tree. Elbows on his knees, head hanging low, his fingers cwed through his hair as though trying to dig out a reason, any reason, for why they were enduring this nightmare.

  The first sound from inside shattered the silence, and with it, their fragile posure.

  A low, guttural squeal—distinctly pig-like, but somehow worse. High-pitched, pierg, primal terror encapsuted in sound. The men flinched as though struck, and Gahad’s fists tightened until his knuckles turhe same shade as his soul—pale aen.

  Then came the butcher knife. Heavy, deliberate thuds followed by the unmistakable wet squelch of flesh yielding to steel. The sound reverberated down the corridor, each strike like a grim metronome keeping time with their collective dread. The pigs screamed, and the men standing outside wished they could.

  As quickly as it began, the sounds ged.

  The squeals stopped, mercifully—or perhaps not. In their pce came the slow, deliberate movements of someohodically tearing through what remained.

  Metallic scraping, soft thuds, and the occasional shift of a bde cutting through silence so thick it could choke. Whatever was happening in that room was the stuff of nightmares.

  Outside, the knights looked as though they had aged decades in mere moments. Tension gave way to something worse: resignation. No one dared voice what they were thinking, but their eyes betrayed it. This is what it takes to stay loyal?

  No. This was what their king did for loyalty. Both Aroche’s loyalty and his own.

  Gahad, the unshakable, wore cracks in his stoic facade. The dark circles under his eyes whispered of sleepless nights long before this, but this? This was new. His rigid posture remained, a soldier’s discipline drilled into him, but his hollow gaze spoke of a man haunted not by what he’d done, but by what he was hearing now.

  Days passed—or maybe years; it felt the same. Sileretched from ihe room, thid oppressive. It was as though the air itself spired to remind them that something unspeakable was happening just a few feet away. The room had bee a tomb, and the man is ghost.

  The knights waited. They didn’t speak. They didn’t dare. Their prayers—when whispered—were fused. Some begged for Burn to emerge whole, others feared what “whole” eve anymore.

  Then, finally, a sound: the faint scrape of a chair, the soft shifting of a bde. It was subtle, almost unnoticeable, but it cwed at their attention like an unwelemory. Relief wasn’t the word—whatever y beyond that door wasn’t relief.

  Burn would walk out eventually. That much they knew. But what would remain of the man? That was anyone’s guess.

  And still, they stood there. Silent. Steadfast. No matter how long it took.

  Because he was their king.

  And to say they had followed him through hell wouldn’t be a lie anymore.