Part two: From being a king to mere student
Auntie Marie stared at him like someone watching a mouse condemned to die while the very lizard that cursed it crawled away alive.
Her look carved lines into Kyle's — no, into Arthur's — face. The old skin folded as if the years themselves were ashamed. Up close, he looked like a man bent over by pain; the way his mouth tightened made him seem constipated with grief. But his clothes, the servants, the polished floor — all of them told a different story. Wealth and ease framed the stranger in the chair; contempt and suspicion framed him, too.
Everyone watched. Not gently. Only Auntie Marie knew tonight was not a night for jokes. A single careless word could cost a life — and tonight it almost had.
Arthur felt the maids' and guards' eyes like knives. Their frustration turned to hatred on his face. He wanted to laugh at them, to spit in their faces and tell them to go to hell. "Are you all that blind? Do you hate me so much because one old woman is angry?" he wanted to shout. But his voice was something else in this body — quieter, foreign.
The reception room pressed against him like an iron lid. Rage pooled in his chest until he imagined setting the entire fortress ablaze. A foolish thought stole over him: if this were his throne again, he would burn this place down and watch the faces he hated twist and melt in the light.
He tried to steady himself. How had he come back into a world he barely recognized? Had he dreamed it? If this was a dream he had to wake. He could not afford sleep now — not while danger hummed in the walls. In the castle, everyone was a snake. He trusted no one, not even the woman who shared his bed once. The memories of such women made him spit. They had come for titles, not love. His sons had suffered; that thought burned with an old, shameful grief.
Lost in those ghosts, he followed Auntie Marie as she stormed into the right wing house, the room that smelled of polished wood and money.
It looked like a noble's pride: gilded ornaments on the mantel, a portrait of Auntie Marie in a golden frame staring down with a smug, carved smile. Sofas sat like trophies; every stitch screamed wealth. The hush in the room snapped when Auntie Marie's voice broke the silence.
"I can't hold it in any longer," she hissed. "Why did you kill my young brother, Kalimantan?"
Arthur froze. The old woman's words landed like blows. "He did nothing to hurt you," she spat, voice rough. "He loved you."
"You snake," she snarled at Kyle's body. "I never liked you — from the day you were born. You are treachery wrapped in a face. After your father died, I took you in, just to see how treachery you was to my kalimantan,go ahead Kill me too, since you are so fantastic with little ones."
Her words dug into him. Kalimantan had been her light. She said she was empty now; she had become darkness. Arthur watched without knowing how to answer. The old woman's grief was real; the house shook with it.
"And you," she continued, voice breaking to a rasp, "you are the child of a snake. A snake cannot be anything but a snake." She turned to the family around her. "Traitors! All of you! And you — you belong nowhere near the name Hunts. Sign the papers and leave this house. Leave this family!"
The room tightened. Tears wavered, anger flared, and Arthur felt absurdly small. He tried to tell himself the truth — that he would never have killed Kalimantan if this body were still his. He believed it like a thin shield. The idea of his hand stained with that blood was impossible.
The old woman's rage thickened into something else. Discipline, she called it. A slap struck across his face — not once, but a law-old, ceremonial blow, heavy with authority. The slap carried a strange, crackling power that made Arthur's head ring. He almost laughed at the absurdity of an old fool wielding ancient force. Almost.
"No one laughs in front of me," she said, voice flat and terrible. The power in her chest spiraled, a visible pulse that made the room hold its breath. Arthur felt it lift at him — and for the first time tonight, a whisper of fear slid under his skin.
Then a guard stepped forward, paper in hand. Mistress Marie," he said, handing her a letter sealed with an old enchantment. The letter was safer than message in phones
When she opened it, the ink seemed to fold itself into air; the parchment disintegrated under her fingers as all eyes watched.
The spell in that scrap of paper soothed Auntie Marie's fury like balm. Her shoulders, once rigid, sagged. The cold fire in her gaze cooled and retreated. Arthur mouthed the words he had read in that vanished script; they were a small, impossible mercy — the line that saved him from the old woman's full wrath.
Her face softened then into a dark, satisfied smile — not the peaceful kind, but the look of a hand that had set a new plan in motion. "From tomorrow," she said, voice thin with triumph, "you will go to military school."
She spoke the next name like a verdict. "To your uncle, Demos Hunts."
Arthur felt the sentence like iron around his feet.
"And I will not stain my hands with your blood," she added coldly. "Demos will take his revenge for my brother. This Kyle will rot in the dungeon forever."
School ?....damnation !.
I hate them...I really hate them...but what option I have...I should find a way to wake up
The way this dream move is hard for me to endure more
I can't tolerate anymore..especially the very thought of being a student again
But what if -it is not a dream...and everything here is really...