The following week, Eizen was forced to attend the "Rite of Remembrance." It was a festival where the royal family shared stories of their ancestors to "reinforce the spirit of the bloodline."
Eizen stood on the balcony, watching his father, King Alaric, recount a legendary battle from twenty years ago. The King spoke of a heroic charge, of a divine light that guided his sword, and of the noble sacrifice of his commander. The crowd cheered, weeping at the beauty of the "truth."
Eizen stood at the edge, his hands behind his back, feeling a profound sense of disgust. Later that evening, in the private solar, the King turned to Eizen.
"Did you feel it, my son? The weight of our history? The truth of our past?"
Eizen looked at his father, the man who believed his own lies. "Which version of the past, Father? The one where you almost retreated because of a stomach ache, or the one you just told the peasants?"
The King's face turned a violent shade of purple. "How dare you? I remember it vividly! The sky opened, and—"
"You remember nothing," Eizen interrupted, his voice cutting like a scalpel.
"What you have to remember about the past is that it literally doesn't exist. It exists only in your mind. Your memories are no more real than a daydream is. Your memories are most likely not as accurate as you think they are. They are colored by your emotions and how you were feeling, and colored by your memory itself."
The King stepped forward, his hand raised to strike. Eizen didn't flinch. He didn't blink. He watched the King's muscles, calculating the trajectory of the blow.
"The mind exaggerates, Father," Eizen continued, unfazed. "Your commander didn't sacrifice himself; he fell off his horse and was trampled by your own cavalry. But that doesn't make a good story, does it?
"Memories are not accurate and cannot be trusted. We gain our sense of self from our memories. We decide who we are because of our memories. We write a story about our life and tell ourselves that story to form our sense of self."
The King lowered his hand, his eyes filling with a mixture of rage and genuine fear. "You are a monster. You strip the soul out of everything."
"I strip the rot," Eizen corrected.
"Because the past doesn't exist anymore and what you remember happening probably didn't happen the way you remember it at all. You can rewrite it, rewrite the story you tell about yourself to yourself. Rewrite your personal story and rewrite your past, and you rewrite yourself."
Eizen stepped closer to his father, his eight-year-old frame seeming to cast a shadow that filled the entire room. "I have rewritten my past already, Father. In my memory, I was never born of your blood. I was born of the void and logic. Therefore, your 'authority' over me is nothing more than a chemical reaction in your brain that I choose to ignore."
That night, the King gave the first order to the secret guard: Watch the boy. He is not a child. He is an infection.
Eizen, meanwhile, sat in his dark room, staring at the moon. He didn't see a goddess in the sky. He saw a rock reflecting light. He picked up his quill.
"So what if I am hated, detested and scolded by countless people? If this world was so simple such that hatred, loathe, and curses worked, why would I still need strength?"
He knew the trial was coming. He could feel the gears of the kingdom turning against him. But to Eizen, the battle was already over.