Rating: MA19+Themes: Trauma, mass death, loss of control, survivor's guilt
PART ONE: The Festival of Light
The morning came the way summer mornings do in kingdoms that don't know they're about to die—golden, warm, full of the particular innocence that exists only before tragedy teaches you better.
Kael Valdris woke to his mother's singing. Queen Seria's voice drifted through the palace corridors like something made of light itself, carrying the melody she'd learned from her grandmother in a language Kael didn't speak but somehow understood meant home and safe and loved. He was ten years old, and he believed—truly believed—that nothing bad could ever happen as long as his mother kept singing.
He dressed quickly in the formal clothes laid out for him: deep blue tunic embroidered with the Valdris crest, silver clasps that caught the sunlight, soft leather boots that still felt too stiff. Today was the Summer Solstice Festival, the biggest celebration of the year, and as the crown prince he was expected to look the part even though he'd rather wear his training clothes and spend the day with Lira and Tomas.
"You look very princely," his mother said when he appeared in the breakfast hall, but her smile was teasing, affectionate. She could see through the formal clothes to the kid underneath who just wanted to play.
"I look uncomfortable," Kael replied, tugging at his collar.
King Aldric looked up from his documents—always working, even on festival days—and his stern expression softened just slightly. "A prince serves his people even when it's uncomfortable. Especially then."
Kael nodded dutifully and ate his breakfast while his mother hummed and his father returned to his endless paperwork and the castle staff bustled around preparing for the festivities.
Normal. Safe. Boring in the way that safety always is when you're ten and don't know enough to treasure it. By noon, the festival grounds were alive with color and sound and the particular energy that comes from an entire kingdom celebrating together.
Kael escaped his minders—again, a skill he'd perfected over years of practice—and found Lira and Tomas near the fountain in the market square. Lira was a commoner kid, daughter of the palace healer, with dark curls and magic that manifested as gentle warmth whenever she touched injuries. Tomas was the blacksmith's son, dreaming of becoming a knight even though his father wanted him to inherit the forge.
"You're late," Lira said, but she was smiling.
"I'm a prince. We're fashionably late," Kael replied with exaggerated pride, which made Tomas laugh so hard he nearly choked on the sweet bread he was eating.
They spent the afternoon doing exactly what people like them usually should do at festivals: playing games that were rigged but fun anyway, eating too many honey cakes, watching street performers juggle fire and tell stories about heroes who always won and monsters who always lost. The world was simple. Good and evil were clear. Magic was wonderful.
Kael sometimes felt it—his magic stirring beneath his skin like trapped lightning. It sparked when he was angry, flared when he was afraid, shimmered faintly when his heart raced with excitement. But it never became anything tangible. Nothing useful. Nothing like Lira's gentle healing warmth or the elegant elemental control the Academy students displayed with effortless pride.
Still, he was not a complete failure. Not like Akio Mune. Everyone knew that name.
Akio Mune—the child who could not use magic in a world that worshipped it. A commoner who entered the Royal Academy chasing power he could never grasp. He trained harder than anyone. Studied longer. Bled for lessons others mastered in a day. And when war tensions rose and strength became everything, his weakness became unforgivable in many eyes.
The bullying was relentless. Public. Famous.
People said he died because he pushed himself too far trying to awaken magic that was never there. Others said he blamed himself until there was nothing left of him but regret. Either way, the world decided what his story meant.
He became a lesson. A warning.
A legend carved in stone on the commoner side of the capital—a statue raised in pity by those who saw themselves in him. Even nobles knew his name, though they spoke it with quiet disdain. To the royals, he was proof that blood determined worth. To the Academy, he was an example whispered to new students: Do not be weak. War does not forgive weakness.
No one questioned the system that destroyed him. He was only a commoner, after all.
And so Akio Mune's death became something convenient. A tragedy repurposed into doctrine. A symbol used to keep order between nobles and commoners alike.
For Kael, his story was more than history. It was a shadow.
Because Kael carried royal blood. Because his family's power had shaped generations. Because failure was not an option for someone in his lineage. His tutors always assured him the magic would awaken in time. Royal bloodlines never failed. Power was inevitable.
"Be patient," they would say, voices calm with absolute certainty. But whenever Kael felt those small, useless sparks flicker in his heart—brief, fragile, and gone in an instant—doubt crept in.
Royal bloodlines always awakened… didn't they? He couldn't help but think of Akio Mune.
The name lingered like a cautionary whisper in the halls of history. A legend—though not the glorious kind. Akio Mune had once chased magic with unwavering belief, convinced that destiny owed him power. Yet nothing ever came. No awakening. No miracle. Only failure. His story had shaped the world in subtle ways, becoming proof that ambition without ability was folly.
But sometimes, in the quiet moments between lessons, Kael wondered... had Akio once been told the same comforting words? Had someone once promised him that power was inevitable?
Kael didn't dwell on it long. Unlike others, he didn't obsess over what his bloodline meant for politics or noble expectations. He focused only on the magic itself. The bloodline was a given. It was the spark that mattered.
And he still had time. He was only young. Time, after all, felt infinite.
The sun was starting to set—painting the sky in shades of orange and purple that looked like they'd been designed specifically for this perfect day—when it happened.
PART TWO: The First Spark
They were near the fountain, watching a puppet show, when Marcus appeared.
Marcus was twelve, the merchant's son, and he'd hated Kael for years with the particular venom that comes from being almost-important in a world where someone else will always be more important just by their title alone. He was bigger than Kael, meaner, and had three friends who followed him around like a small pack of wolves looking for something to hurt.
"Well, look at the little prince," Marcus said, loud enough that people turned. "Playing with the commoners. How generous of you to lower yourself."
Kael's hands clenched, but he'd been taught to ignore bullies. "Leave us alone, Marcus."
"Or what? You'll tell your parents?" Marcus stepped closer, and his friends formed a semicircle, cutting off easy escape. "Maybe I should teach you what happens to princes who forget their place."
Tomas moved to stand beside Kael. "Back off." "Make me, blacksmith's kid."
It happened fast. Marcus shoved Tomas. Tomas shoved back. Marcus's friends grabbed Tomas's arms. And then Marcus turned to Lira—who'd never hurt anyone in her life—and before Kael could process what was happening, Marcus grabbed her by the shoulder and pushed.
She fell backward into the fountain with a splash and a cry of surprise. The crowd gasped. Lira surfaced, sputtering, clothes soaked, face shocked and hurt and humiliated. And something inside Kael ignited.
Not metaphorically. Literally. He felt it—a furnace in his heart roaring to life, heat flooding through his veins, power erupting from places he didn't know existed inside him.
"Don't touch her," he heard himself say, and his voice didn't sound like his voice. It sounded older. Dangerous. Wrong. Marcus turned, and whatever he saw in Kael's face made him step back.
Then the flames came.
They erupted from Kael's hands—crimson laced with black like blood mixed with ink, beautiful and terrible and completely beyond his control. They didn't burn. That would have been better. What they did was worse.
The flames touched Marcus and something in the kids expression changed. His eyes went wide with fear, but it wasn't normal fear. It was terror amplified beyond reason, beyond control, beyond anything a human mind was meant to process. He started screaming—high and shrill and endless—and he couldn't stop, couldn't even pause for breath, just kept screaming until his voice broke and still he tried to scream more.
"Stop it!" Kael cried, trying to pull the flames back, but they had their own will now. "I didn't mean—stop!" The flames spread.
A person rushed to help Marcus, grabbed him to pull him away, and the corruption transferred. Her protective instinct—the normal human desire to help a person—amplified into something monstrous. She grabbed Marcus so tightly Kael heard bones crack, clutching him against herself while Marcus's broken-voiced screams continued and the person kept whispering "safe now, safe now, I'll keep you safe" even as she crushed him.
More people came to help. The flames spread to them too. Each person's emotions became weapons turned inward:
A merchant's pride in his stall became desperate hoarding—he started attacking anyone who came near his goods, convinced they were stealing, stabbing with a knife he pulled from his one jacket pocket—
A child's joy at the festival became manic laughter—she spun and spun and laughed and laughed until she collapsed from dizziness and still kept laughing, tears streaming down her face—
The entire festival descended into chaos in seconds. The corruption spread like disease, person to person, emotion to amplified emotion, turning the whole beautiful celebration into a nightmare of people trapped inside their own feelings, unable to stop, unable to control anything entirely.
And at the center of it all: Kael. Ten years old. Small hands erupting with crimson-black flames he didn't understand and couldn't stop.
"KAEL!" His father's voice cut through the screaming. King Aldric was running toward him, guards flanking, trying to create a perimeter. "Son, you have to calm down! You have to stop!"
"I CAN'T!" Kael sobbed, and the flames pulsed brighter with his panic. "Papa, I can't make it stop!" Aldric made a decision. He dismissed the guards with a gesture and approached alone, arms open. "It's alright. I'm here. I'm not afraid of you."
"Don't touch me! I'll hurt you!" "You won't. You're my son. You could never hurt me." It was meant to be comforting. It was the worst thing he could have said.
Because when Aldric wrapped his arms around Kael, pulling him into a protective embrace, the corruption flowed like water finding its level. And Aldric's protective instinct—the deep, fundamental drive of his father to keep him safe—amplified into something that transcended reason.
Kael felt it happen. Felt his father's love twist into something sharper, something that cut. Felt the arms around him tighten from embrace to restraint.
"No one will hurt you," Aldric whispered, and his voice had changed. "I won't let anyone near you. I'll kill them all if I have to. Every single person who might pose a threat. I'll make the world safe for you."
"Papa, no—"
But Aldric was already turning, sword drawn, eyes scanning the crowd with the focus of a predator identifying prey. Anyone who moved became a threat. Anyone who screamed became a danger. His corrupted mind reframed the entire world into enemies that needed to be eliminated to protect his son.
Queen Seria's voice cut through: "Aldric! Stop!"
She was running across the square, face set with determination. She'd seen what was happening. Understood, somehow, that her husband was already lost. But her son might still have a chance to be saved.
She started singing. The lullaby. The one she sang every night when Kael couldn't sleep, the melody in her grandmother's language that meant safe and loved and home.
The flames around Kael's hands flickered. Wavered. Her voice was cutting through the panic, reaching the part of him that was still just a frightened kid who wanted his mother.
"That's it, my light," Seria sang, still approaching, arms open. "Come back to me. Come back—" Aldric's sword took her through the heart.
He'd seen her moving toward Kael. In his corrupted mind, that made her a threat. The person he loved—had loved for eighteen years, had built a kingdom with—registered only as an enemy approaching his son.
The sword punched through her back and emerged from her stomach, blood blooming across the deep blue clothes she'd worn for the festival. Her song stopped mid-word, replaced by a wet, choking sound.
Time stopped.
Kael's scream wasn't sound. It was force. It was every bit of grief and horror and rage, compressed into a single moment and given form. The crimson-black flames detonated.
They exploded outward from him in a wave that consumed everything. Buildings didn't burn—they twisted, warped, became architecture that hurt to look at. People didn't die quickly—the corruption hit them and their emotions amplified until their minds snapped, until they killed each other or themselves, until madness became mercy.
Lira, still in the fountain, was hit by a stray spark. Her healing magic—gentle, nurturing—became compulsion. She started healing everyone near her, pouring her magic into them, healing wounds that didn't exist, healing them until their bodies couldn't take it anymore, healing even as her own magic burned through her life force, healing until there was nothing left of her but the drive to heal.
Tomas tried to reach Kael, to pull him away from the center of the destruction. A flame touched his shoulder. His dream of being a knight—protecting people, being a hero—amplified into suicidal courage. He charged into the worst of the fighting, trying to save everyone, taking wounds meant for others, throwing himself between blades and victims until his body couldn't take any more damage.
The corruption spread through the entire city like wildfire through dry grass. The Valdris Kingdom—prosperous, peaceful, beautiful—became a monument to what happens when a persons magic manifests as the crystallization of trauma he hasn't experienced yet but will carry forever.
By the time the flames finally died—hours later, when Kael's magic exhausted itself and his body collapsed unconscious—the kingdom was silent except for the wind moving through ash and the occasional scream from someone whose mind had broken but whose body stubbornly continued living.
PART THREE: The Morning After
Kael woke to gray light and silence so complete it felt like the world had ended. He was lying in the street near the fountain. The water had stopped flowing. Bodies floated in it, including organs and bones.
He turned away, vomited until there was nothing left, then kept dry-heaving because his body needed to expel something even if it was just air and bile and horror.
When he could move again, he stood on shaking legs and looked at what he'd done.
The festival grounds were a graveyard. Bodies everywhere—twisted into shapes bodies shouldn't make, expressions frozen in emotions too intense to process. The buildings around the square had warped like wax melting, walls at impossible angles, doorways leading nowhere.
And the smell. Burning and flesh and bloody bones and something chemical from the corrupted magic, mixing into a stench that would haunt his nightmares for the rest of his life.
"Mama?" His voice was small, broken. "Papa?"
He walked through the ruins calling their names, knowing—knowing—they were dead but needing to find them anyway, needing to see, needing proof that this nightmare was real.
He found his father first. King Aldric lay in the square, surrounded by bodies of people he'd killed trying to protect Kael. His sword was still in his hand. His eyes were still open, staring at nothing.
Kael knelt beside him, touched his cold face, whispered: "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. I didn't know. I'm sorry, Papa. I'm sorry." His mother was nearby, the sword wound in her stomach dried flesh, face peaceful almost, like she'd forgiven him in that last moment before—
He couldn't look at her. Couldn't process it. His mind just... skipped over her body like a scratched record, refusing to acknowledge what it couldn't handle.
He found Tomas's body near the eastern gate—recognizable only by the pendant his mother had given him, the one he never took off. The pendant was intact. The blacksmith's son was charred beyond recognition.
He found Lira still in the fountain, floating face-down, body gaunt like she'd aged decades in hours. Her healing magic had consumed her from the inside out.
"I killed them," Kael whispered to the empty city. "I killed everyone."
He wandered for hours, then days, through streets he'd known his entire life now made unfamiliar by destruction. He didn't eat. Didn't sleep. Just walked, looking for survivors, finding only corpses and the occasional person who'd survived physically but whose mind was shattered beyond repair.
On the third day, he found an old granny huddled in what remained of her home. She looked at him with eyes that didn't quite focus and asked, "Have you seen my grandson? He's seven. He was at the festival. I can't find him."
Kael had seen him. The grandson was dead in the square, crushed when a building collapsed. "No," Kael lied. "I haven't seen him." "He'll come home," the grandma said, smiling. "He's a good kid. He always comes home."
Kael left her there, clinging to delusion because reality was too sharp to hold.
By the seventh day, he was sitting in the ruined throne room with a knife pressed to his throat, hands shaking too badly to complete the cut but trying anyway because staying alive felt obscene when everyone else was dead because of him.
"That would be a waste." The voice made him jump. A figure stood in the doorway, wearing traveler's robes. He had kind eyes. Kael hated him immediately for those kind eyes.
"Who are you?" Kael asked, knife still at his throat. "Patrix Whoguard. I'm a scholar. I've been tracking magical anomalies, and yours was... considerable."
"I killed a kingdom. Is that considerable enough?"
Patrix stepped closer slowly, hands visible, non-threatening. "You manifested corruption magic under extreme stress. It's rare but not unprecedented. And you have a choice now about what that means."
"I choose to die." "That's one option. The other is to spend the rest of your life making sure it means something. Making sure they didn't die for nothing."
Kael's laugh was broken glass. "I murdered everyone I ever loved. What could that possibly mean?" "I don't know yet. But we won't find out if you're dead."
Patrix extended his hand. Clean. Steady. Offering not salvation but simple continuation—the chance to keep breathing, keep walking, keep existing even when existence felt like punishment.
Kael stared at that hand for a long time. The knife was still at his throat. The bodies of his parents were still cold in the square. His friends were still dead. The kingdom was still ash.
But the hand was there. Patient. Waiting. Finally, Kael dropped the knife. The clatter as it hit stone was the loudest sound in the dead kingdom. He took Patrix's hand, and the wise person pulled him to his feet.
"What happens now?" Kael asked, voice small. "Now we walk. One step at a time. Until you figure out who you want to become."
They left the ruins of the Valdris Kingdom as the sun set behind them—a scholar and a ten-year-old child with crimson-black stains on his hands that no amount of water would ever wash clean.
Kael looked back once at the destroyed capital, at the graveyard he'd made of his home. "I'll never forgive myself," he whispered. "Good," Patrix replied. "Forgiveness is easy. Living with what you've done and choosing to do better anyway—that's the real work."
They walked into the twilight, and the kingdom burned on in Kael's memory, a fire that would never fully die.
TO BE CONTINUED...