"The Yatara mountains. Your extraction of resources that's making their structure crumble in on itself. The way you've enslaved the Undebians in the sound while pretending to be righteous kings."
Vharun's face was enraged. "You're a child who's read far too many books. You think the world is fair? Kingdoms are built on power, and power is taking everything you can. That's how it's always worked."
"Then maybe it shouldn't work like that."
Vharun stared at his son. His strange, blue-eyed son who dared to question thousands of years of history.
The king stepped forward and screamed. "You think YOU know suffering? You think sixteen years in a castle is pain? I watched my father execute my own brother for treason. I was a witness to my mother drinking poison rather than live without him. I killed-" He stopped, his chest heaving. "You know nothing about what it takes to be a K'onoma."
"Then teach me. Show me. Take me outside these walls and let me see the kingdom you rule. Let me meet the people. Let me-"
"NO!"
Vharun stepped forward, looming over his son, his red eyes blazing with fury.
"You will rot in that tower until the day I die. You will stay surrounded by gray bricks and books and your worthless dreams. And when I'm gone, you will sit on that throne and you will rule exactly as I did, because that is what a K'onoma does."
"No."
Vharun leaned closer. "What?"
Hyde looked up at his father. At that mountain of a wolf who had never once held him, never once asked if he was scared or feeling good.
"I said no."
Vharun straightened, surprised by Hyde's eagerness.
"You think I'm defective? You think I'm a disgrace?"
Hyde took a step forward, then another, he kept coming, closing the distance between them, his paws rising.
He reached up and slowly pulled off his gloves.
The black fur at the ends of his paws absorbed the chandelier's light, looking like shadows given form.
Vharun's red eyes flicked down to them. Fear.
"What-"
"You never gave me a book about the Rotting Touch." Hyde's voice was terribly calm. "You never taught me about Ts'chelliin. About what he did and what he became."
Vharun took a step back. "That's a myth. A legend. No K'onoma has ever actually had that skill-"
"Well, you'll be the first K'onoma to witness it then."
"Hyde." Vharun's voice changed, the rage drowned out by fear. "Hyde, listen to me. Whatever you think you're doing."
"I've been listening to you my entire life."
Hyde's paws closed around his father's throat.
Vharun tried to scream but it came out as a faint whisper. His body convulsed, his red eyes going wide with terror and pain, his paws clawing uselessly at Hyde's wrists.
But Hyde would let go. Vharun's fur began to darken. To wither.
"HYDE- PLEASE, I'M YOUR-"
"Father? Yes. You are. And you just told me to rot in this castle until you died."
The rot spread. Vharun's struggles grew weaker. His red eyes began to dim.
"You should have let me go outside."
Hyde's grip tightened on his father's neck, his fingers began to dig into the softened flesh. Blood poured down as a thick, black clumps of what was once liquid, dripping down onto the cobblestone floor. His father's flesh became a gooey mess under Hyde's touch. Every single layer of skin, muscle, and fat had merged into one as they all withered away.
CRRK- Thump.
Hyde was holding his father's head by the spinal cord that has been ripped out. His limp body fell down onto the floor.
He stood over it, looking down at what remained of King Vharun K'onoma. The face was stuck in time, but as the rotting spread it slowly became more and more unrecognizable. His red eyes had turned gray, like the ones Hyde had before his initiation.
Well done. That hadn't been Hyde's inner monologue, but Kurviz's calm voice.
Hyde looked at his hands. The chandelier blazed above him, the torches flickered on their pillars. He turned and walked toward the great doors, leaving his father's decomposing body on the floor.
There were a couple hundred people left to go.
Two guards stood at the far end of the hallway beyond the throne room. They heard his footsteps and turned.
One of the guards noticed him.
Hyde closed the distance in four strides and pressed both palms flat against the man's breastplate. The metal couldn't stop anything as the rot spread through their bodies. Dropping to the floor before a scream could form.
He caught his spear as the second guard ran, letting him go for now.
Moving through the castle was almost a second nature for Hyde, he had studied the walls, corridors, turns and shortcut over the past 16 years.
The kitchen staff, four people, mid-dinner prep. A boy barely old enough to shave, threw a pot at Hyde's head, striking him in the temple.
He killed the boy last out of respect for such bravery.
Hyde wiped the blood from his temple with the back of his palm and kept moving.
The eastern wing housed the scholars and tutors. Dohren was an old man, a bear hir-soger, enormous standing at almost 2 meters tall.
He'd taught Hyde mathematics and astronomy for eleven years, he backed himself into a corner shelf, a heavy tome clutched to his chest like a shield.
"Hyde, please, think about what you're doing."
"I've thought about it."
Dohren threw the tome, Hyde caught it and left it aside on a nearby table. The old teacher had drawn a short blade from somewhere inside his robes.
He held it with both hands, knowing how to use it.
A simple spear through the stomach fixed it.
- - -
He found the three elders in the castle's chapel.
They were waiting for him, he could tell by their arrangement, side by side, facing the door, their robes immaculate and their red eyes burning.
The same three men from his initiation. The room was narrow, just wide enough for two people to walk side by side through its aisle.
"Come in, child. We've been expecting you."
"I'm not a child."
"Do you know what we are?"
"Elders of the initiation rite, I believe."
"We're the servants of Kurviz. As you now do, and Kurviz does not sanction this."
Hyde looked at the window, it was stained glass, depicting Kurviz as an enormous black wolf.
"You've been deceived, whatever the entity told you, whatever deal it offered, it's not true."
Not to be obvious, but they're all lying. Kurviz said from inside Hyde's head.
"You spoke with something that wore a familiar face and told you what you wanted to hear. We have served the true Kurviz for three hundred years, we know his voice, and whatever you heard was not it."
"Then what is this?" Hyde raised both paws, letting the black fur at the ends speak for itself.
Their eyes dropped to his hands.
The center elder gave a single stride, stopping just before Hyde.
"... All that is true. Chapel Confessional."
The chapel changed. The room changed, the pews compressed inward, the light went amber, the ceiling dropped until it sat a hand's width above Hyde's ears.
And where the altar had been, there were now two enclosed wooden booths pressed against the far wall.
Hyde was inside one. His paws hung at his sides, feeling entirely useless.
I didn't know they had territories. Kurviz's voice had gone tighter.
The elder's voice came through the latticed screen. "My territory's condition requires an explanation of the rules." His voice was calm and unhurried. "Violence is impossible here. Doesn't matter how much you try, your actions will be erased if they have violent intent. You will tell me your most recent sin, then the barrier around us will break. I will forget your sin, but the gods won't, and you'll receive the appropriate punishment."
Hyde leaned back on the wooden wall, almost laughing.
"Confess your most recent sin."
Hyde said nothing.
"You cannot leave without confessing."
He looked down at his black-furred paws. Which one was it? My father's head being separated from his body by a spinal cord? The kitchen boy? Master Dohren?
"My most recent sin... Not killing the three of you elders."
"Arrogance is not a confession."
Hyde pressed his paw flat against the latticed screen.
"I didn't know Master Dohren carried a blade."
"A confession of ignorance... Is that truly what weighs on you?" The elder said slowly.
"Your punishment must be proportional. For the sin of arrogance and willful blindness, the sentence is the removal of Myrn from your body. You will become ordinary once more."
Hyde closed his eyes.
"Wait."
The real one, the one that had sat behind his ribs, pulling at his heart.
"A'cci. She was supposed to be out of the castle today, I checked the schedules. She was going to the east market. She came back early."
"And?"
"And I found her in the east corridor. She carried flowers, she'd gone to get flowers for my room because she thought the ceremony deserved a celebration. She smiled when she saw me, even with my hands, she smiled."
The territory ccracked.
"The punishment for the sin of killing someone who loved you." The elder said, his voice changing to something almost like grief. "Is to carry them."