Once upon a time, there was a wizard and a newly appointed apprentice.
The wizard treated him as a slave rather than a pupil.
Every creation the apprentice made was never his—always taken, always destroyed, always stripped from him like it had never existed.
Right now, I am wailing not because of how everything unfolded, nor because the other wizards are mourning his tragedy.
I am wailing because my own creation exploded in a burst of fire and metal, and I knew… it was all my fault.
Little did he know, I had planted a detonation within it.
A trap wrapped in my own despair.
A death that would take everything he thought he owned and me, if I weren't careful.
I can still smell the scorch of burnt wood, feel the jagged pain of shards that pierced my gloves, and hear the screams of the instruments splitting in heat.
Every echo was a heartbeat of doom, my heartbeat.
Even as the other wizards mourned, even as flames licked the sky, I felt only ice crawling through my veins.
He had always taken, always stolen.
Now, he would fear what I could take from him.
Because tonight… tonight, the apprentice was no longer helpless.
And the wizard would see it.
See the reckoning I had waited for, biding its time like a shadow in the corner of his eyes.
Little did he know… when the fire blossomed, when the explosion roared, it was not chaos he had caused, but mine.
And when it finally quieted… when the smoke cleared and the ruins stank of burned magic and broken ambition…
He would know.
That power can be taken.
That fear can be planted.
And that revenge has its own heartbeat. Slow, cold, and inevitable.