Rise of the Faceless Demon

His scream died against the wooden walls, replaced by a barrage of ragged breaths slitting his throat. His lungs thrashed, demanding air. This wooden shack was thick with dust, reeking of rust and foul bile. The foul air choked him.

Luka's chest heaved. Cold sweat seeped out, soaking his worn linen shirt. Fresh blood flowed from the stitches on his neck. His body lay rigid on the cot, his joints petrified. Veins bulged hard against his pale skin.

Long-sleeved arms embraced him.

Rhea wiped the blood on Luka's temple with her thumb. Her skin channeled a searing heat, crawling into Luka's filthy pores and banishing the Oesterian frost gnawing at his bone marrow. It was a constant warmth, soothing his tense nerves. The scent of lilies bloomed thick from the fibers of her coarse wool dress, overpowering the stench of blood and forcing his lungs to accept the aroma as a crude painkiller.

"Drink this, My Lord."

She offered a wooden chalice. The worn rim touched Luka's cracked lips. A pitch-black liquid moved sluggishly, defying gravity like boiling mud from crushed leaves. Its sharp stench attacked his corneas, burning his nasal passages.

The pit of his stomach thrashed. Danger alarms blared hard, crashing into his hollow skull. His neck muscles locked tight. Refusing to swallow. This filthy corpse recognized the scent of rot.

His eyes stared at her face. Rhea's gray eyes dimmed. Painting the naked agony of a mother forced to watch her son rot at death's door. Devoid of malice. Only a thick stone wall offering shelter from a blizzard.

Luka opened his jaw.

The black liquid surged in. Bitter. Its texture resembled fine glass shards scratching his tonsils. Sliding down, coating his airways with burning heat,

crashing into the pit of his stomach. His body shuddered, resisting a hard contraction. His bile thrashed upward, piercing his chest cavity, triggering a gag reflex. Luka clamped his jaw shut until his molars ground. Forcing the liquid to stay in his gut.

Rhea pulled the empty chalice away. She dragged a rickety wooden chair. Sitting close beside the bed. Her back stood straight. Spine locked flawless, untouched

by the shack's freezing air.

"Three months." Rhea's voice shattered the clatter of dead branches colliding hard outside the window. "Three months you slept in this hell. Your body froze. Your muscles forgot how to move."

Luka stared at the dusty ceiling. The wood cracks resembled a giant spider web. Three months. His brain groped for the remaining time. He dismantled every corner of his head. Hunting for numbers, names, facial silhouettes, or the colors of the place he was raised. Nothing. A white wall smeared with black mud.

"Who..." Luka's voice was gritty. The friction of dry bones clashing. "Who am I?"

Rhea leaned forward. Her dress fabric rubbed without producing a sound. "You are Luka. The rightful heir to the throne of the Eisenhart Kingdom. The crown prince of King Reinhardt."

King Reinhardt.

That single name triggered a sharp throb tearing his left temple.

"Our kingdom was once peaceful." Rhea's voice swung low. Its rhythm crawled, swallowing the wind's howl. The clatter of broken branches outside the window vanished. The room shrank. Luka's brain locked onto the only vibrating sound source around him. "Wheat grew in abundance. The people smiled welcoming the morning under your family's banner. Eisenhart was the continent's protective shield."

Luka listened. His memory caught a flash of golden sunlight.

Yet, a distortion slapped his physical form. His flesh rejected it. His bones rebelled. He felt the thick calluses on his palms. His knuckles were full of permanent bruises and layers of dead skin. This corpse regurgitated stories of white marble floors and warm silk. Why did his flesh respond like a street carcass used to scavenging trash bins?

He tried to shift his legs under the thin blanket. His knee bones creaked. Stiff. Weak. Devoid of a knight's sword training muscle memory beneath his skin. Defective.

"Then, the betrayal happened." Rhea's tone dropped. Sharp ice cleaved the shack's air. "Ulric. Your uncle."

The throb in Luka's temple exploded, turning into the strikes of a giant sledgehammer.

"He was not satisfied being your father's shadow. He brought elite troops to the palace during the night of celebration, slaughtering the guards without a sound and burning the west wing to the ground." Rhea stopped talking. Her index finger rubbed the blue veins on the back of Luka's hand. "He decapitated your father right before your own eyes."

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The seal broke.

The thick wall holding back the trauma in his head collapsed. The fluid in Luka's gut boiled. A feral heat spread, tearing his blood vessels, crawling up to cleave his chest and infiltrate his neck tissues. It invaded the empty space in his skull with full aggression.

His true memories returned. Torturing his gray cells with raw agony. Sledgehammer strikes shattered his skull from the inside.

Pain.

The nerves behind his eyeballs throbbed. The fine veins in his sclera ruptured in unison, turning the whites of his eyes into pools of blood.

Memory flashes battered his brain without mercy.

Fire.

Red flames licking expensive silk curtains.

The stench of burning human flesh.

Marble floors drenched in thick puddles.

Ulric.

A giant executioner's sword swinging with a roar.

Cleaving a neck.

A decapitated head.

Blood spraying the angel's stained glass.

"Run, Prince!" A guard knight's hoarse scream cleaved his eardrums.

A longsword slashed from a blind spot.

Tearing his neck. Ripping his scalp. Cleaving his skull wide open.

The pain from that past slash locked in sync with the pain from the stitches on his skin. Merging in an instant. Bringing back the horror of that coup night to his ruined physical state. Flawless.

That was the reason. The reason his head was stitched rough. The reason his face

was covered in thick gauze. Ulric did it. That bastard's sword ruined him. His own uncle robbed everything.

Luka vomited a muffled scream. The sound of a blood clot stuck in his throat. His body arched upward, bowing rigid on the cot. His neck veins bulged wild, throbbing fast near bursting. His fingers crushed the bedsheets. Gripping the worn fabric until it tore long.

Rhea sat motionless. She watched Luka's spasming muscles resisting the past trauma stoning his brain. Her hand rested calm on the wooden chair arm. Her pale index finger tapped the board.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Counting the duration of that physical torture. She calculated Luka's bodily endurance burning in his own dark memories, ensuring her Prince did not perish from nerve shock.

One minute passed. Time crawled. A creeping death.

The spasms across Luka's body subsided. His muscles went limp. The boiling heat in his head receded. Leaving a constant throb of pain beating in rhythm with his exhausted heart.

He fell, crashing into the wet mattress. Pulling greedy oxygen. His lungs expanded to their limit.

He opened his eyes.

The empty white room had burned to ash. His head was now crammed full. Fragments of the past crashed into his skull walls. The scent of old parchment in the palace library. The texture of silver carvings on his royal training sword hilt. The bitter taste of black coffee brewed from Eisenhart plantations. And the tremor of a jaw thrashing to rip the neck of a pale blonde man decorated with pitch-black eyebags.

Ulric.

That name triggered a lethal gut reaction. His bile rose. His heart pumped filthy blood throughout his body faster. The skin on his hands turned red, enduring the heat.

He forced his body to stand.

Sitting upright. A royal posture. His brain commanded his spine to stretch straight with authority. Chest puffed out. Shoulders pulled firm backward, challenging the world.

His body rejected the command.

His right shoulder slumped broken forward. His back hunched on reflex. His muscles curved. Hiding his vulnerable gut from potential ambush like a hunted beast. His flesh defected against its own master. His brain demanded the grace of a conquering heir, yet his body responded with a frail tremble. His posture was crooked.

"My body..." Luka said. His voice was hoarse and dusty. He raised his right hand. Staring at his severe trembling fingers.

"Ulric did not just wound your physical form, My Lord." Rhea stood calm. Grabbing a clay pitcher. Pouring water into a wooden cup. "His sword slash shattered your soul's foundation. The Law of Erosion robbed the rest."

Luka turned his head. His eyes demanded an explanation.

"You slept too long. Your body lost its muscle memory. The energy network beneath your skin severed. Spiritual erosion erased the nobility from your flesh, making you feel defective inside your own body. You must crawl from the beginning."

Luka stared at his palms again. Rough lines. Old scars. Thick calluses.

Rhea's explanation pierced right into the cracks of his reason. Sealing the doubt that had visited his head. Forcibly killing the question of why his body felt so filthy and vile. Ulric shattered his soul's foundation. The slash that night did not merely slice skin, but mutilated his essence. Erosion robbed his remaining pride. His throne, his family, his sanity, even the way his body stood. Ulric took everything.

Luka's breath returned to normal. His rumbling chest found a killer's sharp focus.

"Mirror." One word. Commanding.

Rhea stayed silent. Her dress fabric froze motionless. "Your condition is not stable..."

"Give it."

Rhea lowered her head. She turned, stepping across the shack toward the darkest corner and bending down to pick up a palm-sized shard of glass from the dusty floor. The worn glass was cracked long, cleaving its center point. Rhea brought it close, handing it over with both hands.

Luka snatched the glass. The sharp edge pierced the side of his index finger.

He raised the mirror to eye level.

Rusted copper light reflected blurred on the glass surface. Most of the face in the mirror was covered in dull white gauze wraps, stained with gray dust and brownish spots of dried blood. One eye, free from bandages, emitted a feral flash—the glare of a starving dog cornered by a predator. On his neck, thick stitches bulged aggressively. Red flesh poked filthy between the thick thread knots. Ruined.

That was not the face of a prince heir to the Eisenhart throne.

That was a monster's face. A breathing carcass. Shattered meat fragments stitched together by force. The victim of a power-crazed uncle's savagery.

Luka stared at the crack on his own eye's reflection. The crack line in the mirror cleaved his face in physical form. Affirming an irreparable ruin.

He locked that reality. Storing it at the bottom of his darkest thoughts. He was Luka. The betrayed prince. The throne heir slaughtered and thrown to the bottom of the mud to rot.

His right hand gripped the glass shard. He crushed it. Harder. The sharp glass edge pierced his palm skin. Tearing his filthy flesh. Fresh blood dripped, falling from between his fingers. Staining the worn white blanket on his lap with red drops.

He did not let go.

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