The limestone cave smelled of wet moss and copper.
The campfire in the center of the room whimpered. Damp pine twigs refused to burn fully. Gray smoke billowed thickly, crawling up and licking the sharp stalactites on the cave ceiling. Filthy orange firelight reflected on the stone walls, creating long shadows dancing randomly.
The temperature plummeted. Oesteria's freezing autumn air infiltrated through the rock crevices, piercing the pores.
Luka sat leaning against the cold cave wall, his back rigid.
Rhea knelt before him. The maid's gray wool dress had been cleaned of remaining mud, though the tear on its side still revealed the black fabric layer beneath. The woman's pale hands moved fast. Efficient. She wrapped a roll of white gauze boiled in scalding water around Luka's right arm.
The wrapping did not cover normal human skin.
From the wrist up past the elbow, Luka's right arm form had permanently changed. His ulna bone fracture had fused by force. His skin hardened. His flesh thickened with a dark reddish color, rough and thick-scaled resembling cracked asphalt. A permanent scar from forcing the inner gate open and manifesting his monster form into the real world.
Rhea pulled the final knot. Locking the white cloth wrap tight.
"The heat will last until tomorrow morning, My Lord," Rhea whispered.
Luka raised his right hand. His fingers clenched, then opened. His joints creaked faint. His new skin texture rubbed against the gauze. Devoid of the paralyzing pain from before. Only numbness. A lack of feeling filled by an unnatural muscle density.
He stared at his own palm.
Hours ago, this hand tore the chest of a living corpse lump. These fingers snapped a dozen neck bones at once. He chewed a heart dripping black slime. The monster's filthy blood flowed down his esophagus.
A throne heir of the Eisenhart Kingdom swallowed the internal organ of a defective creature in the middle of a dead forest.
His gut contracted. His stomach muscles tensed. A nauseating sensation tried to rise to the base of his throat. His human flesh responded to the horror of what he had just done. He had discarded all palace etiquette. He fought more feral than a starving dog.
Luka swallowed his saliva by force, suppressing the bile urge to go back down.
Luka lowered his hand. His jawline hardened. The veins on his neck throbbed.
What meaning did grace hold if his people were slaughtered? What use were beautiful sword stances if he could only kneel letting Ulric rob his throne? That tyrant did not play by knightly rules. His uncle burned the palace from the inside. Robbed the people's wheat. Let children freeze to death on muddy streets.
Justice could not be enforced with clean hands.
Luka stroked the reddish scales beneath his bandages. This monster flesh was the price he had to pay. Proof of his suffering. A weapon forged by the Oesterian hell. This hand would strangle Ulric. This hand would snap the traitor's neck before his own throne. He needed this savagery. His people needed this monster to kill the monster sitting in the palace.
Rhea stood up. The woman turned toward the fireplace, lifting a small clay pot. She poured thick fluid into a wooden bowl. The stench of pale broth merged with the sharp aroma of herbal leaves.
"Eat, My Lord." Rhea offered the bowl.
Luka accepted it. The bowl was warm. He immediately drank the broth straight from the bowl's rim. The fluid slid past his throat. Bland. Rough. He chewed the tough meat sinew chunks resting at the bowl's bottom. His jaw worked hard crushing the tough texture.
He swallowed. His stomach received the intake greedy.
Luka looked down staring at the empty wooden bowl bottom. His mind drifted.
He tried tracing back the corridors of his memory. The event in the forest earlier had shattered his mind. The forced pull on his Soul Energy had torn something from inside his skull, leaving a sudden, gaping void.
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Two girls.
Luka's brain groped for the memory. He tried calling their names.
Nothing. The letters burned to ash.
He tried drawing their faces inside his head. Their hair. Their eye color. The sound of their laughter.
Thick fog covered the projection. Instead of human faces, he only saw melting silhouettes—formless faces fading the harder he tried to remember. He knew they once existed. He knew his fingers once gripped their hands. That warm sensation still lingered as muscle memory on his left palm. Yet their forms and identities vanished without a trace.
Pain.
The veins on Luka's temples bulged. His head throbbed severely. Agony stabbed right behind his eyeballs. It felt like an unseen hand reached into his skull and wrenched a chunk of his brain flesh by force.
This was not the pain of a physical blow. This was formless torture. Knowing a part of you was amputated, and you did not even know which body part was missing. A massive void inside the chest demanding to be filled, yet you knew not what object could fill it.
Luka held his head with his left hand. His nails pressed his scalp behind his limp blonde hair. His breaths turned short. White vapor spewed fast from his mouth.
"Who..." Luka muttered, his voice breaking. Cold sweat pierced the pores of his forehead.
He tried again, digging deeper, tracing past conversations at the palace dining table, searching for those two silhouettes among his father's faces.
The throb in his head grew wilder. His inner wall rejected it. The pain warned that forcing to remember would only ruin his own nerve tissues.
The wooden bowl slipped from his hand, falling and rolling as it struck the gravel.
A pale hand snatched his left wrist.
Rhea. The maid knelt right beside him. The woman's fingers locked Luka's trembling hand. Rhea's skin felt cold as an ice block, yet the touch was constant. Unshifting. Channeling a physical anchor amidst the striking inner panic.
Luka raised his head. His breaths gasped. His single eye stared at the maid's face with the gaze of a hunting dog losing direction.
"They are gone," Luka hissed. His chest rumbled hard. "Something is missing in my head. I cannot see their faces."
Rhea's face was rigid. Her gray eyes radiated no cheap sympathy. The woman stared straight. Piercing Luka's trembling black pupil.
"The Law of Erosion never lies, My Lord," Rhea said. Her tone was extremely low, yet carried steel weight. Slitting Luka's panic with cold logic.
Luka fell silent. His breath hitched.
"Every pull of power consumes fuel," Rhea continued. Her fingers tightened their grip on Luka's wrist. "Your body refused to die in the forest earlier. In exchange, this flesh burned the remaining memories you possessed. Sacrificing the past to buy the future. Sacrificing memories to buy your life."
The explanation entered. Filling the empty space in Luka's head with rusted nails.
Erosion. He had just burned his own memories to maintain his heartbeat. To trigger his monster arm out.
"Ulric made you do this." Rhea shifted her position closer. The lily scent forced its way into Luka's nasal cavity. "That tyrant's sword slash first ruined your memory vessel. Letting your memories leak slow. Every thing you forget, every face melting in your head... it is all your uncle's sin."
Luka's chest contracted.
The venom of justification crawled fast. The trembling in Luka's hand stopped. His panic froze, hardening into one dense urge to kill. This was not his weakness. This was a wound carved by Ulric. That man robbed his throne, his father, and now robbed the remaining people he loved from inside his own brain.
Rhea leaned her body forward. The woman's free index finger moved up, touching Luka's hard-throbbing temple. Rubbing the pain point with her thumb.
"Let them go, My Lord." Rhea's voice resembled a death lullaby. "The burden of a crown is too heavy if you keep looking back. Memories will only make your sword hesitate. Let the empty space in your head be filled by justice."
Luka stared into the maid's eyes.
Rhea's heavy eyelids stared at him with absolute loyalty. Lacking hesitation there. In the middle of a dying world, in the middle of his memories constantly betraying him, this woman was the sole figure remaining in her position. Protecting him. Directing his sword. Piecing back his ruined mind.
Luka tilted his head, letting his cheek lean full on the woman's pale palm. He surrendered his remaining reason to be guided.
Luka stopped thrashing. His shoulders went limp. The severe throb in his head gradually subsided, leaving a long numbness. He let the void regarding those two girls remain a black hole in his chest. He would not try remembering them again. He would cover that hole with the corpses of his enemies.
"Tomorrow," Luka's voice sounded extremely heavy. Hoarse and cold. "We climb those mountains."
Rhea pulled her hand slow. The woman bowed her head.
"The Hollow Syndicate awaits their new king, My Lord."
Luka turned his gaze toward the dying campfire. The remaining embers licked wet twigs, producing small pops. His black eye reflected the firelight. He no longer felt loss. Erosion had burned his remaining humanity one layer deeper. He had accepted his hand as a weapon, and discarded his past as the price of redemption.
Beside him, Rhea sat silent in the shadow. Merging with the cave's darkness. Watching her crafted prince with a calculation no one could ever read.