The rusted door hinges shrieked.
Luka pushed the thick wooden board before him. The long-frozen hinges refused to move. He exerted his shoulder strength, and the door opened halfway. The wind crashed inside.
Cold.
Freezing temperatures struck his face, drying the sweat layer on his temples in seconds. This air was not merely cold. The Oesterian wind carried ice particles smelling of cast metal and old blood, burning his nasal hair and freezing the mucus in his airways.
Luka stepped out from the shack's gloom. His boots stepped on the dirt.
Hard. The dirt outside this shack had frozen into a layer of stone mud. A faint cracking sound accompanied every step.
He stood at the edge of a stone cliff. Right below him, a vast lake stretched. The water surface did not reflect light. The lake was dead. Its water was dense and thick, covered in a dull copper-colored crust layer. Mine waste and natural rot gathered as one. No fish jumped. No ripples of life.
Across the lake, the Oesterian forest stood fencing the horizon.
The sight ruined sanity. The trees there did not shed peaceful autumn leaves. The tree trunks grew elongated lacking direction. Gaunt. Dry. Pale grayish. Millions of branches twisted and bent, resembling desperate human skeleton fingers reaching for the empty air above them. When the wind blew, there was no rustle of leaves. There was only the sound of dry wood colliding—the clatter of millions of broken bones.
Luka looked up. His eyes searched for the light source illuminating this place.
His breath hitched. His neck veins tensed.
The sky was not blue. There were no white clouds. The horizon above him was smeared with a brownish-orange color, the color of old iron rust covering the entire roof of the world. And right in the dead center of that cosmic rust expanse, hung an astral carcass.
The sun.
The celestial body was no longer round. Its center bore a massive hole, piercing through and letting the void of space peek from behind it. The sun was shattered. Its form now resembled a giant burning red ring. The light it radiated was dim, pale, and smeared with the color of filthy blood.
Around the red ring, glowing stone debris orbited slowly, trapped in a sluggish rotation torturing the sight.
Luka stood petrified. His legs refused to shift.
The shadows of the dead trees and his own body's shadow fell elongated, covering the frozen dirt. The light falling from the red ring was wrong. It scattered unnaturally, bending the shadows on the ground and creating an optical illusion as if time had long died at the end of dusk.
"This world is dying, My Lord."
The voice came from behind. Leather boots scraped against the frozen dirt.
Rhea stepped forward. The woman stopped right at Luka's right side. The fierce wind blew her gray wool dress, yet her body posture remained upright. Her pale hands carried a dark-colored fur coat. She unfolded the coat. Draping it over Luka's shoulders.
The scent of lilies banished the smell of frozen mud in the air.
Luka tightened the fur coat's pull on his chest. His eyes refused to descend from the rusted sky. The dull red light reflected inside his pupils.
"What happened?" Luka's voice broke. His throat choked, refusing to scream a single word under the pressure of the sight. "What happened to the sun?"
Rhea looked up. Her gray irises stared straight at the giant red ring. The woman's face was hard.
"Shattered," Rhea answered slow. "Just like your kingdom's foundation. Our sun exploded and hollowed. Leaving a cursed ring trapping us in an endless rusted dawn."
Luka held his head. The throb in his stitch scars attacked again. His memories of the past were fragmented, but he was absolutely certain the Eisenhart sky was never the color of filthy blood. He remembered golden light. He remembered marble warmth.
This text was taken from NovelPhoenix. Help the author by reading the original version there.
"When?" Luka demanded. His hand gripped the sleeve of Rhea's dress. "When did this sky rot?"
"A few days after that night of betrayal." Rhea did not brush off Luka's grip. She let her master seek a hold. "After Ulric decapitated King Reinhardt. After your father's blood stained the palace marble. A massive earthquake occurred, collapsing half the mountain range. Then... our sun shattered to pieces."
Luka's throat choked. A sour taste flooded the base of his tongue.
His father died. Then the world rotted. His brain pieced the horror fragments together. Ulric did not just rob the throne. That bastard killed the sun. The sky responded to the spilling of the rightful king's blood with ruin. Luka's breath grew heavy. The air in his lungs felt burning.
"My uncle," Luka growled. His teeth ground hard. "He destroyed everything."
Rhea lowered her gaze. Staring at the dead lake below the cliff.
"More than just destroying the sky, My Lord," Rhea said. Her tone was set to a slow frequency full of poison. "His greed knows no bounds. Right now, beneath this rusted sky, your people are dying."
Luka turned his head sharp.
"Ulric cares not for the shattered sun," the maid continued. "Instead of healing the kingdom's wounds, he deploys the remaining elite forces to the border. Invading neighboring continents. Expanding his colonized territory to satisfy his lust for power."
Luka's chest heaved rough.
"Tax soldiers comb the villages," Rhea's voice grew quieter, planting the rusted nail deeper into Luka's ear. "They rob the last wheat from the people's granaries. Emptying winter firewood supplies for war logistics. They let small children freeze to death on the side of muddy roads. All for the ambition of one fraud upon your throne."
Luka's breath turned into dense vapor. A hard throb struck his solar plexus. The heart he ate yesterday responded.
The blood in his vessels boiled. Feral heat crawled from his chest, spreading to his arm muscles. His body temperature spiked, fighting Oesteria's freezing air by force. His hatred for Ulric was no longer just a matter of memory or throne.
He imagined gaunt, starving children on muddy streets. Those crying, freezing faces suddenly overlapped with the shadow of his own face. His gut twisted responding to the story. He knew the feeling of freezing on the roadside. He knew the feeling of being kicked by steel boots. He had to kill Ulric. He had to slash that tyrant and stop this oppression. His hands trembled hard, demanding his uncle's blood.
"Where is my sword?"
Luka released his grip from Rhea's sleeve. He turned around. His eyes glared feral.
"Your flesh condition is still too raw, My Lord," Rhea said.
"Give me my sword." Luka's voice was heavy. Commanding.
Rhea fell silent for a moment. The woman turned, stepping inside the shack. The roaring wind battered Luka's back. The heat in his chest refused to die. He stared at his right palm. Hard calluses. The reddish color from yesterday's remaining blood still clung. This was not a peaceful hand. This was a neck-chopping hand.
Rhea emerged carrying a rusted iron sword. The sword Luka used to tear open the soldier's chest yesterday. Its hilt was still stained with remaining blood dried black.
Luka snatched the sword.
The old metal felt right in his palm. Its weight balanced the wrath in his head. He turned his back to the shack, facing the dead lake and the skeleton forest across it. Beneath the red ring's dim light, his half-gauzed face radiated darkness.
"I will chop his head tomorrow," Luka hissed, his eyes sharp forward. "I will bring his head to the city center and let wild dogs eat his face."
He gripped the sword hilt with both hands, raising it high past his right shoulder.
He swung the sword forward, slicing the air with all his wrath's might and targeting Ulric's shadow neck before his eyes.
Clang!
Luka staggered, falling.
Not from an enemy attack. No one was in front of him.
The rusted sword slipped from his grip before his swing passed the shoulder line. The heavy metal struck the frozen dirt, clinking discordantly and bouncing to the cliff's edge.
Luka's knees struck the stone mud dirt. He groaned loudly.
His right hand gripped his left shoulder. His right arm muscles coiled wildly beneath the skin. His veins twisted, torturing his own nerves. His collarbone dislocated with a violent wrench. Agony tore his reason. His flesh rejected it. His muscles contorted. The forced pull to move as a palace knight instead ruined his vein tissues from the inside.
Luka looked down, staring at his severely trembling palms. His hands were paralyzed for a moment. His breaths broke, enduring the pain.
He failed. Let alone decapitating a tyrant protected by thousands of armored troops, he could not even complete a single basic sword swing in empty air. This law of erosion was far too severe. The ruin inside his soul had rotted his body.
The protector prince collapsed on the frozen dirt, kneeling surrounded by his own flesh's weakness.
Rhea stood behind him. The maid's gray eyes stared at the sword lying at the cliff's edge, then descended to stare at Luka's trembling back. The fierce wind blew her black curls.
Beyond the fallen prince's line of sight, a cynical and highly satisfied smile painted clear on Rhea's pale face. Only briefly. The smile vanished in a flash. Rhea reassumed the flat face of a caring maid, then took one step forward to become a support for her king.