Third Person POV
Nightmare
Darkness swallowed everything and for a moment, there was nothing.
No pain, nsound, no light and then—a wet splattering noise echoed through the darkness and Cassian opened his eyes.
The execution platform stood before him once again, the crowd was still there, the king was still there, the Crown Prince was still there and so was he.
His body remained kneeling upon the platform, his severed head lay several feet away, staring back at him with lifeless silver eyes.
Blood pooled beneath the corpse, spreading across the wooden planks like a crimson river.
Cassian stumbled backward and his breath caught in his throat.
That was impossible.
He was dead, wasn’t he?
The severed head suddenly blinked and then smiled.
“Cassian.”
His own voice echoed across the execution grounds.
“Cassian.”
“Cassian.”
“Cassian.”
The crowd began chanting his name.
Thousands of voices, thousands of hateful eyes and the sound grew louder and louder until it became deafening.
CRACK.
A woman in the crowd suddenly tore her own face off and blood splashed onto the people beside her.
Yet nobody reacted…instead, they continued smiling.
CRACK.
Another person ripped out his own eyes and then another followed and another.
Flesh tore, bones snapped, blood sprayed through the air and within moments, the entire crowd was mutilating themselves while maintaining those horrifying smiles.
“Cassian.”
“Cassian.”
“Cassian.”
The chant never stopped and just then, the royal viewing platform slowly turned toward him.
Not the people but the platform itself.
Wood twisted like flesh, the pillars bent like broken limbs, the entire structure transformed into a gigantic grinning mouth lined with human teeth and at its center sat the Crown Prince.
Lysander’s face remained calm, perfect, untouched.
The only normal thing in this nightmare and then he smiled.
A smile Cassian had never seen before.
It was a slow, deliberate and cruel smile.
“Proceed.”
The word echoed across the world and the executioner’s blade instantly descended.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Cassian screamed in pure agony as his body was beheaded repeatedly.
Heads piled around him and there were dozen….hundreds….thousands…..
Each one belonged to him and every head stared at him with accusing eyes.
Traitor.
Murderer.
Monster.
The whispers crawled beneath his skin and just then, something suddenly grabbed his ankle.
Then another hand and then another.
The bloody heads opened their mouths and skeletal arms burst from their throats.
They clawed their way toward him, dragging him down and pulling him into a sea of flesh and blood.
Cassian struggled desperately but there were too many.
His family emerged from the crimson ocean.
His father, his mother, Cedric, Freya, Delphine, Elise.
Their eyes were hollow sockets dripping blood.
“We believed them.”
“We abandoned you.”
“We watched you die.”
Their bodies melted into red sludge and the sea swallowed them but only one figure remained.
Lysander.
Standing above the blood-soaked abyss and he was silently watching just as he had always done countless times before.
Cassian reached toward him.
Hatred burning through every fiber of his being but before he could touch him, Lysander slowly raised a hand and pointed downward.
And whispered—
“Proceed.”
The sea of corpses erupted and countless hands seized Cassian’s limbs.
His flesh tore, his bones shattered, hisscream echoed through the darkness and then—a loud piercing scream tore through his body and out of his lips as his eyes snapped open.
Cassian jumped to his feet and swept his eyes around the room, eyes wide and breath leaving his body in short pants as he tried to make sure that he was no longer there.
No, he had been reborn…he was no longer there.
Was he?
Maybe he was dreaming of being reborn because how can that concept even exist?
They were all figments of his imagination, just….
Fuck!!!
His head was spinning and he just couldn’t get the insistent knocking out of his head.
It felt like his skull was going to be split open due to the knocks and it was getting him so angry that he felt like ripping off the head out of source of the knocking.
After all this was just a dream and he would soon wake up again back at that execution ground and watch himself be beheaded again and again until he fell into this dream and the circle would cont—
“Cassian Valmont.
I am giving you ten minutes to leave that room and get your ass to your carriage for morning court or I will dismember you and hang you up in front of my gates as a warning!” His father’s frantic voice filled his ears and his brows furrowed as the swelling feeling within him turned cold.
Morning court?
Private carriage?
He really was reborn!
How could he have confused his nightmares with his reality?
Fuck!!
Shaking that off, he hummed as he stood up on shaky feet and quickly walked into the bathroom and rubbed a hand over the foggy mirror to clear it up.
His reflection stared back at him from the mirror.
A young man stood where a condemned corpse should have been.
Nineteen years old, with sharp yet slightly unrefined features still carrying the last traces of youth.
Black hair framed his face in soft, slightly disheveled strands, as if he had only just woken up.
Beneath them were a pair of silver-gray eyes—clear, cold, and unusually striking.
Eyes that looked too composed for someone standing in a bathroom that shouldn’t have been possible, yet faintly hollow in a way that didn’t belong to a boy his age.
His skin was pale, untouched by years of prison or execution, and his expression sat somewhere between exhaustion and restrained disbelief.
He looked… ordinary.
And yet, there was something about him—something in the stillness of his gaze—that felt wrong.
Shaking his head, he took his time in washing up and used that time to properly pull himself together and by the time he was done, he was sure that ten minutes his father gave him was already up.
But strangely, he couldn’t find it in himself to care.
He dressed up in straight black trousers and a white shirt that he left three of the buttons unbuttoned as he pulled on his shoes and left his room behind.
He stopped by the kitchen and grabbed a mug of iced tea from the counter which had been prepared for him just as he liked it and swiftly left the house behind.
His father was impatiently waiting for him beside two carriages and as soon as he noticed him coming, he quickly turned around and opened his mouth to speak but Cassian cut him off before he even began.
“Old man, don’t think about riding in my beautiful carriage.
Go get your own merits if you want one.” His father’s forehead came alive with veins as he tried but failed to hide his anger but Cassian didn’t care at all.
He simply stepped forward and entered his carriage and not long before he settled down, the carriage jerked forward and was soon leaving the Count’s estate behind.
The ride to the castle was fast but it still took over thirty minutes or close to an hour to get there but soon, they were pulling up outside the castle first gates where the carriages were being cared for and visitors were obligated to step out of their carriage and step through the castle gates with their passes in hand or their whatever.
He didn’t really care.
He stepped out of his carriage and waltzed up to the guards stationed at the gates but before he could do anything, an arrogant voice stopped him.
“Oh, isn’t this the Count’s useless third son?” He didn’t have to turn to know who it was.
It was the second son of Duke Ravencrest and from what Cassian knew of the boy, he was about twenty or so and had always been overbearing and arrogant even in his past life.
“Duke Ravencrest sure is misfortuned by having a child like you,” he tsked before he continued.
“I bet no one knows that you are his son from all those decades of designs you’re currently carrying on your person.”
Laughter filled the air as the boy’s face turned beet red in anger and humiliation but Cassian paid him no heed as he turned around and continued on his way to the guards.
“Hey, stop there this instant!
You ugly bastard son of a—”
Hands grabbed at his collar and anger rushed through him, mixing with his blood and before anyone could blink—he turned around and punched the boy straight to his face and a —
CRACK
Sound filled the air as the boy went down to the ground with groaning of pain.
“Unlike you, I don’t have the energy to start changing my clothes every two minutes.
So keep those dirty hands off me.” He turned and walked up to the shocked guards.
“Permissi—”
“Between the both of us, you don’t need a hoarse voice by the end of the day screaming things people are supposed to already know so let’s cut through the chase and get this over and done with without wasting any of our time.” He flashed the medal and their eyes widened before they parted way for him and allowed him through the gates with his father following behind.
“Basted!
I’ll make you pay for this!
My father will hear of this!!” Those words were music to Cassian’s ears as he walked into the castle grounds.
Well, well, well, some people just didn’t disappoint you at all.
Chaos!
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