I take my job as a security guard very seriously.

My alarm chimes at exactly 8:15 PM—I iron my uniform, clean my nightstick, make sure my cell phone is fully charged, verify that my military grade pepper spray is functioning by firing a test shot into my kitchen sink—it works—then I grab my travel coffee mug and exit, setting the alarm as I go—and I am in my car by 8:50 PM.

I arrive 15 minutes early to the guard gate.

The corporate park is occupied entirely by Laveen Labs, which is a subdivision of UniCo Labs.

It’s twenty minutes south of my apartment in Laveen. I live within walking distance to the Walmart Supercenter. I’ve lived in Arizona my entire life. Some friends moved away, but I love the desert. The open land. The mountains.

John at the gate gives me a smile and checks his watch.

“9:20,” John says. “Are you ever late?”

“Being late isn’t part of the plan.”

The gate opens, I drive in, find a spot, and make way through the vacant parking lot to the front door.

I scan my ID, get inside, check in with the next stage of security—they check my ID verification on their monitor and hand me a walkie talkie in exchange for my cell phone. They put my cell in a bag with my name on it and hang it on a hook behind them.

There are ten rows of one hundred hooks and there are never any more than seventeen other bags hanging there when I start my shift.

The guards turn the tablet-like device on their desk to face me and I punch in my code and answer the daily security questions that verify my identity and finally I push a light green button that says “clock in.”

My fellow guards nod and wave me in. “Have a nice evening, Tom.”

“You as well,” I say as I step into the elevator.

There are four floors up. Six floors down.

I tap my ID to the row of buttons and press B4.

The corridor of B4 is a pristine white. Every night I can’t help but think about how regimented and efficient the cleaning crew must be.

There is no main desk or reception. Just rows of white doors on either side, every twenty feet, each labeled with a different element of the periodic table. And at the end of the hallway, a vacant white wall.

I stop at Fr, a door near the end of the hall. From here I can see the long row behind me. I check my watch. 9:40 PM.

Perfect. Five minutes earlier. As planned.

The elevator opens and three white-coat scientists walk towards me. I know them by face only as fraternization between security and the white coats is discouraged.

They arrive at Fr and I give them a silent nod to which they ignore. I keep my back to the door as they enter.

I heard one story from John at the gate of a guard a few years back that accidentally saw inside a research facility—and even though he said he only saw the sub-corridor walls within—they fired him.

Eyes forward. I remind myself. Stay quiet. This job is too good to lose because you’re curious. They tell me plainly what to do. I do it.

Simple.

I could never find the logic in the existence of my position. Nothing ever happened. No visitors. No other scientists. No other door ever opened. I worked three nights a week. They pay me $35/hour for a ten-hour graveyard shift, and I only ever saw these three scientists come down the hall, enter Fr, and ten hours later exit Fr.

My therapist has a theory that I take my pre-work procedure and arrival so seriously because it’s the only part of my job that I can find meaning.

“I disagree,” I tell her.

“I find it interesting that you always keep your phone charged.”

“Why?”

“You can’t use it while you’re at work. Why does it need a full charge?”

“Well,” I say. “It makes me anxious to think it will die.”

“Do you find the rules you create for yourself inhibit your life?”

“I don’t feel inhibited at all. My phone says I should keep it charged, so I do.”

Our conversations felt like doing laps in a revolving door. I wasn’t fond of therapy. I only went because I started as a teenager, on my mother’s guidance, and have held onto it as a tradition.

The weekly ritual is calming.

Some people go to church on Sunday. I go to therapy every Thursday at 11:30am.

The hallway was always quiet.

Ten hours of straight silence surrounded by polished white would drive anyone else I knew insane. It had the opposite effect on me. It was like standing in an untainted world. Everything here was perfect and unpolluted.

I straighten my back and take a firm stance, trying to keep perfect form like the British Royal Guard.

I love everything about my job. The safety. The consistency. My shift is a long meditation. I am grateful for the gift.

In my world, a pin drop would echo like an anvil. So when the heavy door halfway to the elevator whips open, and a familiar scientist tumbles out, landing hard on the floor with a thud, I forgive myself for flinching at the jarring sight and sound.

The door slams closed behind him as I hurry over and help the man to his feet.

“It’s early.” I check my watch to verify the time: 10:55 PM.

His face was a milky white and his eyes were heavy, like someone who had not slept in a week.

I look at the door he came out of, then behind me to where my post—door Fr.

“How’d you get over here?” I ask.

“What’s your name?” He whispers.

“Tom.”

“Tom,” he leans into me. “Don’t ask questions.”

“Okay.”

He grabs my arm and drags me along back to Fr. “I need an extra set of hands,” he says as he pulls a roll of tape from one of his coat pockets.

“I don’t understand,” I say.

“Perfect,” he says as he unravels a long piece of tape and leans towards me. “Close your eyes.”

I take the order and feel the adhesive press into my eyelids. Then I hear another piece of tape rip, and another. Both overlap with the first.

“Can you see anything?” He asks.

“No.”

There is a pause. Suddenly I’m slapped across the face. Hard.

“Ouch.” I say flatly.

“Had to check,” he grabs my arm and I hear the door open. “Apologies.”

I’m guided inside and hear the door close behind me.

Silence.

Then two consecutive beeps, and an automatic lock opens and we start forward.

“Tom, is it?”

“Yes.”

“Do exactly what I say, understood?”

“Okay.”

We twist through tight corners, and the hallway air grows colder with each turn—almost unnaturally so. A muffled humming pulses in and out of my hearing, like a frequency tuned by ghosts, rising and falling like distant static.

“What are you doing?!” a voice says as I’m pulled to a halt.

“Did it work? Did he follow me?” The scientist holding my arm asks.

“Stop talking! The guard has no clearance for this—you want to get us all fired?”

“I’ve been here for twenty years—it’ll be a cold day in hell before they fire me—now tell me, did it work?”

“Jesus Christ—yes—it worked.”

“Excellent, and he’s still contained in the exit funnel?”

“Yes. But—”

“–just shut up—” the scientist holding my arm says. “Tom,” he tugs my forearm, “I need you to do one thing for us—it’s easy—just like your job.” He pulls me along.

“What are you doing?” The other voice asks, and he ignores them.

“I need you to stand here, Tom.” He moves me a bit to the left. “Just right there. Can you do that?”

“I can.”

“And keep your arms to the side, and no matter what you hear—”

“—this is insane Joseph!” The other voice says, and he shushes them.

I hear a tapping on glass. The other snaps—“What do you want me to do?”

“Everyone shut up!” Joseph barks.

“Tom, do not move. Do not remove the tape from your eyes. Just be still and be quiet.”

“Okay.”

“And you—we’ll stand far on either side—ready with Francium—and you!” There is a rapping on the glass. “On my signal, open it.”

Whoever was on the other side of the glass must have been protesting—but I couldn’t hear his voice.

“Just do it!” Joseph screams.

I hear the two scientists scurry around. Metal clangs and other heavy objects thump. It’s hard to track the conversation without being able to see.

“—take this—”

“—got it, set the device there—”

“—this is madness—”

“—noted—” Joseph says and I hear a clunk and my feet vibrate slightly as something heavy hits the floor right in front of me.

Then the room is quiet.

“Okay, let’s not fuck this up. Ready. Three. Two,” Joseph pauses... “One.”

There are a series of beeps and I hear the suction of sliding doors part and a bone-chilling war cry envelopes me.

I should be terrified.

I should have resisted doing whatever it is he asked me to do.

But it didn’t bother me. My job is perfect, I think. I like being instructed what to do.

I may not know the plan, but there was a plan. That’s what mattered. As long as there was a plan, I’m not anxious.

I feel the ground tremble as if a stampede were bearing down on me, then suddenly glass shatters and a man screams.

“No!” Joseph yells.

“David!” another voice yells.

All around me was a whirling wind and a chorus of shattering glass and objects flying around and crashing into the walls. Joseph and the other scientist scream and I hear an alarm trigger and there are many other noises I cannot describe but they all come to a screeching halt and all that is left is the alarm blaring.

And then I feel a cold chill at the base of my neck.

The room settles. This is what it must feel like to stand in the aftermath of a tornado.

I feel the weight of someone step right behind me and then a gentle voice speaks right into my ear.

“What is your name?”

“Tom.”

“Finally, I am free,” the voice says. “Thank you.”

A long thin digit brushes the back of my head, and what feels like a sharp fingernail slices the tape and I feel my eyelids instinctually start to open, but I keep them tightly shut.

“Open them,” the voice is delicate, like a seductive femme fatale from some 1940s noir movie, and it carries a low resonance that vibrates through my bones, with an echo not of this world. Her breath is warm on my face and my eyelashes dance in her breeze.

“Open them and be free with me...”

I stand there—all I can hear is the alarm blaring and with each wail it sings my body tightens—and I squeeze my eyes shut.

I don’t want to see the room. I don’t want to know anything I shouldn’t know.

I pull the walkie from my hip and pause—what do I say...

“Something has happened,” I hesitate. “Can someone tell me what to do?”

A sweet, calming scent washes over me, lingering as a sudden gust of wind whips past, nearly knocking me off my feet. The smell is like honey and wildflowers. The ground shakes, and I hear the distant, ominous crashes of thunder, punctuated by the sharp, jarring sound of shattering glass.

A distorted announcement cuts through the sirens: “Containment breach in Sector B4-Francium—emergency protocols engaged.”

My walkie talkie squawks: “Stay put. Do not pursue. Do not open your eyes.”

The pleasant fragrance begins to fade, overcome by the heavy, smoky smell of a raging fire. Yet my heart rate slows, and the tension eases from my locked eyelids, as the muscles in my face rest in a state of soothing calm.

Someone has a plan.

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“It’s about damn time,” I said as I opened the top left drawer of my desk and slid the glass lid back.

I plucked two cigars—the good ones from the far back.

“It’s the small things that make life enjoyable,” I cut my cigar and sat. “Like a humidifier built right into the desk.”

The Lois Lane-inspired reporter stood across from me, exuding a stern, matter-of-fact dullness

“If you knew what a day—never mind a lifetime—was like before modern times, you’d appreciate how I marvel at this simple, climate controlled drawer. One purpose. Keep this tobacco fresh. It’s magnificent.”

I handed her a cigar.

“No thank you,” she said. Her voice was deadpan. Stuck somewhere between full-blown shock and trying to maintain professionalism.

“Modern women,” I huffed and put the cigar back.

“Excuse me?” She lifted a brow and fanned the cloud of smoke I sent her way.

“Yes, I said modern women. I was born in 691 AD. My manners never caught up,” I smirked.

“What if I were a man and said no thank you to a cigar?”

“I’d have said ‘old sport, don’t be a woman’ and insisted you take it.” I grinned. The game was moving.

She sat down and massaged her forehead.

“So not only are you an immortal,” she let out a sigh. “But you’re an asshole as well.”

“Unfortunately, yes, very much so.” I puffed. “And terribly wealthy—let’s not forget that. In my defense, I tried the nice guy thing for a few hundred years—was no fun. And made no difference, if I’m being honest.”

She adjusted her jacket.

“I know what’s in the pocket, so you may as well put it on the table,” I said. “Don’t want you misquoting me because of bad audio.”

She removed a phone from her pocket. A recording app was running—it had been since she walked it. Her fingers were thin. No polish. She lightly placed the device between us.

“Would you like to repeat what you said earlier when you walked into my office?” I directed.

She adjusted in her seat. Paused. Took a deep breath. The power of the conversation was on my side.

“The audio will do fine,” she said. I could tell she was trying to take the reins back.

Huh. Maybe this won’t be boring, I thought.

“Why, after all this time—why tell me?” She asked.

“That’s your first question!” I was irate. “I have been waiting hundreds of years for someone to prove the rumors true. Sure, some have been close—but never here! Never in the room, knowing the answer. Never with that!” I pointed at the orb and huffed. “I’ve lived and seen—the stories I have! And you ask why you?”

“So my theory is correct. You wanted someone to find out?” She asked.

“Of course!” I puffed and paced. “Well, not at first, but after a while, it gets boring.” I groaned and smoked. “So fucking boring.”

“So you, Raymond the Tenth, are in fact every other Raymond before you?” She smirked.

“Precisely. The first time I tried it, I was Henry the Fourth—too regal, too suspicious. But passing myself off as my own descendant is surprisingly efficient. Really streamlines passing of wealth. You don’t know what a logistical nightmare it is to pass things from yourself to yourself.”

“Would you be willing to go on live TV and do an interview with me?”

“Oh, dear—no. Interview? Why would I let you interview me?”

Her brow furrowed. “Because you’re letting me interview you right now?”

My smile dissolved to pity. This was not a contest. The game was over.

“I thought you followed the clues.” I sunk into my chair. “Found the breadcrumbs that lead you here—here with that!” I pointed to the red orb.

“I did.”

“But you don’t understand, do you?” I laughed. “Ah, fuck me. How disappointing.”

She examined the red orb. “I found this in your original grave.”

“So you unraveled a century old scavenger hunt to discover my truth, but missed the actual meaning.”

“Enlighten me,” she said.

“I cannot.”

“Because I’m a woman?”

“Ah, Jesus! Stop being so hurt all the time—I’m over 1300 years old—I’ve known countless women who needed no advantage over men—some accomplished great things, others, not so much. I respect no one. The only people I’ve ever respected died before your great-grandparents were born.”

She took a breath. I almost had her angry. So close. She pivoted and kept control, and pushed on.

“So tell me,” she said.

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“If I tell you, without you having known, then it cannot happen. And I would very much like it to happen.”

“This feels like a game,” she was dismissive.

“It is. It is a game.” I pointed at the red orb in her hand again. “And in your hand lay...” I shook my head in disappointment.

“What is this?” She held up the orb.

I shook my head. “If you really don’t know, then I’m afraid we’re done here.”

I took the iPhone and dropped it in my glass of water. She yelled something in protest, but it didn’t matter.

“I’ll need that too, so I can reset it all.” I extended a hand to the orb.

“Reset it?” She asked.

“Yes, reset it—the puzzle you solved 99% of.”

“If you’re going to reset it, then you can tell me.”

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“You said you couldn’t tell me, because if you did, then it wouldn’t happen. Well, whatever it is, it will not happen now with me. So you may as well tell me.”

She was right.

And she was wrong.

I wanted to tell her. I wanted to let the secret go and tell her the stories of my lives. I wanted to pass my immortal life to her, and finally die.

But she missed the point.

For a moment, I feel the old ache in my chest, the longing to escape eternity. But it fades, replaced by weary resignation.

“No,” I said.

“But I know—I know the rumor is true.”

“And you’ll what—tell the world?”

I believe she expected a physical threat, and she stepped back.

“Don’t worry, I won’t kill you. I don’t have to. You won’t tell anyone.”

“I will,” she said. “I have to.”

“I wish that were true, but you’re not the first person to solve part of the puzzle—you’re not even the first person I’ve confessed to.” I remembered the loves of my many lives and their fleeting memories—I remembered the laughter of a woman in the 14th century, who I believe would have solved the puzzle had she not died of plague, she was one of the great ones. I shoved memories aside and shook off encroaching tears.

“I will say, I thought you completed it. You have the orb. Nobody else got that far in a very long time.”

She slowly stepped back.

“I don’t have to hurt you. The second you walk out of here—the moment I am no longer in sight—you’ll forget this entire conversation.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t expect you to. And I don’t care if you do. But you’ll forget. They all do.”

“Who?”

“Everyone I’ve ever told the truth to. They forget. They forget me. Who I really am. All of it.”

She was nearly at the door.

“You didn’t think immortality was a gift, did you?” I stepped to her, and she crossed the threshold.

“It’s a long and lonely curse with no end.” We were toe-to-toe. She took a final step back, over the threshold into my assistant’s office

Her eyes filled with a familiar glassy haze.

I plucked the red orb from her hand.

“Shame,” I said. “You had my hopes up.”

I shut the door just as I heard my assistant ask her how the interview went.

I pressed an ear to the door, half-hoping for a miracle—hoping that after all these years, there may be a surprise left for me in this world.

“Interview?” she muttered, sounding dazed.

I sighed and flicked my lighter, setting the orb’s glow to a slow pulse. “So it goes,” I whispered.

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I remember the day I heard the news.

“A cure! Hope returns!” It was the headline plastered around the world.

I swore when I came back from Europe after the Second World War I’d never kill another man again. Even if it meant my own death. I’d let them kill me.

I had no family. No children. So there was no one worth protecting.

Then on December 26th 1947 the first of the dead started to rise. It was in New York City.

I was there. Trying to get to Madison Square Garden to see a young man named Jack Kramer play his first professional tennis match. He was up against Bobby Riggs.

That day Mother Nature dropped the largest snowfall in the history of the City. 27 inches. Transportation was paralyzed. The City had never been so quiet.

I got the idea from a kid. He was skiing down the street.

I’ve seen a lot—death, war, the dead rising—yet that image of a vacant 6th Avenue, blanketed white as more snow cascaded down, and the Empire State Building towering in the distance—that calm in a space that was typically chaos—settles my heart.

Anyway, I bought the kid’s skis, made my way to the garden, and found the place at capacity. The world outside was hibernating, but somehow every ticket holder was in attendance.

The match never finished. The screams started. I don’t know if the first one turned inside the Garden or came in from the subway—but I do know I wasn’t fast enough to kill him.

The lights flickered twice, casting weird shadows on the corridors, but stayed on for the moment, as if deciding whether to abandon us.

The stench of sweat, snowmelt, and popcorn mixed with something fouler—decay—made my stomach turn. Then an unholy moan came, reverberating off the concrete walls, and the hairs on my back stood up.

Panic crackled in the air like bursts of electricity, and I heard bodies collide with folded chairs as they struggled for the exits.

My pulse hammered, and though I vowed never to harm a soul again, my hand went for my boot—concealed within was a six-inch Nazi blade I took off some kraut I killed in an abandoned French bakery back in ‘44.

I remember clearly. In the dark there was a stampede to get outside and a gangly man that I almost mistook for a skeleton had tackled some dame and took a bite out of her chest. The blood spraying and screaming were all horrors that felt familiar, and I felt my senses sharpen from fear—it had kept me alive before, and it was awake again.

There was no time to remember my oath. For real men, instinct to help will always win the day—the woman flailing and a man ripping at her like a wolf I once saw take out a deer.

I cut his throat and tossed him aside and pulled the dame to her feet.

“Get her to a hospital!” I handed her off to people that were headed toward the door.

I felt the skeleton man grab my ankle. The little bastard went to take a bite out of me.

I gave him a taste of my heel.

I heard another scream. Turned to look. The dame I saved had turned savage. She was atop a man and gnawing on his neck. Others yelled in horror and left the man to die.

I felt a hand reach to my ankle again.

It was by accident I was the first to learn how they die.

I plunged the Nazi blade in his skull, he went limp, and kicked his husk aside.

The dame scurried out and the one she had taken as a light snack rose like something from the house of horrors and followed her.

Some folks started shouting about blocking the exits, stacking chairs, screaming for help. I almost believed we could hold them off—maybe ten seconds of frantic hope.

Then the lights cut out and any semblance of order died with them. All I could hear were footsteps tripping over one another, bodies slamming into railings, and moans of the hungry dead.

New York was quarantined. Left to survive and govern itself, while the outside suits worked on a cure.

I’m told in ’47 there were around 14 million people in the City. Over the five years we were locked in I lost count of how many I killed.

I still picture one girl, must’ve been eleven or twelve. Stumbled out of a building, eyes pale as moonlight, lips parted in a silent moan. I didn’t realize she was turned until her jaws snapped at my arm. I defended myself—my damned blade did its job. Later, when the cure was confirmed, I started dreaming about her every night, alive, laughing, like a daughter I’d never have. But in each dream, her eyes are still pale as moonlight.

Fucking science. Nobody imagined it could be reversed.

Each time I drove that blade through a skull, I told myself it was a mercy, not a murder. I’d grip the hilt so hard my knuckles ached, chanting in my head—they’re already gone—and I kept silent the part of me that still saw them as human.

Word of a cure existed, but it was rumor—just talk on stolen radio frequencies. By the time the first official broadcast confirmed it, I’d already taken more lives than I cared to count.

I remember hearing the static-ridden announcement on a battered radio some street survivor had rigged. I stood, transfixed, knife in hand, as the voice declared: “A medical breakthrough—an end to the plague.”

For a split second, hope dazzled me like a sunrise you didn’t plan on seeing.

Then my stomach flipped as I realized they had all been savable. A new wave of guilt heavier than any I’d carried in the war hit me like a punch to the gut.

The fucking cure was real. Fat lot of good it did for the ones I’d cut down.

The tragedy of my life. I never wanted to kill. And now I’m the greatest mass murderer in history.

Nobody blames me. They never did. There are some I saved during those five years that still send me Christmas cards of their children. “We wouldn’t have this if not for you.” They all say.

One of them, a single mother named Pearl, had been pinned beneath a toppled streetcar while the monsters converged. I nearly ignored her screams, too focused on clearing an alley of the shambling dead.

But something in her voice drew me back. She still writes me regularly, sending pictures of her daughter—born just weeks after the quarantine was lifted.

The girl’s name is Dawn. She’s grown now. And every time I see her smile in the photos my heart tightens.

But decades later I still dream about the ones I killed. The ones that never got to be brought back because of me. How many lives and children would never be brought into this world because I failed to find another way.

I got married in ‘64, had some kids, got divorced, and eventually wrote a book, confessing to being a mass murder during the ’47 outbreak.

My children, now grown, tell me it wasn’t my fault.

My ex-wife tells me it was.

I still get noticed in public. People think I’m some hero. I use the same line on all these pansies that glorify killing the-momentarily-dead that I used to end my book.

“It was easy to kill—harder to save. Now leave me the fuck alone.”

The dreams went away for a while, and then got worse in ’88.

In the end I was what I always imagined I’d be. An old man, waking and screaming in the night.

My children tell me about therapy. Tell me to go and talk. That it will help.

“You kids talk too much,” I always tell them. “A man lives horror. Learns to drink. Learns to write. Be like Hemingway. That’s how you digest war. What is some thirty year old bookworm going to tell me I don’t already know?”

They always protest, and I let them talk. I listen. They sound smart. I guess that’s a good thing. My son can’t fight but he can talk, I tell myself. Which seems to be more important in the modern world.

I don’t know why I still keep the Nazi blade on me at all times. Even if the dead start to walk, I’d let them kill me.

I had a dream where all the dead whose future I stole—their souls were locked in this blade—and the only way I could free them was using the blade to kill myself.

Nonsense, I tell myself, and pour a drink.

I used to think my only redemption lay in telling the world my story—help them see I was forced, that we all were. But the nightmares remind me it was never that simple. Some we saved, some we killed, and the cure came too late to matter. Life moved on while my guilt stayed put.

I think about death—my death. I want no fuss or frills. Bury me with the blade, I tell my kids. I don’t deserve to be parted from it.

Sometimes, late at night, my thoughts drift to an alternate life—if I’d refused to kill even one more time, and just let myself be killed. How many souls would have endured by me not existing?

Sure, I’d be the one rotting in the streets—small price to pay.

There’s no winning in these questions, just a slow ache that lingers with the stench of rotted memories.

And so late at night I slip my hand over the hilt of that Nazi blade. The grooves are worn and deep. I recall how effortlessly it sliced through the living and the dead—through hope and final chances. More than once, I’ve considered plunging it into my own chest. But I haven’t yet, and I’m not sure if that makes me a coward or a survivor.

And so I wait.

And so I remember.

And if I’m lucky, when I join the dead—they’ll have me.

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King Caidan was not an indecisive man. From a young age, he showed confidence that his two older brothers lacked. When he was twelve, his father, King Harold, was assassinated by the court jester.

The sound of hushed whispers filled the court as the jester, his painted face pale, pled guilty before the king.

“The king was reckless,” the jester said. “How many of your fathers and sons and husbands have died as part of his ego-driven conquests?! He did not value the lives of his people. He only valued his ego!”

The three sons of the king sat at the helm of the room. The youngest of the three, Caidan, was the only one with vengeance in his eyes.

“In killing King Harold, I have prevented countless deaths. I do not regret it. And I know, the people—even if they do not speak out—appreciate my sacrifice.”

The hall was silent. All waited to see what the eldest son decided. He had been groomed to rule, and rumors of his compassion and mercy had already spread throughout the neighboring kingdoms.

“Execution is not something I wish for anyone,” the eldest son said. “I believe the fate of rotting in a dungeon for the remainder of your life is a far better punishment than a swift release to the afterlife.”

The room erupted with chatter.

Caidan slapped the table with the authority of a tyrant, commanding the room to go silent, and it did.

“Caidan,” the eldest son said. “Control your emotions. If you cannot, then leave.”

Ignoring his brother completely, Caidan turned on his heel and left without a backward glance, the silence heavy with unspoken resentment. With measured steps, he marched down the aisle, the silence broken only by his boots on the polished floor, before he stopped before the accused.

A sneer twisted the jester’s painted lips as he looked down on the boy, his eyes filled with contempt for him and his entire lineage. Their locked stares, cold and hard, showed no respect or remorse.

Caidan drew his blade and cut the jester’s throat.

Caidan stood over the jester’s lifeless form, blade still dripping. The hall, moments ago tense with moral debate, now hung in stunned silence. Gasps rippled among courtiers and guards as they realized the youngest prince had sealed his fate and theirs in a single strike. For in that crimson instant, no one doubted which brother would claim the throne. The hush deepened, a heavy silence pressing down as all eyes tracked Caidan’s departure. His calm, assured stride spoke of a king’s quiet confidence, his authority already palpable.

When King Caidan’s sole child, a girl, turned thirteen, he knew he had failed as her father. Had she been a boy, he thought, he would have made her life harder. Challenged her. Put her in battle. Forced her to get her hands dirty.

Still, she was his princess. The sole exception to his hardened heart. He spoiled her rotten. Whatever she wished, he granted.

Despite his best efforts, he could never refuse the girl. So, on her thirteenth birthday, he did what he must. He exiled her. He realized she would never become the ruthless ruler he needed as long as she remained within his realm.

He refused to see her before she left, knowing the sight of her tear-stained face and the sound of her choked sobs would weaken his resolve.

On what would be her twenty-first birthday, the King set out with his guard to bring her home.

They arrived in the northland a few weeks before winter. Knight Edden, the man appointed as her guardian, welcomed them.

“Where is she now?” The King asked.

“She’ll be returning from work soon, my King,” Edden said.

“Good,” the King said. “Your reports over the years have been insightful. I thank you.”

“My king,” Edden bowed his head. “She has done well.”

“She has no knowledge that you have overseen her, correct?” The King asked.

Edden’s head held its bow. “No, my King. I have taken many disguises, but always stayed close and kept her safe.”

“Not too safe, I hope.” The King said.

“As instructed, I let her experience the pain of life. She has been beaten, and from that, she learned to fight. Never was her life truly in jeopardy, nor—” Edden’s eyes peaked up—“her purity.”

“Well done,” the King said. “I do not wish to dirty my boots in this village.” The King turned to his guards. “Setup camp.” He turned back to Edden. “Bring my daughter to me.”

While being escorted through the camp, Princess Ralina mentally rehearsed what she would tell her father. She had replayed that scene countless times since her exile.

The banners outside the Kings tent bellowed in the wind. The dark colors and the sigil, an elephant, were something she never thought she’d see again.

She hated it.

The night was bitter. As she stepped inside the tent, the first snow was falling, and she felt a few sneak down her neckline and send a chill down her spine.

“Daughter.” She heard his voice. The voice she cursed at every night all these years. And she boiled.

The King sat on a makeshift throne, twenty feet in front of her. One guard on either side.

She didn’t bow. The King smiled.

“You’ve grown,” he said.

“You’ve aged.”

The King ran a finger through his wiry grey beard. The fire roared and wind beat the sides of the tent. It was all amplified by the Princess. Rage had her senses tuned. Her nostrils flared and a rush of perfume and privilege made her gag.

“What are we doing here?” She asked.

“First, I want to say I am sorry. For this.”

“For this—do you mean this, the vile scent of your bathwater, or this—you exiling me when I was a child?”

“There was no other way.”

“What do you want from me?”

“What I’ve always wanted,” he stood. “For you to rule, as I have.”

She chuckled. “On the day they left me, I received two things. A small sack of coin. And a message. I kept the scroll you wrote for the first few months before I burned it. But against my wishes, every night, I heard your voice whisper them to me.”

The Princess took a single step forward and drew a dagger from her belt. “Grow stronger. Grow vengeful.”

The guards took a defensive stance, but the king waved them off. He slowly started towards his daughter.

“You know how I came to be King?”

“One old man put a crown on your head, another old man read from an old book and waved his fucking hand.”

“Amusing,” the King was brooding. He continued to approach, slowly. The weight of his power fell on Ralina with every step and she felt like a child again—a young girl pulled far from home and told not to return.

His shadow stretched unnaturally long across the floor. The room plunged into deeper darkness as a gust of wind extinguished half the candles, their sputtering flames leaving a smoky scent.

“I never waited to take an order,” the King huffed. “A ruler must act. When everyone else is weighing options, a true ruler slams his fist on the table!”

He stepped to her.

“Executing your father’s assassin, and then conspiring to usurp two elder siblings for the throne—” she sighed. “How did I ever admire you?”

“Weakness. Indecisiveness. Those are not traits of a powerful king.”

“No, that’s control, right father?”

“I found no joy in liberating your uncles from their birthright. But it was necessary, so I did it.

“Needed only by your ego.”

The King smirked.

Ralina was unmoved. “You think your plan has worked, don’t you? That how I speak to you now shows you made the right decision? That I’ve become a person you respect—and slightly fear.”

“You’re vengeful, are you not?” The King asked.

She took her time, finding the right response. It was a game of chess she’d played for nearly a decade, every night, anticipating how this conversation would happen.

“I am,” she said.

“Good,” he nodded. “You should be.”

She knew what she had to do. There was only one way she could win. They locked eyes, both knowing what was coming.

“You want me to kill you?” She asked.

“I want you to rule as only my bloodline can.”

“I won’t return.”

She took a step back, and he matched it. “If you leave,” the King said. “You’ll never be free of the vengeance brewing in you.” He took a breath. “I know. You and I are the same. You see it now.”

If she left, he would be right.

If she killed him, he would have won.

The fiction she crafted around this moment always ended the same way, and every night she told herself the same thing—when the time comes, be courageous enough to do it.

She raised the dagger. The King felt a weight lift from him, a relief he’d only felt one other time in life, when he killed the jester.

Ralina put the blade to her own throat.

“I pass my vengeance to you.”

The King gasped but his outstretched hand was too late. Blood sprayed across his face and the Princess hit the floor. The King collapsed to his daughter and a chorus of his screams and the winter wind haunted the world that night, and King Caidan, in his grief, knew he was doomed.

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When I first took the boy in I knew he was smart.

It was the year 1257 of the Second Age of our great pantheon of Star Sorcerers, and I was a man in my prime. I had often overlooked the runts in the street, but one day a young man tapped my shoulder—and to my surprise—he held out a small pendant. It was mine, of course. Nothing of any value. It was a silver circle with a hand inside, and carved in the hand was a flame.

“You dropped this,” the boy said.

“Huh,” I snatched it back. “Seems I did.”

He said nothing. He didn’t try to con me with some sob story, like the other slum urchins. He didn’t ask for a reward. He stood, silent.

No, the boy showed his intelligence in a way only someone paying attention would notice.

He asked questions.

And not the questions another would ask a less than reputable sorcerer for hire like myself, like “How does it work?”—or—“Can you conjure money?”

No. The boy asked good questions.

The first question he asked—when I took pity on him, brought him in to my shop, and fed him soup was this: “Can anyone learn sorcery?”

“Well,” I told him. And felt a bit of pride perk up in my chest. “Not just anyone. It takes a certain kind of mind.”

The boy, who was nameless at the time (and would later be called Lord Jez’ah), ate his soup slowly. Not like a starving, bag-of-skin-and-bone, eleven-year-old would—no—he ate with the poise of a noble, and spoke with the inflection of a philosopher.

“But the gift is not something you must be born with?” He asked.

I grinned and sat across from him. The fire in the corner was nearly burned out and the room was getting dark. I reached for a candle and held it between us.

“The connection,” I struck my index finger and thumb together and manifested a tiny flame and balanced it on my fingertip. “Is something that can be learned. If the spirit and mind are tethered yet broken from the bounds of what we see.”

I passed the flame from my finger to the wick and put the candle to rest on the table.

The boy’s eyes watched the flame. The crimson shine in his eyes excited me. And as he took a deep breath the fire subsided at his back and the candlelight illuminated his gaze and all the air between us was filled with curiosity and possibility.

He put a fingertip out to the flame.

“Ouch!” He snapped it back.

I laughed.

“How does it not burn you?” He asked.

“One cannot be burnt by their own creation,” I held my finger inside the flickering manifestation of my will.

He didn’t ask me to teach him.

I should have sent him back to the streets.

My instinct told me I was no instructor.

My pride assured me I was.

“Do you think you can learn?” I asked him.

“I do,” the boy said. “I’m not just anyone,” he grinned.

I should have heard it in his voice then. I mistook his lust for power as an innocent curiosity about knowledge.

It’s my fault. All of it.

In the year 1273 of the Second Age of our great pantheon of Star Sorcerers, Lord Jez’ah, who had surpassed my teachings, successfully plotted a coup and killed the royal family and took the throne for himself.

He named me—his former mentor—the Hand of Light, and I allowed it.

“My Great Magíster, Aandi-wi, Lord-friend,” he waved two hands and smiled as he stood from the throne he’d stolen. “I hereby name you The Hand of Light. Arise,” he stepped to me as I rose from a knee.

My bones felt old as I straightened and my face felt a chill. For the great Lord Jez’ah opposed bearded sorcerers—and men. He viewed the overgrown appearance of sorcerers’ past as unkempt and a representation of an unorganized mind.

Lord Jez’ah would have no such lack of vision. I viewed his dedication and drive as ambition. It was obsessive control. A desire to eradicate the unknown. A fear of the whimsical. A fear of the mystery and fate of life and of magic itself.

I smiled as he put a hand on my shoulder. When I looked in his eyes I could still see the crimson candle flame dancing as it did all those years ago.

I did not see a man garbed in royal purple robes stolen from a King. I didn’t appreciate the obedient silence born of fear from the citizens at my back.

I saw the boy.

And I fooled myself to believe I could redeem him.

“My Magíster,” the boy said. “I owe this, and my whole life, to you.” He placed his other hand on my other shoulder. “Do you accept the position of The Hand of Light?”

The position was his elevated vision of the once political Royal Hand, which was the top advisor to whoever sat on the throne.

“With great honor,” I paused. “And humility, I do.”

I saw the smile on his face twinge and fade for a brief moment, his disgust for the word humility evident.

But he kept his smile. Forced as it were. As was mine.

“The Hand of Light,” Lord Jez’ah said as he brought his two empty palms together before me—smoke manifested as he conjured and a silver pendant levitated between us. It was a circle, with a five-finger hand welded within—and carved in the hand was not a star, as I had thought, to pay homage to the Gods—but a single flame.

I felt honored.

“Wear this, and be my will and my counsel, when all other flames falter,” the boy said.

I loved him as a son. Even in darkness.

“For you, anything,” I said.

Manufactured applause erupted from the crowd and I placed the pendant around my neck.

In the year 1303 of the Second Age of our great pantheon of Star Sorcerers I finally found the truth.

The darkness and death was not redeemable.

The boy I raised. The boy I loved. Had died long ago.

I am certain others would call me a fool. They will say how did that old fool take so long to see what the world had known all along.

Even then I thought, Lord Jez’ah was not truly evil. He was a ruler. A stern ruler. A conqueror of foreign lands. But never truly evil.

I was wrong.

I was wrong about many things.

Lord Jez’ah returned to the palace in a grand ceremony of his own design, back from a campaign to slaughter another royal bloodline and cannibalize another kingdom to his vision.

We had gradually grown distant over those years at the end. While he took my counsel, he did not heed it. While I was able to speak freely where others would be executed for treason, he would let me speak.

I would watch him as I spoke about what we could do, now that we had a firm command and such a reach with the empire—and as I spoke he would stare at me with wide complacent eyes.

I know now, he did not see the old babbling man that I was—he saw the young sorcerer that could conjure fire. The man that was his Magíster. The man that gave him a home. That gave him soup.

And he would let me talk.

But he did not listen.

When I learned that in the latest conquest no men were left alive and all women and children had been either slain or taken for slaves because he viewed their kind as a subspecies, I knew we were at an end.

Conquering and war was his legacy. But he always allowed the lands to return to their people in semi-freedom, as long as they folded to his empire—and with it their resources and armies were his. It was a lesser freedom, sure, but a life better than annihilation.

I often thought about my own path, as I was never good, but never evil. In that, I believed I could never help create evil.

As I learned, I was wrong.

He was alone that night when I came to him.

“Magíster,” he huffed. “I welcome your presence, but am in no mood for lecture.”

“I understand,” I said and I easily tossed him the pendant—which he caught without looking up.

“State your meaning.” He turned a worried eye upward.

“My meaning is clear,” I said. “Too long have I allowed this. Too long have I believed a fateful purpose for you waited at the end of this treacherous path—too long have I—”

“—enough!” He stood with a force that sent the throne back into the stone wall and the fires in the chambers amplified and the Lord Jez’ah turned his eyes towards me and I knew what his enemies felt like.

“I will not hear this,” he waved me off. “Go to bed, old man.”

I stepped toward him, and he was surprised. Everyone feared his wrath—his power—the death and scorched Earth his conjuring could bring.

“No, boy. I will not be dismissed so easily,” I said. “You,” I took a breath and I could see him boiling. “You are still a man with purpose—please—call me Magíster as you once did and listen to—”

“Boy,” he raised hand. “Boy!”

I didn’t step back and he closed the gap to me, one slow step at a time.

“The kindness of your past has granted you a long life—by my will—but I see now, even paternal kindness will decay, Magíster,” Lord Jez’ah said as he smashed his hands together and the room erupted in flames and a tornado of crimson fire collapsed in on me, and as it did I saw the boy’s eyes one last time—and that tiny candle flame dancing within—and then all was blinding.

Lord Jez’ah screamed and cursed and the room was an inferno and all I could hear was “Die—Die—DIE!”

I could see nothing. I could feel nothing.

The room darkened.

The flames receded and I saw Lord Jez’ah with his back to me. And I heard him crying.

I stepped over the dying flames.

“Dear boy,” I whispered and Lord Jez’ah spun around—bewildered.

“How—it can’t be—how are you still alive—I don’t—” he couldn’t finish the sentence.

I held a hand up and a flame danced inside my palm.

“One cannot be burnt by their own creation,” I smiled.

He shook his head, and I saw the boy for the last time. I stuck a dagger in his heart and cradled his body as he fell to the floor. The last of the flames he conjured to kill me were dying around us, and in his eyes the reflection of the dying flames broke my soul.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

Lord Jez’ah tried to utter one last curse—but the rage in his eyes subsided and the boy emerged—he was still there—and with his final breath he uttered: “Not anyone.”

This is Wyrd Fiction Short No. 50. New stories drop every week (or sooner). If this one landed, subscribe — there are 51 more where it came from.

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