The night had cast its veil over the Kingdom of Ivis, but it was not a peaceful night as the people of the kingdom were used to. In every alley, in every corner, there was screaming. Screams of pain and despair, cries carried to the sky like a desperate plea from humans torn apart by a calamity they had never known before.
Everywhere, the disease was spreading. People's skin was no longer as it had been; it began to turn a deep black like coal, then slowly melted away, leaving open wounds that burned as if scorched by the fires of hell. The pain was unbearable, casting a heavy shadow over the kingdom, suffocating everyone who walked through its streets.
But amid this devastation, the people thought of only one person: King Yaram Dontefry.
They remembered him, the king who had never failed them, the man who once promised that he would protect them no matter the cost. And now, as terror reached its peak, they lifted their eyes to his palace, wondering: would he come out to them? Would he stand with them in this ordeal?
And although rumors began to spread that the king had fled, some still clung to hope.
Then, on that dark night, the palace doors opened.
The king emerged.
He stood tall on the grand balcony of the royal palace, wearing his black armor adorned with the golden insignia of the kingdom. But he was not the same man they had known before. His face was weary, his eyes sunken in darkness, and his hair, once radiant, now seemed devoid of life.
He raised his hand, and silence fell over the entire kingdom. Even those who had been screaming in agony grew quiet, as if something stronger than their pain had stopped them.
Then, King Yaram began to speak.
"My beloved people... O children of Ivis... Throughout our history, we have faced many wars, endured hunger, suffered oppression, but what we face now is the most horrifying affliction ever inflicted upon mankind. This disease is not an enemy we can slay with our swords, nor a foe we can crush with our armies. It crept upon us in the darkness and seized our lives while we stood powerless before it."
Here, he looked at the people with eyes carrying deep sorrow. Yaram was not just a king; he was a man who felt everything they felt, suffered alongside them, and endured their pain.
"But listen to me well! Are we truly helpless? Are we mere victims of this plague?" His voice rose, carrying an undeniable strength. "No! We are the children of Ivis! We are the ones who fought to the last breath to protect our land! We are the ones who never surrendered to any enemy!"
His words began to stir something in the hearts of the people. Some lifted their heads after having bowed them in despair, and the tears that had flowed from pain began to mix with a faint glimmer of hope.
"I will be honest with you. I do not yet have a cure for this disease. I do not have magic to banish it overnight. But I promise you one thing: I will not abandon you! I will stay here, with you, until my last breath!" His voice wavered slightly, but it was not hesitation it was charged with raw, sincere emotion.
Then, he descended from the balcony.
He did not settle for words he walked among them.
They saw him move through the sick, kneeling beside a man who had lost half his face to the plague, holding the hand of a child crying in agony, and wiping away the tears of a woman clutching the corpse of her husband.
This was not a king who sat in his palace and ruled from afar. He was one of them. A man ready to die among them.
And so, something strange began to happen.
People started regaining their strength not because the disease had vanished, but because they found something worth fighting for. They were no longer mere victims; they were warriors in an existential battle, led by a king who refused to abandon them.
And in the days that followed, death was not the only topic of conversation anymore. They spoke of hope. Of healing. Of a future where this disease would be nothing but a bitter memory that would never break them.
And this was the greatest victory King Yaram Dontefry ever achieved.
In the heart of a secret laboratory, where the walls were soaked with the scent of blood and death, stood the boy Alexis Lockard, his brows furrowed, and his eyes gleaming with a mixture of excitement and madness. The place was filled with scattered bodies, some still twitching, while others had become mere husks of extinguished lives.
"Marvelous… astonishing!" he murmured in a low voice, almost a whisper laced with a wicked chuckle. He took slow steps between the corpses of his victims, examining the results of his experiments.
One of his followers, a man barely able to stand, dared to speak in a trembling voice: "Sir... is this... necessary? We are dying... one after another..."
Alexis turned to him, his features a blend of coldness and exhilaration. "Of course, it's necessary. More than that it's so necessary that I am willing to watch the world burn to achieve it." He took a step forward, his voice gaining an unnatural heat. "Do you know what's truly ironic? All of you, every single one of you collapsing before me, are just confirming what I've always known. You are weak, pathetic, and this disease is not your real enemy you are your own worst foes."
He inhaled deeply, as if the stench of death fueled him with power. "But I am different. You are victims. I? I am the challenge to this ruin you have brought upon yourselves! I will break the rules, rewrite the laws, and create something greater than life itself!" He tossed a glass vial onto the ground, and it shattered, releasing a thick liquid. One of his followers let out a scream of agony before collapsing, convulsing.
At that moment, Alexis erupted into manic laughter. "If you cannot survive, then you simply do not deserve to live!"
Elsewhere, inside the royal palace, where darkness and silence gathered, King Yaram Dontefry stood by the window, his eyes lost in the depths of the city that was once full of life. Behind him stood a man clad in silver armor engraved with intricate patterns, his eyes carrying both sternness and wisdom, his features betraying a past weighed by responsibility. It was Raphael, a guardian of the academy and his brother.
Raphael sighed as he said, "I have seen many things, Yaram. I have witnessed kingdoms fall and people perish. But what is happening here... this is different. This is not just a plague; it is a curse reshaping the very logic of existence."
Yaram turned to him, his eyes reflecting exhaustion and pain. "I know that. But we are not helpless, Raphael. We cannot be."
Raphael was silent for a moment before saying, "There is something strange."
Yaram raised an eyebrow slightly. "What do you mean?"
Raphael took a step forward, lowering his voice as if what he was about to say was a secret no one else should hear. "There is only one person… who survived. Valerian Lockard."
Yaram's eyes widened, shock slipping into his voice. "Valerian? How?"
Raphael shook his head. "That is the part I don't understand. Every person infected with this disease, no matter how strong, has fallen victim to it. But Valerian... he healed. Not gradually, not after suffering, but in an instant, as if the disease simply decided to leave him alone."
Yaram fell into silence, then muttered, "This… is unnatural."
Raphael gave him a sharp look, as if searching for something in his brother's face. "Exactly. And that's why I believe he did not survive..."
The air trembled between them for a moment, as if those words carried a weight heavy enough to ripple through reality itself. Yaram swallowed hard, then spoke in a hushed tone:
"A traitor..."
"Yes," Raphael said firmly. "His luck was not natural. And if that's true, then it means he never needed to be cured... because he had the antidote from the start."
Long moments of silence passed before Yaram spoke in a deep voice: "This means there was someone who could have been healed... but died instead."
Rafael turned his face toward the window, his gaze heavy with worry. "And if that's true, then there's no other solution for us?"
In the lab
The place was engulfed in darkness, but Alexis didn't need the light to see the chaos he had created. The bodies were stacked around him, and the ground was soaked with a mixture of blood and mysterious fluids he had concocted in his lab. He took a deep breath, savoring the deadly scent that had become familiar to him. His eyes were glowing with madness, his body shaking slightly as his hands fumbled for a glass vial on the table in front of him.
But he felt it.
The pain wasn't ordinary, it wasn't like anything he had ever experienced before. At first, it was a slight sensation, a gentle prickling, like a needle brushing his skin. But it quickly escalated, as if invisible flames were burning inside him, creeping into his bones and gnawing at them slowly. Alexis wasn't someone who knew fear, but this time, something inside him made him stop.
He looked at his hands, seeing them tremble.
Then the change began.
His skin started to turn a dark color, not just black, but as if it were absorbing the light around him. The veins in his arms swelled with a strange purple hue, as though they contained a living liquid crawling within. He tried to move, but felt an immense weight pressing down on his chest, as if something invisible was gripping his ribs and crushing them.
"Ha..." A short laugh escaped his lips, but he tasted a metallic flavor in his mouth.
He spat on the ground and saw a blotch of black blood.
"Wonderful... absolutely wonderful!" he muttered in a hoarse voice, but it wasn't pain he was expressing as much as a mix of awe and excitement.
He felt as though the virus was pulsing inside him, changing him, remaking him from the inside out. It wasn't just a disease; it was a being, something conscious interacting with him. His body trembled violently, and he collapsed to his knees, but he didn't scream. Alexis Lockard doesn't scream.
He gasped for air, trying to comprehend the nature of this transformation.
"It's... alive." he whispered, his eyes widening in disbelief.
He lay on the ground, feeling both cold and heat at the same time. It was as if his body no longer understood balance, as though it were being rebuilt according to new rules that he hadn't chosen. For a brief second, he thought he might lose consciousness, but something inside him refused that.
He wouldn't die here.
He pushed himself up, crawling toward one of the shelves in the lab, where the vials were neatly arranged, containing his experiments, his creations, everything he had made with his bloodstained hands. He reached out with his trembling hand, and just before he could grab one of the vials, another wave of pain tore through him.
He fell to the floor, and a muffled scream escaped from him.
But with the pain, there was something else.
Power.
He felt something explode inside him, as if his human limits were shattering. For a moment, he wondered: what if this wasn't a disease? What if this was evolution?
But his body couldn't take it anymore.
He fought to raise himself, pulling one of the vials containing a glowing blue liquid. It was the antidote, which he had created weeks ago, though he hadn't thought he would need it so soon.
"If I'm going to die... it won't be now." he muttered, then without hesitation, he broke the vial between his teeth.
The liquid flowed down his throat, cold as death itself.
At first, nothing happened.
Then, suddenly, a sensation of fire rushed through his veins.
It was like a storm had swept through his body, destroying the virus, tearing it into small pieces before swallowing it. He bit down on his lips until they bled, but he didn't care. His eyes burned, his hair flew wildly from the strange energy that engulfed him. His body shuddered violently, and then, as if someone had thrown him into hell and then pulled him out, everything stopped.
He collapsed on the floor, gasping.
For a moment, he thought he had died.
Then, he started laughing.
A faint laugh at first, then louder... and louder... until it turned into full hysteria.
He raised his head, his eyes shining with madness.
"I did it! I fucking did it!" he shouted, then slammed his hand on the ground, as if he couldn't believe he was still alive.
From a distance, behind the glass wall that separated the lab, another figure watched.
Rain, his older brother.
He stood there, leaning against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes following the scene without the slightest surprise.
A smug smile curled on his lips.
"I knew you wouldn't die so easily," he said in a calm voice, yet filled with confidence.
Alexis, still gasping, lifted his head and looked at him, his eyes burning. For a moment, he said nothing, just stared at his brother.
Then, he smiled in return.
Rain tilted his head slightly, then said, "But the real question is... are you still you? Or are you something else now?"
Alexis didn't respond, he just kept laughing, as the pain that had been tearing him apart completely disappeared, replaced by something else.
Something he didn't understand yet, but he was certain of one thing:
He had become stronger.