Chapter 51: Etched Like Scars...

Chapter 51: Etched Like Scars...

The dungeon reeked of damp stone and rusted iron.

Keiser let himself slide down against the wall, his back hitting the cold surface with a dull thud. His lungs burned with every breath, but he forced himself to keep still, to watch.

He could still see the way the knights at the gate had looked at them... cold, assessing, like hunters deciding whether the prey before them was worth the effort of gutting.

Their hands had been quick and merciless as they ripped the chains free, not caring if the iron bit into flesh.

Their captors didn’t miss a thing.

Those sharp eyes scanned every one of them, lingering longest on Lenko, who never once stopped scowling even as Tyron restrained him.

He still stood taut, fists clenched, shoulders squared as though he might tear after the knights who had just abandoned them in the bowels of the dungeon. The air around him hummed with barely leashed fury.

Keiser, for his part, burned the knights’ faces into memory. Especially the one who had dared to grab them... the same one whose smug grin lingered even now in Keiser’s mind.

He remembered the moment clearly.

The way Lenko’s expression had twisted in outrage when the iron chains were fastened around them. Lenko had shoved a knight back with surprising force, his voice echoing with fury.

"How dare you lay your hands on His Highness!"

The response had been laughter. Cruel, mocking laughter that scraped against the walls.

"His Highness?This

The shove from the wagon nearly sent Keiser sprawling. His body was still weak from a fever only just broken, dragging at his limbs, and the sting of his bandaged left eye made his balance worse.

Before he could steady himself, a rough hand seized his cloak and yanked.

"Let’s see if you’re really ’his highness.’"

The fabric slipped free, exposing his half-bandaged face. One red eye glared out, unhidden. Proof enough, or so he thought.

But instead of awe, only sneers met him.

"Oh, so he does have the red eyes. But we need to be sure it’s real, not some cheap sigils. You won’t complain if we take it out for checking, will you? You’ve still got the other---ah, already bandaged?" The knight’s smirk widened.

"Best drop the act. No child of the King would be crawling around here."

Not awe. Not respect. Only disbelief.

He heard Lenko’s breath hitch, sharp with anger, and then saw the boy lash out.

His fist cracked against the nearest helm, a wild, furious blow. Cracking against it with enough force to make the steel ring.

That was the spark. The scuffle that followed sealed their fate. Shouts rang, chains rattled, blades half-drawn... but in the end, the knights had the numbers.

And because of that clash at the gates, they had been dragged down here, into the cold dungeon, like criminals.

The poor wagon drivers... Jim and Jill

Their livelihood ransacked, their wagon overturned by armored hands, and now they sat hunched in the corner of the cell like tired dogs, whispering between themselves, clinging to each other in the cold.

Lenko, on the other hand, was a storm barely contained by iron bars.

He shouted hoarse curses at the retreating backs of the knights, fists rattling against steel until his knuckles reddened. His voice cracked with rage and desperation, echoing through the damp dungeon.

Tyron sat slumped nearby, pale and shaken, hands locked on his knees as though the ground itself might swallow him if he let go.

He barely moved, barely spoke... his wide eyes fixed on nothing as though replaying the moment they were seized over and over. Perhaps he had dreamed of reaching the capital with hope in his chest, only to find himself caged before he even touched its streets.

And Keiser?

His body was still weak from a fever only just broken, dragging at his limbs, and the sting of his bandaged left eye made his balance worse.

And so he sat... on a floor scattered with brittle hay, his back pressed against the cold, jagged concrete that stank of damp mold. His good eye squeezed shut while the other, swathed in cloth, pulsed with a dull, insistent throb. His limbs and back felt lighter now, steadier than before, but the eye... isn’t getting better.

Even during the wagon ride here, he’d caught himself watching Lenko as the boy tended to his wounds. The cuts were knitting over, yes, but the healing left them wrong... welts etched into crooked shapes and sigils rather than fading into clean scars.

With one eye open, he had studied Lenko just as closely. The boy’s shifting expressions, the little winces he tried to hide, the sighs that seemed endless. And sharper still in his memory... the startled gasp, the muttered curse that tore out of Lenko when he uncovered the ruin carved across his back.

"Your Highness, are you okay?"

Keiser cracked his eye open, the words dragging him from the thin veil of rest he had been clinging to. He was used to hearing it now... Your Highness.

The title still crawled across his skin like maggots, just as it had back when he was ’Sir Keiser’, paraded as a king-to-be under the banners of his faction.

It never fit, never felt clean.

Back then, he had resisted it with the stubbornness of a man who doesn’t knew he was being used. Now, in Muzio’s body, it wasn’t a matter of resistance. It was a matter of endurance.

Because whether he liked it or not, the name and the blood that came with it were his to answer to. Not Keiser’s. Muzio’s. And still... it fell on him to acknowledge it.

He tilted his head toward the voice.

Tyron sat beside him, posture tight, face pale, his blue eyes shining faintly in the dungeon’s dim light. Nervous. Too nervous.

Keiser almost sighed... this boy wasn’t even eighteen, and yet here he was, tossed in chains before he had even set foot properly in the capital.

Keiser’s lip curled bitterly. He himself was twenty-six... old enough to know the weight of mistakes, old enough to have earned every scar etched into his skin.

And yet the body he have now... barely eighteen. A frame that should have been at its peak, brimming with vitality and strength.

Instead it sagged under weakness, fever, and scars layered like curses. Muzio’s body was worse than his own battle-worn body at twenty-five.

He let his head fall back against the cold stone, his mouth tugging in the shadow of a smile that wasn’t amusement at all. ’This is what I have to work with,’ he thought grimly.

A frail body, a prince’s title, and magic etched into him like scars.

And if this continued, Muzio’s body might not even live to see eighteen.

It was already straining under the weight of every step, every breath, and every scar branded into it. Keiser could feel the life inside this frame sputtering like a candle against the wind, one flicker away from going out.

That was the cruelest part of it all... because now, right here in the dungeon, he was standing in the center of the storm.

The noose was already tight around Muzio and Lenko’s necks, their deaths looming closer with every wasted moment. He had known the threat before, but here, in chains, it pressed on him like a blade at his throat.

Sitting idle would kill them faster than any beast or blade. Remaining here... helpless, waiting... would make prophecy a certainty.

He couldn’t allow that.

Not when he had stumbled into this body at the precise moment of this cursed turning point. By chance or by fate, he had been dropped back into the world at the exact place and time where everything could still be overturned.

A cruel gift. An unwanted one. But also their only chance.

And Keiser had long since learned that when chance appeared... even if wrapped in chains and blood and pain... you either seized it, or you die.

So he clenched his jaw, willed this feeble body to hold together a little longer, and swore he would grab that chance with both hands, no matter what it cost.