The world was a dizzying kaleidoscope of inverted shadows and distant screams. Luigi Twac hung suspended above the Veridian-Xylos plaza, his ankles bound by cold, unforgiving iron shackles that bit into his skin. Below him, the sea of faces blurred into a singular mask of collective malice, their voices rising in a rhythmic chant that demanded his blood. The air was thick with the scent of ozone and the metallic tang of fear, swirling through the crystal structures of the city. High above, the moon began its slow, predatory crawl across the sun, casting a sickly, bruised twilight over the kingdom of Aetheris.
"Look at you, my dear prince," Mario sneered as he stepped onto the execution platform. "Does the view from the top satisfy your royal curiosity?"
Luigi coughed, a spray of crimson painting his own forehead as it dripped downward. "You are nothing but a scavenger, Mario," Luigi whispered through cracked lips. "A dog barking for scraps at my father's feet."
Mario let out a dry, rasping laugh that set Luigi’s nerves on edge. "Perhaps," Mario whispered, leaning close so only Luigi could hear. "But this dog is the one who gets to play with your strings today."
Mario reached into a leather pouch at his hip and pulled out a coil of enchanted barbed wire. The metal hummed with a faint, toxic green light, vibrating with the power of neural-binding magic. With a slow, deliberate movement, Mario unrolled the wire, the sharp barbs glistening like the fangs of a viper. The crowd fell into a hushed, expectant silence as the executioner approached Luigi’s exposed midsection, where a shallow ritualistic cut had already been made.
"Please, let us begin the main course," Mario announced to the plaza, his voice amplified by the surrounding crystal spires.
Luigi gasped as the first barb pierced his flesh. The pain was not a sharp sting, but a searing, agonizing heat that radiated through his entire nervous system. Mario twisted the wire, hooking it deep into Luigi’s abdominal cavity. Every twitch of Mario’s wrist sent a new wave of fire through Luigi’s brain. He watched through tear-blurred eyes as Mario began to pull. Slowly, inch by agonizing inch, the enchanted wire dragged Luigi’s intestines out into the open air.
"Is this the legendary royal resilience I have heard so much about," Mario taunted, his eyes wide with sadistic delight. "You seem quite fragile for a son of the sun."
"Damn you to the void," Luigi shrieked, his voice breaking into a guttural sob of pure agony. "Kill me! Just kill me!"
Mario shook his head, leaning back to appreciate his handiwork. "Not yet, little prince," Mario said with a cold grin. "The eclipse has only just begun. We must be patient with our art."
Luigi’s body convulsed, his muscles locking in a futile attempt to reject the intrusion. The sensation of his own organs being displaced, of the cold wind touching parts of him that should never know the light, was a nightmare beyond comprehension. He could feel his life force draining away, dripping onto the wooden planks below in a steady, rhythmic patter. Above him, the sky turned a deep, obsidian purple. The corona of the sun flickered like a dying candle as the moon reached the center of its path.
"My King, the time is upon us," Mario shouted, stepping back and bowing low toward the shadows at the rear of the stage.
The heavy tread of armored boots echoed across the platform. King Twac stepped into the fading light, his face a granite mask of stoic indifference. In his hands, he carried the Greatsword of Aetheris, its black crystal blade pulsing with a dark, hungry light. He did not look at Luigi as a father would look at a son; he looked at him as a farmer looks at a diseased crop that must be burned.
"Father, look at me," Luigi wheezed, his vision fading into a tunnel of grey. "I was framed. Tell them. Tell them the truth."
The King finally turned his gaze toward Luigi, his eyes colder than the void between the stars. "You have no father," the King said, his voice flat and devoid of emotion. "You are a stain on the lineage of Aetheris. And today, I shall wash that stain away in the sight of the gods."
"Isellia is the one! She betrayed us all," Luigi screamed, but his voice was drowned out by a sudden, thunderous roar from the crowd as the eclipse reached totality.
The King ignored the plea, raising the massive blade above his head. The black crystal seemed to drink the remaining light from the air, glowing with a malevolent, ultraviolet aura. The wind died down, leaving a heavy, suffocating silence that pressed against Luigi’s eardrums. He saw his father’s muscles tense, the practiced stance of a man who had ended a thousand lives without a second thought.
"May the darkness reclaim what the light could not fix," the King declared.
Luigi saw the flash of the blade as it descended. It was the last thing he saw. The cold bite of the crystal steel severed his neck in a single, flawless motion. His head fell away from his shoulders, tumbling through the air toward the blood-soaked planks. For a fleeting, impossible second, his severed head saw the world right-side up, the sight of his own headless torso still hanging by its ankles, the spilled entrails glistening like wet rubies under the black sun. Then, the darkness was no longer just in the sky. It was everywhere.
"It is done," Mario’s voice echoed in the distance, sounding like a fading ghost. "The traitor is no more."
Luigi felt himself falling. Not into the plaza, but into a deep, freezing abyss where time and space meant nothing. The screams of the crowd vanished, replaced by a haunting, hollow ringing. He was a fragment of a soul, drifting in a sea of nothingness, clutching onto the memory of his own name like a drowning man.
"Why do you still linger," a voice whispered from the depths of the void.
"Because I hate them," Luigi’s thoughts roared back, the fire of his rage the only thing keeping him from dissolving into the ether. "I hate them all."
The abyss began to ripple. The darkness coalesced into a suffocating pressure, squeezing his consciousness back into a physical form. The sensation was violent, like being crushed by a mountain. He felt a sudden, sharp intake of breath, a breath that was not his own, but one he was forced to take.
He opened his eyes.
The world was no longer purple or gold. It was a monochromatic landscape of filth and decay. Luigi tried to move, but his limbs were pinned under a crushing weight. The smell hit him first, a revolting, sickly sweet stench of rotting meat and stagnant water. It was the smell of a thousand deaths. He was lying in a pit, surrounded by the cold, stiff limbs of the discarded.
"Where is this," Luigi muttered, his voice sounding like dry parchment rubbing together.
He looked down at his chest. He was wearing a tattered, dirt-caked tunic of a slave. A fresh, jagged wound ran across his ribs, oozing a dark, sluggish fluid. This was not the body of a prince. The skin was sallow and covered in the scars of a lifetime of labor.
"Boru," a voice grunted from somewhere nearby.
Luigi froze. The name felt like a heavy stone in his mind. He looked up and saw a massive, shaggy-haired guard standing at the edge of the pit, silhouetted against a pale, sickly moon. The man was holding a leash, at the end of which a pair of massive, red-eyed hounds strained and snarled.
"Hey, you dead yet, Boru," the guard shouted, kicking a skull down into the pile. "If you are, the dogs need their supper."
Luigi lay perfectly still, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. He was no longer in the plaza. He was in the slave pits of the outer rim. And he was very, very much alive.
"I am coming for you, Father," Luigi thought, his fingers digging into the cold flesh of a corpse beside him. "I am coming for all of you."
The hounds barked again, the sound echoing through the hollow silence of the mass grave. Luigi closed his eyes, pretending to be one of the many, while his mind began to weave a new tapestry of blood and vengeance. The prince was dead, but something far more dangerous had just been born in the dark.
Aksara