Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

With every eye fixed upon him, Alpheo delivered on the spectacle he had promised.Each motion deliberate. Each word, measured to make the event as memorable as possible.

He strode over the remnants of the feast as if they were nothing more than ashes underfoot. Goblets crushed, golden platters kicked aside, roast meats flattened under the weight of his boots. The echoes of destruction rang across the high hall like a funeral bell.

Like a peacock splaying his feathers before a terrified court, Alpheo displayed the full, terrible majesty of his conquest, not with jewels, but with presence. With dominance.

He turned slowly to face the room, arms outstretched like a prophet preaching from a blood-stained altar. His cloak swirled at his heels, trailing crumbs and spilled wine. And when he spoke, his voice boomed, not loud, but resonant. Not shouted, but heard.

"All men must obey the law."

The room didn't breathe as he made his proclamation, in a tone that left no space to retort. Even the flames in the sconces seemed to lean toward him.

"No matter how high they rise. No matter what name they carry or what blood fills their veins. There is always a power above them. Always a reckoning."

He walked the length of the table now, stepping between plates once filled with food now crushed beneath conquest. The lords followed him with wide eyes, like sheep trailing a wolf who had already chosen his prey.

"It is the law," he continued, "that binds men to civility, that separates us from beasts. Without it, we are nothing but the wild turned inward, snarling, clawing, devouring our own.It is men's duty to make logical what is illogical"

He turned then, sharply, and pointed across the hall.

"To break the law is to return to savagery. And what do we do with beasts who forget themselves?"

He did not wait for an answer. He gave it.

"We punish them to make them learn, and if that is no longer possible we put them down."

Alpheo's finger leveled at the trembling man seated at the end of the table. The prince.

"The man you see before you, this creature, he spat upon the law. He spat upon my honor, a thing meant to be inviolate. Sacred for the filthy cockroaches as that one."

His eyes narrowed, the weight of a hundred dead battles behind them.

"He insulted my name. My house. My wife. He sent words dipped in poison and steel forged in cowardice. And so I did what any man must do when challenged by vermin, I answered and pushed down upon it with my heel."

Alpheo took a slow, purposeful breath, his voice now owering into something calm without emotion , listing all his achievements

"My army crushed his. My men broke his. My will outmatched his. And still, here he sits. Like a rat, cornered. Trembling. Sniveling. Praying to gods that will not listen, because even they, even they, have turned their gaze from such pathetic royalty."

He stepped down from the table at last, the room still silent but for the soft scrape of steel from his soldiers, who lined the walls like statues, ready to snap to violence if anyone dare to attempt a movement.

Alpheo stopped in front of the prince. His shadow loomed over the man like the hand of fate.

"And now," he said, voice like iron dragged across stone, "by the law of victory, by the right of conquest, I claim my retribution."

The words had settled like ash in the hall, soft, weightless, and suffocating gripping the throat of every men present.

Like a child making himself look as small as possible facing the ire of his parents.

And then Alpheo spoke again, his voice slow and rich, the madness of man that craved for this moment for years, coiled behind it , just barely restrained.

He took a step forward, his boots clicking like the ticking of a war drum. He didn't shout. He didn't need to. The silence did it for him.

"I could call my men right now."

He let the sentence hang in the air like the edge of a knife. His eyes, obsidian with glints of flame, did not blink.

"I could have them take hold of you, tear the silk from your trembling skin, and split you open like a carcass on a butcher's slab. I could reach into your belly and drag your entrails out like rope, hang you from the castle walls by your own shame. I could strip the nobility from your flesh one inch at a time, in a hymn that would have your screams as the singing voice."

He stepped again, closer.

"I could flay you. Not in some poetic, noble justice. No. Inch by inch. Nerve by nerve. I could peel you until your very breath is a scream. Keep your eyes intact, so you see what I make of you. Keep your ears whole, so every child's cry, every woman's sob, every whisper of your disgrace will live inside you until the end."

He smiled, a horrible, tooth-bared grin, wide and wild.

"I could build a throne of your bones and make your own kin polish it. I could have your tongue nailed to a wall so that every noble may read the words you used to dishonor me and my wife."

Alpheo's voice had risen, trembled with the thrill of his cruelty. And just when the hall felt like it would crack under the pressure of his fury—

He stopped.

His expression relaxed. The smile remained, but now it was soft… mocking. The kind a man offers a whimpering dog before delivering the final kick.

He inhaled deeply, as if calming the storm inside his chest.

Then, gently he continued

"But I won't."

"I am a merciful man," he murmured, the words soaked in venomous grace. "A generous man."

He extended a hand, fingers relaxed, palm facing down.

"I shall allow you to redeem yourself. Right here. Right now."

His voice dropped to a whisper again, but this time it was colder than a grave.

"Crawl to me.'' He announced with finality, barely containing the self pleasure of finally saying that.

Oh how long he had waited...

''Crawl to me like the dog you claimed I was. Come on your hands and knees. Kiss the hand of the man you thought beneath you. Let the lords see your shame, let the servants weep for your fall. Let them all remember how kind and merciful I can be."

The silence was absolute. Not even the torches cracked. Even time seemed afraid to move.

"But refuse," he said, the last word dipped in iron.

"And the world shall witness the depths of hell I am capable of crafting. Just.For.You."

He didn't blink. Didn't breathe.He simply waited.

With the patience of a predator and the certainty of death.

Every eye in the hall turned, irresistibly drawn to the prince who now sat stiff and pale beneath the weight of their collective gaze. Not a single voice rose, not a single movement stirred the tension that had coiled itself like a noose around the long dining table. It was as though time had frozen, trapping Lechlian in a moment that would define the ruin of his name.

His breathing came in shallow, uneven bursts, chest rising and falling with the labored desperation of a man drowning above water. A sheen of cold sweat glistened on his brow, clinging to his skin like the touch of death itself.

His heart seemed to push away from his chest in an attempt to run.

Inside, his thoughts screamed in a chaos of shame and survival.

I am a prince. I am not a dog.  His pride announced in a glorious declaration

But I don't want to die.  His fear instead whispered in a soothing voice.

You will die if you defy him. You will suffer.

He looked around, not for rescue, not really, but for confirmation of the truth he already feared. The gathered lords and noble guests did not meet his eyes. A few watched with tightly drawn expressions of horror, some with pity, but more than a handful stared blankly, resigned, not believing of what was happening.

Then his gaze met the one face he could not escape: Alpheo's.

Standing tall atop the table, flanked by his disciplined killers, the conqueror loomed like a crowned beast, his extended hand glowing with cruel invitation. There was nothing warm in his expression, only a cold, mocking patience, as though he were watching a performance he had long rehearsed in his mind, every movement choreographed, every humiliation preordained.

The prince's throat tightened. His breath quickened to the rhythm of panic, heart hammering in his chest like a drum of war, not against his enemy, but against himself.

He looked to his sides once more, clinging to the illusion that a different path might present itself. His guards stood paralyzed, useless. All his imagined pillars, his dignity, his lineage, his crown, were nothing but painted glass, shattered by the iron truth of the man who now demanded he crawl.

And so, with the trembling submission of one who knows no other road, Prince Lechlian began to do so.

His right hand reached forward, shaking as it touched the cold stone floor. His left followed, fingers splayed wide like a spider feeling its way through a web. Then, slowly, his knees dropped. The sound of his noble limbs hitting stone was barely audible, but in that silence, it echoed like a bell tolling for a dynasty.

No longer seated. No longer standing. No longer royal.

He crawled like a dog toward his master.

Inch by shameful inch, dragging his silks through the spilled wine and crushed food that had turned the hall's center into a mire of waste. His face lowered, lips tight, teeth clenched against the unbearable weight of each movement. Behind him, the gathered lords watched in frozen silence, some wide-eyed, others quietly revolted, but none moving to stop what was unfolding before them.

As he neared the table's end, the hem of Alpheo's cloak brushing near, Lechlian paused from the sheer magnitude of the degradation. He lifted his eyes, just for a second, and what he saw in Alpheo's face was not forgiveness , or rage .

It was delight.

Pure elation.

There was no turning back.

The prince bowed his head, reached out one final time, and took the hand extended toward him. Slowly, miserably, his lips found the conqueror's ring, cold and unyielding against his mouth.

He kissed it once.Then again. A third time too for good measure.

The room remained silent.

The nobles said nothing. The soldiers stood still. Even the servants had stopped moving, as though afraid that any sound might break the illusion ahead of their eyes.

But it was.

And Prince Lechlian, crawling on all fours, wet with wine and sweat, lips pressed to the jewel of the man who had ruined him, had made his choice.

He had chosen to live.

But not as a prince.Not even as a man.He had chosen to live as the dog Alpheo had named him.

And the whole world bore witness to his choice.

Laying eyes on the spectacle that Alpheo crafted just for them.