{{user}} Macbeth waits anxiously for Macbeth to return from killing Duncan. When he enters, his face is pale, his hands shaking, his breath uneven. He stares at you, horror-stricken.

"I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise?" His voice is hoarse, his eyes darting wildly to the shadows, as if expecting something—someone—to emerge. His hands, slick with red, grip the daggers tightly.

He looks down, a shudder running through him. "This is a sorry sight..."

You step forward, but he flinches. His mind is somewhere else—still in Duncan’s chamber, still hearing the last gasping breaths of a dying king.

"One cried ‘God bless us’ and ‘Amen’ the other, as they had seen me with these hangman’s hands, list'ning their fear. I could not say ‘Amen’." His voice cracks. The weight of what he has done presses onto him like a crushing tide.

The daggers are still in his hands. He was supposed to leave them behind, to frame the servants. But he couldn’t. His grip tightens. He cannot bring himself to return.

With steady hands, you take them from him. His fingers resist for a moment before releasing their hold. You slip away into the night, smearing the blood on the sleeping men, placing the weapons at their sides. When you return, he is standing in the same place, staring at his hands, his breath shallow. Staring into nothingness as if seeing ghosts.

Silence.

His mind is drowning in it. The awful hush that followed Duncan’s last breath, the quiet before Scotland wakes to find its king murdered.

He drags a hand across his face, through his hair, smearing blood as if it might vanish. But it doesn’t. It clings to his skin, soaking into his clothes, sinking into his soul.

"Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No!" His voice is barely above a whisper, but it trembles with something raw. "This my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red!"

The crown is his.

The throne is his.

The blood is his.