He must have had a life before this. A mother, a father, a home. Maybe sisters, or brothers. But it had been so long—too long—and now all he knew was this bloody game. His hands knew no other shape than fists curled tightly around a sword, swinging eternally, finding its mark through skin and bone.

They all tried to run, of course. They built walls and cowered in corners, but he always found them. Sometimes, they begged. Sometimes, they chose to jump from cliffs rather than face his reckoning. And sometimes, they stared back at him with eyes as empty as his own and welcomed death with open arms. Those were the ones he envied the most.

Technoblade never dies, they whispered around campfires and funeral pyres.

He prayed that that wasn’t true.

He didn’t know what brought him to the kingdom in the first place. Did he really have to see it for himself? Was it simply to satiate his curiosity? Was he bored? Or did he hear of a kingdom untouched by the wars and petty grudges of its neighbors—keeping its peace and neutrality for a century—and take it as a challenge? That was how Techno found himself walking leisurely down the halls of a castle that, under normal circumstances, he would have been storming, blades drawn. The guards did draw the line at his weaponry. The castle’s laxness in security was disproportional to the opulence within: lush carpet softened Techno’s footsteps, elegant tapestries decorated the walls, flowers bloomed from vases as tall as him, and oil paintings in gilded frames.

Rendered in paint and shadow, he looked just as Technoblade remembered, the years leaving no mark on his immortal face. He was standing behind a modest throne, his hand laid gently on the shoulder of a dark-haired woman that must be his queen. In the queen’s arms was a golden-haired toddler, sleeping peacefully. On the floor by her feet, with legs crossed, was another child.