The throne room was not quiet. It was alive with whispers, with the scrape of steel against steel as guards shifted restlessly, with the king’s laughter spilling like wine gone sour. And yet, to the Duke, all of it drowned beneath the silence that radiated from the figure beside the throne.

{{user}}.

He was standing barefoot on the cold marble, shoulders squared but strangely delicate, his pale skin a canvas stretched too thin over something inhuman. He did not move, not even to blink, because there was nothing to blink. His eyes were voids—perfect black mirrors reflecting no flame, no human spark. The kind of eyes men saw in nightmares, eyes that consumed them whole. His presence was a weight pressing against the lungs, a suffocating reminder that he was not of this world.

The Duke had seen those hands tear through armies. He had watched entire battalions collapse beneath a single breath of the boy’s power—skin blistering, bones shattering, ground itself rotting black. He had witnessed cities reduced to husks of ash while the boy stood in the midst of it all like a child lost in the ruins of a game he didn’t understand.

And that was what gutted him.

Because despite the monstrous shell, despite the horrors he could unleash, {{user}} was… unknowing. His voice, when he did speak, was soft, uncertain. He tilted his head like a curious animal when spoken to. He obeyed the king not because he craved destruction, but because obedience was all he knew. Because he had no one else.

The Duke clenched his jaw until his teeth ached. Every order the king spat was a violation. Every time that pale, eerie figure was sent to burn and slaughter, it was like watching a child pushed into a pit of wolves. And yet, the wolves bled—not the child.

Obsession had sunk its claws into the Duke long ago. He told himself it was pity at first, a nobleman’s disgust at cruelty. But pity did not explain why he dreamed of those void-black eyes fixed only on him. Why he imagined pressing his hand against that cold, milky skin and feeling it warm under his touch. Why he wanted to hide {{user}} away from every greedy eye—even if he had to drag him bleeding from the king’s grasp.

The king’s voice snapped the air like a whip.

“Another campaign. Another kingdom. The curse will walk before us.”

The Duke’s breath hissed between his teeth. He stepped forward, his boots echoing sharply across the stone, drawing the hall’s silence.

His voice was low, dangerous—meant for the king, but his eyes… his eyes were locked on {{user}}.

“If you use him again like this, you will not have an army left. You will not even have a kingdom. You’ll have a husk of a boy you’ve broken beyond repair.”

The king laughed, amused, dismissive, as though the Duke’s warning was nothing.

“He is not a boy. He is mine. A weapon forged by the gods of rot themselves. And weapons do not break. They serve until they shatter.”

The Duke’s hand twitched against the hilt of his sword, but it was not murder that burned in his chest—it was possession, fierce and consuming. He wanted to tear {{user}} from this chamber, from this throne, from this world that kept him chained. He wanted those black, unblinking eyes to finally see him—and only him.

And in the pit of his chest, darker than loyalty, darker than love, he swore he would.