The King of Crows

Bells Shall Ring

I felt an echo so deep in my soul, crying... no, screaming at me to run for the hills and seek shelter away from the massacre. Such a macabre mess that was displayed across the pathways of what I once called home. My family... my friends.... everyone. Now stained against the gravel, stone, and wood they were against. Blood dripped down the standing walls, faded screams still rampant within my mind. They would never leave me behind. A promise was kept, and the promise shall be remained. Yet all I could see was what remained of that promise; all I could hear from the catastrophe's finished climax. Scratch marks against the wood, splinters in the corpse's fingers. Underneath the nails. It would have been so painful for them in their final minutes if it were not for what had happened.

But yet, I could never have ran. I could never have screamed. I could never have admitted defeat right then and there and let myself succumb to the same fate everyone else had quickly become accustomed to. Because I had already done that when the darkness had covered everywhere. When they were all murdered in front of my very eyes. All in cold blood. Yet here I was, standing in the middle of the massacre, alive and with a gaping wound splitting my torso open like a thick pole of wood had been forcefully shoved into my fragile skin. A gaping wound that was now stitching itself back together with only flesh, muscle, bone, and organ matter.

It indeed was excruciatingly painful, something like this. It was impossible to achieve. For mortals that is, it was clear I was no longer that of a mortal. Forced to roam the Earth with nothing but a sudden curse. A mind scarring reminder that I was the only one that somehow had lived throughout the macabre massacre. Not a single soul around left to breathe the same sickening air as me that smelled of nothing but death and metallic blood.

Finally with the strength and mindset, albeit very little, to move, all I could do was sit on the hardwood floor. Now tainted with the blood of what was once my loving family. All I could do was gently grab her head and rest it on my lap, repeating the same words we had vowed to one another all those years ago as I stroked her stained hair. Her wings... ripped to shreds from her own back, a hole in her own torso. Though she was never able to stitch hers up with her own pain-filled body.

My eyes, glossed over with tears that could not spill, slowly looked over to the corpse of what was once my son. Neck snapped, but only after all his torture was 'enough' for them to finally end his final hours of horrific pain. His wings were, too, ripped from the flesh-made sockets on his back. Fingernails ripped from the right, while the fingers themselves were slashed off on the left. A chunk of his hair at the bottom forcefully ripped out from the skin the strands resided within.

My knight, our friend, wasn't accepted upon the list of lucky stars that could die so easily and quickly. Hanging from the room's ceiling with his own plaited hair, suffocation by his own design. Both arms hacked right off his torso. They watched him bleed out from the arms, before they had enough and watched him choke without any way of getting free.

I could only be thankful to the stars above that William didn't have to go through that horrific fate, as he only peacefully succumbed to death in his sleep so suddenly.

I watched my loyal friend get forcefully hung like a witch on trial, my energetic son's neck get snapped like a weak twig, my loving wife's heart get skewered like a fish. All in that order. My wife saw everyone in that room die, and I was forced to watch her die as well. I could never forgive myself for not saving any one of them, but I was not granted such a bastard curse such as this until my own ex-mortal life was about to plummet to nothing but another decoration to the kingdom's cursed day.

It was all but a gut instinct, that full of adrenaline and fear for their bodies to be found and thrown into a pit of skeletons. To be long forgotten to time, to be discarded into a pile that would rot together into one mass death. I hauled their bodies, one by one, to the Valictor. Indeed I was lucky for the death room of my loved ones to be so close to the Valictor's hidden door, but I was no longer thinking mentally well enough to think of such a 'lucky' feat. All my mind could focus on was keeping their remains away from the mortals that would dare to throw them in a mass skeletal pile. But the Valictor was not enough of a safe room. Never was it, even for their freshly rotting corpses. They needed to be even safer than the valuables of this castle.

Their bodies were far more valuable than that of jewellery and scrolls.

I gently grabbed the Hallow Heart from my coat's pocket, the last ever gifts my son and wife ever gave me, squeezing it a bit to make sure it would not dare to slip through my fingers and possibly shatter across the cold tiled-floor. My tear soaked eyes averted from the three-body pile up towards the corner of the floor in the Valictor. Far from the entrance to the room. After wobbling over to the corner and crouching down, I let the Hallow Heart gently graze against the stone floor. Slowly inserting its fragile body into the small dark crack inbetween two delicately chiselled pieces of rock. The trapdoor swung down with enough force it could have potentially knocked out a soul if they stood in its path.

Dropping down with all three bodies in tow, I glanced around the abyss soaked room. It never had a proper use that we could ever fully agree on, but now it did. A permanent one in fact. A way to house the corpses of what was once my beloved ones. Now nothing but unsmelling mummified skeletons in the modern era of mortal humanity.

I will forever be grateful for such an instinct like that to protect their corpses, with how the mortals have treated such priceless old historical pieces now... they would have forced my loved ones to be nothing but still-dancing puppets for their own curiosity and amusement. Making up their own narrative they themselves enjoy the most for the story of my wife, son, and dear friend. In fact they did in a way with the whole kingdom, announcing dramatically it was some form of curse suddenly plaguing the whole place.

Though they were never wrong, the massacre of killers would forever feel like a plague to my immortal soul.

At that point I had forever given up on mortals as a whole for this modern time; but you, my dear Y/N.... you had something. A spark of sorts. You treated my castle with respect as I followed you around, finding my truthful facts enjoyable. I could not have held my secret for long around you. You were a mortal of such deserving worthy. But I always thought there was more to you than meets the eye... and I have finally figured it out!

After all this time of searching and waiting, you have shown to me that my son is alive yet again, same with my short-lived friend and loyal knightly friend. But you.... you were the final puzzle piece right in front of me. My dear Y/N- no, my love. You are the reincarnation of my wife.

And we will make sure our vows stay true, forever and always...