IMMORTAL KING

"The First Thorns

We’re doing *EPISODE 2: "The First Thorns"* next.

3 years later. The king dies. The boys disappear.

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*IMMORTAL KING - EPISODE 2: "The First Thorns"*

_∼2100 words_

The palace burned for 3 days after the king died.

Not with fire.

With people.

The moment the bells stopped ringing for the dead king, they started ringing for war.

Princes in silk. Generals in armor. Ministers with knives behind their smiles.

Everyone wanted the throne.

No one asked what happened to the kids in the garden.

I was 7.

Min-ho was 7.

We were still "Glass Boys."

But glass gets sharper when it’s been cut too many times.

*1. THE DAY THE KING DIED*

It started with a cough.

We heard it from the kitchen. The old cook whispered to another servant: _“The king won’t last the week.”_

By sunset, the whole palace knew.

By midnight, the first prince had soldiers at his door.

By morning, the second prince had poison in his brother’s tea.

Min-ho and I watched from the roof of the storage building.

We weren’t supposed to be up there. But nobody was looking for us anymore.

Below us, the courtyard was full. Banners. Horses. Blood already on the stones.

“They’re fighting over a chair,” Min-ho said.

I nodded. My palm itched. The white scar was 3 years old now.

“Do you think they remember us?” I asked.

“Who?”

“The ministers. The ones who called us glass.”

Min-ho looked at me. “Doesn’t matter. We remember them.”

That was the first time I heard something new in his voice.

Not fear. Not sadness.

Hate. Cold and quiet.

*2. THE THORNS*

The next week was chaos.

Food stopped coming to the back kitchen.

The guards stopped pretending we didn’t exist. Now they looked at us.

Like we were problems to be solved.

On the 4th day, two guards came to the storage room.

“Orphans,” one said. “Come.”

“Where?” I asked.

“To be sorted,” the other replied. “Palace doesn’t feed useless mouths in a war.”

Sorted.

That was the word they used for selling kids to brothels, to mines, to other houses as slaves.

Min-ho stood up. He was small. But his eyes were not.

“Touch us and you bleed,” he said.

The guard laughed. “Look at the glass boy. Think he’s got teeth now?”

He reached for me.

Min-ho moved first.

He grabbed a broken bowl from the floor and smashed it into the guard’s knee.

The man screamed.

The second guard pulled his sword.

That’s when I learned Min-ho was faster than fear.

He threw sand in the man’s eyes. Grabbed my hand.

“Run.”

We ran through halls we’d never been allowed in.

Past silk curtains. Past screaming maids. Past bodies.

The palace was eating itself.

We made it to the garden.

Same peach tree.

We were bleeding again. Not from cuts. From running. From falling.

Min-ho pressed his back to the tree. Breathing hard.

“They’re going to kill us,” he said.

“Or sell us,” I said.

“Same thing.”

The shouting was getting closer.

Torches.

We were 7 years old with no one.

Min-ho looked at his palm. At the old scar.

Then at me.

“Blood oath still stands?”

I held out my hand. The scar was white against the dirt.

“Still stands.”

We didn’t cut again. We didn’t need to.

We just ran.

*3. LEAVING THE PALACE*

We didn’t have a plan.

We had a hole in the back wall.

The gardeners used it to dump trash. The guards never checked it because “no one important” would use it.

We crawled through mud and thorns.

The thorns cut us. That’s why I called them that later.

_The First Thorns._ The first time the world tried to cut us and failed.

Outside the wall was not freedom.

It was a city on fire.

People running. Markets burning. Soldiers dragging people from homes.

The empire was already collapsing from the inside.

We walked for 3 days.

No food. No water.

We drank from ditches. We slept in alleys.

Min-ho found half a loaf of bread on day 2. He broke it in half.

“Equal,” he said.

“Equal,” I said.

On day 4, we were caught.

*4. THE MERCENARY*

His name was General Park. But he wasn’t a general anymore.

Just a man with a sword and 6 boys who looked like us.

Thin. Scared. Scarred.

He found us behind a temple.

“More mouths,” he said. “Great.”

He didn’t hit us. He didn’t ask our names.

He just tossed us bread and said, “You fight, you eat. You don’t, you die. Pick.”

We picked.

That’s how we disappeared.

The palace thought the "Glass Boys" died in the fire.

The ministers probably toasted to it.

We didn’t die.

We trained.

For 14 years.

Park taught us how to hold a blade.

How to read maps.

How to survive when no one is coming to save you.

He had other boys. Orphans like us.

But Min-ho and I were different.

We had an oath.

At night, in the camp, we’d press our scarred palms together.

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

We learned.

Min-ho learned the sword. Became a ghost on the battlefield.

I learned the words. Became the one who listened in rooms where no one thought I mattered.

We learned about the empire. About the ministers who called us glass.

About the system that eats boys like us.

And we made a new promise.

Not just to catch each other.

To catch everyone else the empire dropped.

*5. 14 YEARS LATER*

I’m 18 now.

Min-ho is 18.

Park is dead. Killed by a lord he used to serve.

The other boys are scattered. Some dead. Some soldiers. Some gone.

But we’re back.

At the edge of the capital. Watching the walls.

The same walls we crawled out of when we were 7.

The empire thinks we’re dead.

Good.

Let them keep thinking that.

Min-ho sharpens his sword. The sound is soft.

“You ready?” he asks.

I look at my palm. The scar is still there.

“Ready,” I say.

We’re not here to take the throne.

We’re here to burn the idea of it.

We’re here to build something new.

A kingdom with no king.

Where no child is called glass again.

The bells ring in the distance.

Not for a funeral this time.

For us.

_“If one falls, the other catches.”_

_“If one burns, the other saves.”_

Blood oath.

And this time, the whole empire is going to hear it.

*END OF EPISODE 2*