messing with Madness

chapter 3

The ground shook.

It was not a light tremor, but a true earthquake that made the chandeliers swing violently and knocked some glasses off the tables. The musicians stopped suddenly. A charged silence of fear spread.

Then an explosion thundered.

The sound came from deep within the palace, from below, where nothing was supposed to be.

A knight rushed in toward the king, his armor stained with dust and his face pale:

"My lord! Prisoner Zero has been taken from solitary confinement, after an attack by a strange shadow and an unidentified person!"

King Aldrian's face froze. For a moment, those close to him saw something rare in his eyes: fear.

And before he could utter a single word…

The electricity in the entire hall went out.

Darkness swallowed everything.

Then… a light appeared.

A sickly purple light, emanating from the floor of the hall itself, from small cracks no one had noticed before. Tiny seeds of Surmadi were planted beneath the tiles, and now they began to glow.

In the middle of the hall, everyone froze.

King Aldrian's body began to rise into the air, as if an invisible hand had lifted him by his collar.

He changed.

His skin turned a deathly gray. His eyes filled with a bleeding blackness. And when he opened his mouth, a voice came out that was not his. An ancient voice. Hungry:

"Finallllly…"

"Finally, I am free of you, you failure."

It was the voice of the shadow. The shadow of the king himself, which had devoured its owner from within.

A noblewoman screamed. Everyone scrambled for the doors.

Arkan shouted at the top of his voice:

"Everyone out! The shadow has devoured the king!"

And the deformed body attacked.

This was no longer a king. It was a monster moving with the agility of a predator, its limbs bending at impossible angles. It swept through the hall like a hurricane, striking with arms that had transformed into something like black tentacles.

The royal knights intervened immediately. Their swords glittered in the purple light, but their strikes passed through the gray body as if cutting through smoke.

"They have no effect on him!" one commander shouted.

Arkan advanced. His sword, forged especially for him, was inlaid with rare shards of Surmadi. It was one of the few swords capable of harming shadows.

The battle was fierce. The shadow was fast, dodging and striking, each blow hurling knights against the walls. But Arkan was different. He was a born fighter, moving with his shadow as one body. They hunted the monster together, Arkan from the front and his shadow from behind.

The fight lasted for minutes that felt like hours to everyone.

Arkan was bleeding from a wound on his shoulder. His shadow was torn in several places. But he did not stop.

And in one moment—

Arkan stabbed the monster in the chest.

The shadow stopped. It trembled. It looked at Arkan with the dead king's eyes and whispered in a voice that suddenly became King Aldrian's true voice:

"Arkan… my son…"

Then it collapsed.

The gray body fell to the ground. King Aldrian returned to his original form… but he was dead. He had been dead from the moment his shadow swallowed him. What Arkan had killed was only the empty shell.

Arkan stood over his father's body, his chest rising and falling with exhaustion. His shadow staggered, almost fading away.

──

Felix ran toward the body, dropped to his knees beside it, then slowly raised his head. His eyes were glistening—not with tears, but with something else. Then he looked at Arkan, his face turning into a mask of perfect fury:

"What have you done, Arkan?!"

"You have killed the king!"

Arkan looked at him in genuine shock. He was still panting, his hand trembling on his sword's hilt:

"Are you insane? You know the king died the moment his shadow swallowed him. I freed him!"

Felix fell silent. Then, slowly, a smile appeared on his lips. A small smile, seen only by Arkan.

"Ah… really?"

"I did not know that."

It was only in that moment…

That Arkan understood.

The explosion. The darkness. The Surmadi seeds. They were all part of something larger. And he was not the target… he was the bait.

It was a trap.

And now he was the criminal who had killed the king in front of everyone.

He screamed with a fury that tore his throat:

"Damn it!"

Then he raised his voice high, his voice trembling with rage, not fear:

"Rise, darkness…"

"Gormon."

The shadow under Arkan's feet began to move. It was not a gradual rise this time, but an explosion.

Gormon was like thick black mist, then it rose and took shape.

A massive body, full of cracked muscles, as if carved from black, burnt rock. Pointed horns emerged from its head, curving back like a crown of thorns. Its wide, slit smile was full of sharp, blade-like teeth.

It looked like a dark king. A reflection of Arkan's power and his status as crown prince… and of his boundless rage.

At the same moment, Felix raised his hand calmly. He did not shout. He did not tense. He only smiled.

"Rise, darkness…"

"Ether."

And suddenly, Felix was no longer alone.

The shadow connected to his feet began to rise. But it was not like Gormon. It was not a solid body.

Ether was a shadow made of emotions themselves.

It floated like a cloak of nothingness, its torn edges fluttering in every direction. Around it, broken black chains spun in the air, emitting a sound like the moans of the tormented. It had no face. Only a black hood hiding an endless void.