Chapter 6- Born to be Nothing
737 Words
The chains no longer felt as heavy.
Not because they loosened—no, the iron still bit into my wrists and ankles—but because something inside me had shifted.
It started after she left.
The girl. Kaia.
Before her, the cave had been nothing but stone and shadow. I inhaled damp air and exhaled despair. Every heartbeat was a reminder of the curse gnawing at me from within, a slow rot I could neither fight nor flee. I existed in hunger, in rage, in restless torment with no end.
But now…
Now my chest didn’t burn in the same way.
For the first time in years, the air didn’t taste like rot. The whispers in my mind weren’t deafening. The shadow was still there—always there—but quieter, as though listening, curious.
I leaned back against the cold wall and closed my eyes.
Why?
What did she do to me?
Her words replayed in my mind.
“He’s not the monster you think he is.”
No one had ever said that before. No one had ever looked at me like that—like I was worth saving.
It was dangerous.
Hope was dangerous.
And yet… it stirred in me, wild and reckless.
A question I had not dared to whisper in centuries: What if I could be free?
I forced my breathing slow, shutting out the dripping water and the rattle of chains. I made myself think—not rage.
If there was a way out of this curse, I needed to understand it.
The curse wasn’t just chains. It was a tether, a binding knot between me and the shadow. A bargain made in blood and desperation—one that kept me alive, but twisted me into something unrecognizable.
To break it would mean starving the shadow… or killing it.
And killing it meant killing me.
But… what if there was another way?
What if the shadow could be bound to something else?
Or… someone else.
The thought sickened me. My stomach knotted in revulsion. No. I could not drag another soul into this hell.
Still, my fists clenched—not from fear, but from resolve. If I could weaken the seams of this curse, even just enough, perhaps I could break free before the shadow turned its hunger toward her.
Because for the first time in years…
I wanted to live.
Not just survive.
My heartbeat slowed—not from calm, but from the pressure building in my chest.
Then came the voice.
Smooth. Mocking. Ancient.
“Thinking of leaving me, little prince?”
I clenched my jaw, refusing to answer.
A dry laugh slithered through the air, like dead leaves scraping stone.
“You’ve forgotten… you are mine. You’ve always been mine.”
Shadows surged from the cave walls, coiling around me like smoke. My vision swam. The chains trembled—not from any movement, but from something inside me answering the call.
“Let me remind you,” the voice crooned.
And the world fell away.
Born to Be Nothing
(Flashback)
Images struck me like a flood—sharp, merciless, too vivid to be dreams.
My father’s cold eyes the day I was born.
The twisted legs I could never straighten.
Servants whispering as they thought me too fragile to hear.
The nights I cried out and no one came.
Then—the fall of the kingdom. Fire in the sky. Screaming in the streets. Steel on flesh. Blood soaking the marble floors I had crawled across as a child.
I remembered the choice that was never mine to make. The moment everything collapsed into shadow.
Every humiliation.
Every betrayal.
Every reason I had stopped believing in salvation.
And through it all, the voice wove its poison deeper, filling the cracks with venom:
“You were never a prince. You were never a savior. You were born to be nothing.”
In the darkness, I almost believed it.
Almost.
But then, even as the memory consumed me, her face surfaced in my mind—Kaia’s eyes, fierce and defiant, staring at me as though I was worth saving.
The shadow hissed, recoiling as if her name itself was fire.
I gasped, chest heaving, torn between despair and something dangerous, something the curse had long buried—hope.
And for the first time in centuries, I whispered back into the dark:
“No. I was born to be more.”
- Writer
