Chapter 16: 16 Kairan loneliness

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16: Kairan loneliness 16: Kairan loneliness While Misael nursed his hatred, Kairan found himself facing a different, more insidious enemy: loneliness.

The demonic kingdom was slowly crumbling, and under its weight, the young prince’s soul seemed to break.

Every breath weighed like a mountain, every heartbeat like a boulder.

His mission, once clear and bright in his mind, was turning into a fog of uncertainty.

Misael was no longer the person he had known.

The boy who once followed him everywhere, seeking his gaze, had become the embodiment of his downfall.

Blinded by his thirst for power, he was gradually abandoning everything that had united them, and his every action was now a direct challenge.

Kairan knew that his task was not only to maintain the balance between light and darkness.

It was also, and perhaps above all, to save Misael from himself.

But the more time passed, the more a terrible truth dawned on him: the war he had to fight wasn’t about the kingdom.

It was about his own flesh, his own blood.

Meanwhile, loneliness assailed him in every corner of the Tower.

His position as prince brought him no comfort; on the contrary, it isolated him further.

Lilith, his mother, had weakened after giving birth, consumed by an illness no one could explain, and Kairan went to her every day, sitting by her bed and speaking to her in a low voice.

Misael, on the other hand, avoided her: he couldn’t bear to see his mother so fragile, because her fragility reminded him of his own.

Meanwhile, the politics of the Dark Tower were descending into chaos.

Zaroth and Lilith had built their dominion on a precarious balance, a web of alliances and intrigues that, despite everything, had held the kingdom together for years.

But that network was crumbling, not only because of their children’s ambitions, but also because of a physical weakness that had afflicted both rulers since the twins’ birth; a weakness whose cause no one knew.

Or rather, no one knew it, except one.

But he hadn’t spoken of it aloud yet.

Misael, now convinced that he was the only one destined to rule, was attracting the most powerful demons with promises of domination and bloodshed.

His rise was increasingly undermining the very foundations of the kingdom.

Kairan tried to protect her mother and maintain order, but every attempt seemed to fail: her voice, once feared and respected, was ignored, and her desire for balance was mistaken for ineptitude.

Lilith understood the danger better than anyone, yet she felt powerless to stop her son: her mind torn between love for Misael and terror of what he was becoming.

Alliances were dissolving like sand through his fingers, and Kairan, despite every effort to avoid it, knew one thing with absolute certainty.

A war was about to break out in which family ties would become the sharpest weapons.

And he, who had not chosen that war, had already become its target.

The Emperor’s throne was the heart of the Demon Realm: a place that had withstood the wrath of the gods and the fury of the centuries.

There, time had never had power, and immutability was law.

Yet, something was changing.

The air, saturated with ancient dark energies, trembled, as if an unknown will itself were rewriting the foundations of reality.

The black marble columns, sculpted with fiery red cracks, seemed to vibrate, and the black flames that burned in the hall, fueled by the countless souls sacrificed over the millennia, began to die.

In the absolute silence, the Emperor’s throne creaked for the first time in ten thousand years.

Zaroth stood still.

His black armor seemed an extension of his very being, an indestructible shell forged in the fires of the first hell.

His eyes, two incandescent abysses, stared into nothingness, displaying a façade of imperturbability.

Deep in his dark heart, something was consuming him.

A doubt, like a stubborn woodworm.

For eight years, exactly eight years, he had felt his dominion crumble under the weight of an invisible shadow.

It was not a rebellion or a war waged against him.

It was not an enemy he could confront and annihilate.

It was something worse: a void, a force that did not challenge him, but consumed him, stealing his power drop by drop, without his being able to resist.

At first, she’d thought it was a whim of the cosmos, a fluctuation in the energies of the Abyss, but the signs had accumulated, impossible to ignore.

Her spells, once absolute, were losing strength; her words, which had shaken entire worlds, were dying in the air like embers.

Her power wasn’t fading; it was being absorbed.

Summon Prince Kairan,” he ordered.

The gates of the Throne Room did not open.

They surrendered.

The two guards bowed and pushed open the black door, decorated with thorns and metal roses, and Kairan entered the room, the boy born in darkness, yet capable of emanating infinite light.

As he advanced through the room, he seemed older than the stars.

There was no announcement, no introduction: the universe itself recognized him and trembled.

His black hair fell over his face, leaving only his blue eyes, lined with petals, exposed.

Every guard in the room fell to their knees, not by choice, but because they could not help it.

Gravity, time, space itself seemed to converge around that child so young yet so ancient, bowing like subjects before their sovereign.

Kairan did not even glance at them: for him, they did not exist, as nothing else did.

He stopped before the throne, and Zaroth, for the first time in his entire existence, felt uncomfortable in the presence of another being.

“I have summoned you,” the Emperor said, his voice still a roar capable of shaking worlds, “because I need answers.” Kairan did not move.

“Answers,” he repeated calmly.

“Does the great Demon Emperor, and father, seek answers from me?” There was no irony in those words, no challenge, only an absolute awareness, infinitely more disturbing than any provocation.

Zaroth stared at his son for a long moment, then turned to the guards, still prostrate on the ground.

“Leave us alone, and let no one dare interfere.

Anyone who enters that door will die.”