. lick your lips, cracked as the parched earth, worn by broken promises, eroded by lies, caked with rivulets of ancient blood. run your tongue over your gritted teeth, calcified maw of a long forgotten beast, bare them with a martyr’s defiance. narrow your eyes, the dark depths of infinity, chips from hades’s obsidian throne, until they know that you are king. (you are king. you are king. you are king. the scholars disagree.) . behind the soft skin and long silky hair, behind the delicate features and sharp planes of your face, a monster lies in wait. a hunger for power, a thirst for blood, a need to swallow the stars whole and let them burn a hole in the pit of your stomach. your mama raised one hell of a boy, a tongue of silver and a heart of rot, innocence burned as tribute to forgotten gods, soul sold for gold in your palms. . the carnage laid before you is a feast, the grating sound of bone on bone and metal on metal, the moans of the fallen and whispered pleas of the dying, they are a symphony to your ears. pair and suffering, chaos and death, you taste and sip as if they were the finest of foods and wines. the smile you wear is almost as deadly as the knife in your hand, and the crown on your head. . what are the gods, to you? mere flimsy fantasies, the words of dying men smoke and mirrors, gold and blood. they are nothing to you, nothing but another body to hold up your throne, another throat to slit, another secret to drag out. the gods exist when they are believed in, they say, and though you pretend not to care, you raid and burn the temples anyways. (just in case.) . what do they call you, lord of the dark? what do they call you, sovereign of nightmares? you are a king of ice and thorns, ruler. a bloody story in the dark, a tale of warning, woe, and wariness. (they call you a legend. a tale of caution. but what to beware? after all, you got all you dreamt of.)
— (your name was eilen, once. it's not anymore)
