Coda - One

Remaining still where he knelt, Leed waited for the king to speak.

The hall was empty except for the two men, cold air echoing against the walls endlessly. Leed’s breathing was slow and icy, spikes stabbing into his throat whenever he attempted to inhale or exhale.

Finally, the king parted his lips. “With your exclusion from the battle, Knight Eisen,” he said, his blue eyes slightly distorted in a frown. “Ichel have taken victory.”

After processing what had been said to him, Leed lowered his head. “I have nothing to say, your majesty.”

“And your sword have been broken.”

The king’s words brought back the crushing pain back into Leed’s chest, and he could barely stop himself from tearing at it. Where the bond had once been was hollow and bleeding, the everlasting agony roaring as a storm inside him. The pain was what would constantly remind him that he had only two years of life left after the death of his sword.

“Yes, your majesty,” he managed.

“Indeed,” the king said, then was silent for a long time. Leed blinked heavily down at the marble floor, invisible blades stabbing into the back of his eyes. He realized that drops of sweat were rolling down his face, and closed his eyes slowly.

The long while of silence seemed as if it would never break. Yet Leed didn’t feel his knees ache or neck strain. The only thing that was real to him was the fact that his sword had been broken. The bond was ruined.

Leed felt as if blood was piling in his lungs and pouring into his mouth. He shivered in a mix of all emotions that could kill.

After an excruciating length of time, the king quietly told him, “You are now excused to the White Palace.”

“Yes, your majesty,” Leed responded numbly. Even a long time before, he had known that he would hear those words some day, and once had imagined that he would sob or tremble in grief. More so since the White Palace was where the Head Knights with broken swords stayed until they died in two simple, empty years. And in two years a new Head Knight would be born to fill any missing position there was.

He would now be shoved into a dusty corner with the First and Second Knight, whose swords had broken before his.

Leed closed his eyes. No sadness found him.

* * *

As Leed stood in front of the White Palace, his feet couldn’t move. The absence of a familiar weight at his side made him prone to crumbling into ashes in a simple breeze. Without the blade that had been with him for his entire life, he had to wonder if he would be ever able to lift a sword again.

After a moment of forlorn thoughts, he left the black and gray words to die inside his head and ran his eyes over the small palace of white marble blocks. Despite the fact that the palace was only for dying Head Knights, its appearance was like any other palace in Uxoel.

The gates were patterned with gold and other jewels, and there were statues and engravings of winged animals on the sides of the palace. It was not a place for any royal-blooded men to stay, yet Leed immediately come to a conclusion that it was more than enough for a Head Knight who had foolishly lost his bonded sword.

He only took a short moment to glance up at the top of the gates, which had the words, In the Glory of the Families - Iyn—Denzel—Eisen. Raking his eyes over Eisen a few times, Leed waited a moment for himself to feel any sort of emotion. When the attempt seemed to be in vain, he shook his head, beat a fist against his chest that was choking him terribly, and reached out to push the gates open.

The gates were unexpectedly light. Leed took a step forward, then another, afraid to glance back. It seemed as if he would never be able to escape from the palace until he died shortly. The broken pieces of the bond inside his chest only encouraged him more. Even in the very second, the sharp glass blades were stabbing into his heart and his body was drowning with blood.

After closing the gates to seemingly lock himself away from the world, Leed studied the twin set of stairs that spiraled up into the second floor. The center hall was empty, and he could see the bright dust rising from the floor as he walked onto it. The floor rug was also as pale as the marble, feeling like a sea of skeletons. Leed felt as if he was the only living thing in the palace, and as if to prove him, there was a strange ringing of the walls that only calmed him for a short second. Breathing out slowly, he looked up at the ceiling, then back down. A tremble that he had neglected found him, and he clenched his fists.

“Viole,” a voice called. And it was the flatness of the voice that forced Leed to glance up, not the mere presence. There was simply nothing that normally rang in the voice of someone alive to breathe life into it.

The man had black hair dripping past his ashen eyes like tears, and his pale skin was scarred pink. He wore a white tunic with woolen pants that would normally be worn under a suit of armor. Even with him standing atop the stairs and Leed at the bottom, the stark emptiness and dull texture of his gaze was visible. “Viole,” he repeated. “Come out. We have a new knight.”

Leed carefully opened his mouth, for the man on the stairs had a certain air around him that made it feel as if he would throw himself over the railings in any moment. “Knight Denzel,” he spoke at the same moment as the man’s eyes fell into a deeper pit without end and a new figure appeared at the top of the other set of stairs.

“Ilrey, you just woke me up,” the new man growled, carelessly brushing away his long gray hair from his face. His green eyes were bright as they briefly flickered to meet Leed’s. “And welcome to the prison, Knight Eisen,” the man snapped.

For a moment, Leed froze, although he knew that he had to speak. The green eyes were too similar to those that Linjay Visis owned, dripping with blood and other gores on a field of war. Then he managed to say, “Thank you, Knight Iyn.”

The First Knight —Viole Iyn— nodded carelessly and leaned against the railings of the second floor. His narrowed eyes were those of a wild animal’s, constantly living in war even when he was standing in the White Palace.

Silently, Ilrey walked closer to Viole, and murmured something. Viole glanced down at Leed, where he stood still, unsure of what he was expected to do. A smile twisted at the edges of Viole’s lips, and he put both of his elbows on the railings, swaying dangerously.

“How did you do it?” he asked softly. Behind him, Ilrey cast an empty glance at Leed.

“How did I do… what?” Leed replied sharply, although deep inside him, there was a wrenching feeling that told him the answer before Viole said it himself. Instantly, he felt his insides twist, and the feeling of the missing bond crawled back out from where Leed had thought it faded only a second ago.

“Your sword,” Viole whispered, smiling sweetly, cruelly, with all the grace of a knight bringing his blade down into his opponent’s neck. “How did you break your cursed sword, Knight Eisen?”

Leed opened and closed his mouth. He felt as if he was being pressed down by a gigantic hand into the skeleton rugs on the floor. His hands shivered—with what emotion, he didn’t know.

Instead, he could only say, “Linjay Visis,” and that was the death of his throat.

Viole beamed, and took his hands away from the railings, where they had been gripping the silver-coated iron and crumpling it like paper. “Linjay Visis, yes, that is someone you should kill,” he said, spun away, and stormed to the direction of where he had come from. Leed, although unsure of whether or not it was simple imagination, heard the marble crack under Viole’s feet.

Ilrey looked down on Leed from the second floor. “Your bedroom is labeled Eisen, Knight Eisen,” he said flatly, then headed back toward where Viole had went.

Unable to think clearly, Leed traveled up the stairs, feeling that the white would drive him insane in just a short number of days. He managed to glance around to his left and right, yet all he could see was the same white, faint sunlight and dust glinting off of the marble blocks.

When he arrived at the second floor, he realized that his legs were trembling with effort. A silent wave of grief-stricken shock washed over him, flowing into his lungs and strangling him with a soft snicker. He set his hands against his thighs and attempted to press down on them, yet the shivering only became more violent. The world slowly crashed down around him, the pieces digging into his back, sharp shards of what he had lived for melting into a pond that emptied out of him by each second that passed.

Taking a deep breath, he straightened up. For a moment, he gazed at where Ilrey had told him his room would be. Then he frowned and headed the opposite way, limping slightly as he did.

He walked around the palace silently with no interest that found him. As he soon found out, the second floor was nearly empty, except for two empty bedrooms and another that opened up to a garden with withering plants. There was a smell of gray death lingering in the room, the closed windows doing nothing to smother the scent. After staring for a long while at the dead plants and the gray, cracked soil underneath them, Leed turned and headed downstairs again.