#4

He had no human name. He was known by another name. A name no one dared to speak. He owned an ability to shatter one's soul into ruins, chaos brewing underneath his skin. His skin was equally pale and bright, as if he leeched the light from the cursed moon itself. The horrid taste of war had not escaped his lips, battles were stitched across his veins. His voice were forged from rough steel, whose vowels were the sounds of metal clashing one another and the every words he had formed were sharpened with an accent of blood.

A beast within a beast. He was born a God and life twisted him into a nightmare, a reason you lock your doors at night and check dark rooms twice. Everywhere he went, destruction followed close— a shadow who never missed a footstep he had taken.

Then he met her.

"Touch me and you will burn."

She wore a silk dress and her eyes reflected the golden hour prism light prickled above a distant sea. But the glint in her golden eyes reminded one of a shadow hidden under a rotten flower. Could anything be beautiful and terrifying at the same time? She was something between day and night. And she was something between heaven and hell.

Oh, she did touch him then. Because in her world, there was nothing more honorable than the touch of Death. She then realized he was only a man who wanted to be touched yet his skin was lethal— he bathed himself in pinpricks and hated everyone who refused to graze him. Those who were heartless once shared their love to the world too much and too hard.

Later that night she heard the soothing song of the moon by his side. They pulled ocean tides to shore and cover their souls, defying time and reality to taste every moments Fate had stolen from them. Stars gathered upon their beings to watch how two galaxies exploding and colliding into each other, they were the witness of their union. She wished to carve those moments in the crevices of her memory and revisit them forever.

She forgot he was the monster all along.

Two vivid colors of paints smeared together with a delicate brush on the plain canvas. And for the first time in his life, he had longed for one's presence. He looked at her as if he had a missing piece in his soul and finally found the piece after spending centuries of search. She lit a secret fire that was long gone inside his heart, a kind of flame feared by the gods and its sparkles could conquer the dying sun itself.

"Give me your queen or you will watch your kingdom fall," a cunning man said to him, he did not realize the price he would pay if he stared too long at his eyes.

There was once a king. A king who burned down his own kingdom.

For you, my love, I will kneel.

For you, everything.

Anything.

Always.