Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

Lechlian stared at his son as if seeing him for the first time.

There was malice, yes.

Venom and contempt, certainly.

But this… this hatred burned too deep, ran too wide. It wasn't just a rebellion of a son against his father, it was the very denial of any link with his family.

He shook his head slowly, confused, voice a low rasp from thirst and chains.

"You hate me, that much is clear. Gods know, I know it too. But your mother?" His brows furrowed. "Has your blood soured so bitter that you must spit it even at her? At something so… gentle?"

Thalien laughed. A short, bitter bark that echoed with mockery and scorn.

"Gentle?" he repeated, incredulous, as if the word itself offended him. "With me?" His laughter grew louder, twisted with something dark. "You really are as blind as I made you, old man."

The laughter died on his lips, and what replaced it was pure, unaltered hate.

His smile faded, and a sneer curled up one side of his face like a scar.

"She loved dear Arnold," Thalien said coldly. "Of course she did. The firstborn. The heir. The golden son. She even managed to treat the middle one with some affection. The spare. He had a place too if some things came to pass."

His voice lowered, quiet and razor-thin.

"But me? She gave me nothing. Not her warmth. Not her kindness. I was a shadow in her halls. An echo she never turned to face when she understood I would not bend to your wishes."

He leaned forward slightly, his tone colder still. "Use that rotting mind of yours. Tell me, can you recall a single time she smiled at me? One time?"

Lechlian's mouth opened, faltered. His thoughts stumbled backward, seeking something, anything.

"She… smiled when you were born," he said hesitantly, clinging to the memory like a plank in a storm that was trembling.

"Probably because I finally stopped scraping her insides on the way out, had I known I would have ripped her guts as I came out of her. " Thalien muttered, his voice a dull flame of resentment.

Lechlian looked at him, truly looked, and felt something sour churn in his stomach.

"I can't understand," he said quietly. "How something like you came from my loins."

"We share that confusion, Father. Every time I look at your pathetic, sagging ruin of a body, I wonder the same. We share nothing, you and I. Not blood. Not soul. Not name. Not even shame."

He took a step closer, each word like a nail driven into the coffin of their legacy.

"When you banished me to that crumbling capital, I felt no fear. Death was certain—we were isolated, betrayed, starved of steel and hope. Your great banner was already ash. Around me, soldiers wept and begged the gods, clinging to life with their trembling hands.

I watched them. I saw their weakness. And felt disgust

I found none of that in me ."

He tapped his chest once.

"Because I was not weak. I clawed my way out. I swam. I rose. I bled, but I survived. I won."

He sneered now, face inches from his father's.

"But you? When death came for you where was your answer?

Not in glory, not in war, but simply in the form of your own cowardice—you whimpered. You begged. You groveled like a dog beneath a butcher's boot. You didn't fight like a prince. You died already, long before these chains wrapped around you."

He straightened, gesturing broadly.

"So yes, I truly do not understand how we share the same blood, the same breath, the same damn bones."

Lechlian said nothing. His eyes lowered to the dirt. The weight of his renewed shame was burning him.

Thalien noticed.

He stepped closer again, like a cat circling and toying with a crippled bird.

"Oh no," he cooed mockingly. "Don't look down now. Look up, Father. Face me."

He crouched beside him, voice like silk laced with thorns.

"Ruler do not bow their heads. Even false ones like you.

Lechlian didn't answer.

Thalien's smirk grew wider, sharp with triumph.

He had broken him, it took years , but he had finally done it.

He was so close.

"There," Thalien said, voice crisp and level, like the closing of a door. "That's the last lesson you'll ever give me will be how a legacy dies. Not in fire, not by the sword, not on the battlefield crowned in glory. But with your back hunched, your eyes lowered, and no one left who dares to lift your name."

He let the words hang in the still air.

"And since I imagine you're curious… let me tell you what becomes of you." He crouched beside his father, looking into those weary, sunken eyes. "You remember the career you wanted for me? A life hidden behind temple walls? A quiet little cage where I could do no harm and bring no shame?"

He smiled. "Rejoice. Because that's where you're going."

Lechlian stirred, it could have gone worse.

"You'll be taken to a remote temple. Far from cities. No courtiers. No letters. No legacy. A place for forgotten things." He leaned in closer. "But don't worry, the prince has made sure your health will be maintained. You'll live a long time in that silence. Enough to contemplate every decision that led you here.

And guess what?I will visit you often and give you my company,"

Lechlian said nothing. Could say nothing. A pit opened in his chest where anger used to live.

"And since this is, likely, the last time we'll meet for a unfortunately long time …" Thalien's voice dropped, suddenly soft. "I brought you a gift."

From his satchel, he pulled a long, narrow object wrapped in cloth. With deliberate care, he unwrapped it, revealing a strange, slightly misshapen flute.

Its surface was uneven, the mouthpiece crudely carved, and the body pale and ridged with small grooves.

He raised it to his lips and blew.

A thin, wailing note cut through the air, haunting and cracked—like the cry of something dying slowly.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Thalien said, smirking.

Lechlian scoffed. "It's as wretched as you."

"Fitting, then," Thalien said smoothly. "I made it myself."

He turned the flute in his hands, letting the firelight catch on the grain of its surface.

"Want to know what it's made of?" he asked.

Lechlian didn't respond.

Thalien's answer reached him all the same. "It's made from the bones of that stag I gave you.The one you refused"

He held the flute closer, reverently. "Its leg bones. Hollowed and shaped. Even the mouthpiece—it's from a sliver of antler, polished with my own hands."

Lechlian looked down, his eyes shadowed with something that might have been shame.

"Strange, isn't it?" Thalien said. "You threw that gift away. But it became the instrument of your farewell, from the very stag that bounded us so."

He blew another note—this one shorter, sharper. Almost a laugh or a shriek.

Lechlian blinked slowly, as if trying to catch up to something lost years ago. His voice was hoarse, dry with disuse and dust.

"What stag?"

Thalien froze.

The silence between them stretched, taut like a drawn bow.

Lechlian looked up at him, genuine confusion carved across his tired features. "I don't remember any stag. What the fuck are you talking about? Are you mad or delusional? You never went further from our garden."

Thalien's face went blank for a moment.

His brow furrowed, his nostrils flared. And then the calm shattered.

"What stag?!" he bellowed. "What stag?!"

His voice echoed against the canvas walls, too loud, too raw.

"You don't remember the stag I spent three days hunting? The one I dragged, bleeding, over mud and stone and roots to bring to you?"

He took a step forward, fury tightening every word.

" I was skin and bone and frostbitten fingers. I stood there holding the reins of that animal, thinking you'd finally look at me like a son.

You didn't even look at horns of the beast. You asked me why I wasn't with the scribes."

He laughed bitterly, voice cracking. "What stag," he repeated, voice shrill and venomous. "Damn all of the gods! You don't remember the reason you fell."

Without thinking, he lifted the bone flute and smashed it against Lechlian's forehead.

The brittle instrument cracked with a sharp snap. Lechlian cried out, his head snapping back as blood dripped from the gash above his brow. A jagged splinter clattered to the ground.

Thalien stared at the broken piece in his hand, his breathing heavy, his face pale.

"Damn it," he muttered as he swiped his hand across his father's brow. "You are supposed to stand before the court tomorrow."

Panic flickered through him, then rage overtook it again. He stepped forward and struck Lechlian in the stomach with his boot, hard.

"You don't get to forget!" he snarled.

Another blow, this time to the ribs.

"You don't get to erase the one moment I tried to earn your pride! When even your eldests failed to catch it. "

Another kick. And another.

"You don't get to spend your pathetic life not knowing why you were torn down, why you're tied like a beast in a tent while I walk free!''

Lechlian wheezed, coughing, still unable to process the fury beating down on him. Through the blur of pain and blood, he stared at his son.

He had never seen him like this. Never imagined he could erupt with such violence.

Not this boy who once followed the shadows of his brothers, quiet and strange, but always smiling.

Now there was no smile. No joy. Just seething hurt, sharpened by years of silence.

Thalien knelt again, grabbing a fistful of Lechlian's tunic. His face was inches away, trembling.

Thalien held his father by the collar, panting, his chest heaving with the fury he had unleashed, but the fire that had burned so hot within him began to flicker, replaced by a cold emptiness.

Because even now… even after everything…

Lechlian still looked confused.

There was no recognition in his bloodshot eyes. No flicker of memory. Not even a shadow of guilt.

He truly didn't remember.

Thalien stared at him, at the man whose shadow he'd lived under, and felt something in his chest collapse in on itself.

As if his life's work , proved meaningless.

Slowly, his hand uncurled from the bloodied tunic.

He let go.

Lechlian slumped forward, breathing ragged, barely conscious.

Thalien stood frozen for a long moment, trembling not with rage now, but with something worse: hollowness.

He looked down at the shattered remains of the flute, the warped fragments of what was meant to be his victory—his proof, his offering, his triumph. A symbol of what he had endured, what he had won, what he had conquered.

And yet now… it was just splintered bone on cold ground.

With a grunt of disgust, he flung the largest shard away. It hit the canvas wall with a soft thud and fell to the dirt like something forgotten.

He turned and walked toward the tent's exit, his steps uneven, like a man who had just fought a war and wasn't sure if he'd won.

This was supposed to be his moment.

The moment his father would finally see him, know him. The moment Thalien would be vindicated. Elevated. Satisfied.

So why did he feel like something inside him had caved in?

As he passed through the flap of the tent into the cool night air, he didn't look back.

The air outside was clean, the stars sharp and bright above, but Thalien failed to feel anything.

He had built a pyre in his heart to burn down the man who had once denied him love, pride, memory, and meaning.

And in the end… all it gave was smoke.