What if the emperor's invisible suit wasn't a trick… but a ritual?
Today, we shall explore this... chilling retelling of the classic children's fairytale: The Emporer's New Suit.
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In the heart of a kingdom wrapped in gold and rot, ruled a monarch obsessed with the mirror.
The Emperor was a man who no longer saw people—only reflections. His courtiers were decorations, his subjects invisible unless they applauded. He changed his robes with the sun's passing, had seamstresses executed for a single crooked stitch, and once boiled a tailor alive in honey for daring to suggest cotton.
"I am not a man," he often declared. "I am a vision."
And so, he demanded garments that transcended mortal cloth. Things woven not from fabric—but from truth. Reverence. Fear.But nothing satisfied him. The silk bored him. The velvet grew dull. The jewels felt like pebbles.
Then, one evening as blood-pink clouds bled across the sky, they arrived.
Two figures, tall and gaunt, entered the palace gates without permission. No one saw them come. No guards stopped them. Their skin shimmered like polished bone; their smiles looked carved. Their voices sounded like blades gliding across wet stone.
"We have what you seek," they said, bowing so low their spines cracked.
"We sew not with thread—but soul."
The Emperor's eyes lit like torches. He dismissed his staff. Gave the strangers the palace's tallest tower. No one questioned it—though screams began to echo from the tower each night, followed by the smell of iron and cooked fat.
They requested strange things.
Teeth. Hair. Eyes—only from children.
At first, the Emperor hesitated. But vanity is a deeper hunger than guilt. So he complied.
"Bring me those unworthy of beauty," he commanded. "They'll make my new splendor."
And so, the palace became a slaughterhouse.
Children were taken in carts painted gold. Their parents cried to deaf guards. The tower grew slick with blood. But the Emperor smiled—he dreamed of his final form. He saw it in nightmares: himself, wrapped in garments no mortal could comprehend. He called it: "The Garment of Ascension."
The tailors, who never slept, worked until their fingers no longer had skin. They sewed with strands of hair soaked in formaldehyde, with sinew pulled from the living, with bones ground to dust for dye. And when their materials thrashed too loudly, they cut out the mouths.
The Emperor was never allowed to see the suit. "It must only touch you when you are ready," they hissed. "It must bind with your truth."
Then came the ceremony.
The ballroom was silent. Nobles packed the space, trembling in brocade and rouge. The scent of incense—thick and cloying—masked the reek of charred meat.
The tailors emerged, dragging an invisible weight behind them. There was no fabric. No cloth. Only air.
And they said:
"This is a suit woven from purity.The impure shall see nothing.The stupid shall think it does not exist.Only the worthy may wear it."
The Emperor stood, shaking with joy. He stripped bare.When he stepped into the nothingness, something stepped back.
The suit fused to his body.
At first, he wept from ecstasy. He declared he felt "unreal and eternal." But then the seams pierced his flesh. The thread began to burrow.
He screamed.
The audience smiled.
No one dared say they saw nothing.
But behind their eyes, they watched his skin being pulled away, layer by layer, like paper from wet bone. His eyes turned glassy. His tongue blackened. But he still smiled.
He had to.
To say he was naked… to say the suit was not divine… would expose their own "stupidity."
So they clapped.
And clapped.
And clapped.
The Emperor stumbled through the hall, flayed, grinning, his veins pulsing outside his flesh like silver threads. The suit had no end. It became his body. His blood. His breath. It whispered truths only he could hear.
"You are beautiful," it told him.
"You are perfect now."
But something more began to grow inside him.
An emptiness.
The Child
The moment shattered when a small, trembling voice piped up:
"He's not wearing anything."
A boy. Just a child, dragged in with the others to witness the splendor. His voice trembled, not with mockery—but with terror.
The Emperor froze.
His eyes turned. But they were not eyes anymore. Only sockets that bled softly.
And then the child screamed.
A scream so sharp it cracked mirrors.
He doubled over as his mouth stretched open—**too wide, too fast—**ripping the skin at his cheeks. His spine twisted. Something inside him snapped. He collapsed, twitching, eyes rolled back. His soul unraveled like yarn—sucked into the garment still pulsing on the Emperor's body.
The courtiers screamed now. Some tried to flee—but the doors had vanished.
The tailors were gone.
In their place: two piles of empty skin, neatly folded beside the golden throne.
Aftermath
The Emperor walks the city now.
Naked, skinless, dripping with a crimson sheen. Still smiling.
He does not speak.
He simply stares, and those he stares at… change. They forget their names. They forget their truths. Their skin begins to itch. Then peel.
He does not need a throne anymore.
He wears the throne. And it grows every day.
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Are you scared yet?