He awoke to the sound of chains.
Clink. Clank. Drag.
Dust stung his eyes. Heat clawed at his skin. He blinked slowly, and the world staggered into view—endless wasteland, bleached and cracked, under a sun that seemed too close and too cruel. The air shimmered with mirages, but nothing lived here. Only death dragged its breath.
And people. Slaves.
Dozens—no, hundreds—of them, all around him. Thin, beaten, broken. Shackled in groups of three by thick iron cuffs locked around wrists and ankles. Men, women, children—no one was spared. All of them were hauling massive, jagged stones on their backs. Stones easily a hundred pounds or more.
And he was one of them.
The weight crushed down on his spine like a punishment written into his bones. His hands trembled beneath the strain, calloused and bleeding. Yet to him, it was all sudden—he hadn't lived this life, hadn't grown into it. He had simply... woken up.
"What...?"
His voice was barely a whisper. Dry. Brittle.
He stumbled forward in the sand, chained between two strangers whose hollow eyes didn't even turn to acknowledge him. His body moved on instinct, carrying the stone alongside the others. As if his muscles remembered what his mind did not.
But then came the memories. Faint. Like flickers of flame in fog.
"Life minus one."
"You dared defy the gods."
And then... a throne. A crown. A war.
He had been a king.
His knees nearly buckled.
"No. No, no, no—" he rasped.
As he collapsed to the side, someone yanked his chain forward, dragging him along. His head turned slightly and there it was—burned into his shoulder in black ink:
Nullen10906.
"Nullen…" he whispered. It felt like someone else's name.No last name. No legacy. Just a number. A file in a system of cruelty.
He raised his eyes.
And then he heard the screams.
Not the panicked kind. These were raw, animalistic shrieks of terror that rippled through the crowd. The ground began to tremble. The sun dimmed in shadow.
Something massive was approaching.
Nullen turned, and saw it.
A grotesque, elephantine beast—twenty feet tall and covered in obsidian-like scales—stomped forward, each step making the earth quake. Its tusks were jagged like blades. Its eyes were glowing pits of molten gold, and its breath... fire.
Real, blazing, consuming fire.
It roared, rearing up on its hind legs, and crushed the nearest group of slaves beneath its feet. The sound of snapping bones, shrieking men, and sizzling flesh filled the air. Blood soaked the sands.
It wasn't punishment. It was entertainment.
Slaves who lagged behind or collapsed from the weight of the stones were executed by this monster.
"No—no, gods—!" someone ahead screamed before being engulfed in flame.
Nullen's body moved before his mind could catch up. He tried to run—his legs failing, the chains pulling him down—but fear made him faster than logic. He tripped. Crawled. Staggered again. His feet were bare, scraping against rocks and bones alike.
I was a king... I was a king...
But now he was nothing. No strength, no weapon, no throne. He had only the memory of a crown—and it was slipping away.
The monster roared again. Closer now. Fire licked at the wind.
And then—
He saw it.
A floating ruin.
Far in the distance, through the heat haze and screams, a castle—not whole, but shattered, suspended midair above a jagged cliff. Its stones drifted slightly, as if held together by forgotten magic. Broken banners fluttered in slow motion. He didn't know why—but it called to him.
Something deep in his chest ached.
He crawled toward it, then stumbled to his feet.
"MOVE!" a guard shouted, cracking a whip.
Nullen dodged just enough to let it miss his back, then fell again, but kept moving. The heat from the beast's breath was right behind him now. Another scream. The smell of burnt flesh and ash.
One of the prisoners beside him dropped. The chains pulled Nullen down, but he unclipped the shackle, freeing himself. The effort nearly cost him his life. The beast roared again, spewing fire wide, scorching the sand beside him.
Nullen ran with everything he had.
His legs weren't strong—they were barely healed sticks. His lungs burned with dust and fear. And yet he ran. Toward the floating ruin. Toward the unknown. Because in this hell, even broken stone in the sky seemed closer to salvation than gods or chains.
He reached the edge of the cliff.
The floating castle loomed above, unreachable. But as he stood beneath it, panting, coughing, something shifted. A faint hum in the air. His chest burned—not from running, but from something else. Recognition.
And then—
A whisper.
"You remember, don't you?"
He froze. The voice wasn't real, yet it was everywhere.
"Seven lives. One king. One war. One rebellion. And one punishment."
The memory burned sharper now. He remembered a golden hall. Six thrones. Laughter. His hands bloody. A god with serpent eyes telling him: "You were a fine distraction, Kaelen. But the game's over."
"Kaelen," he whispered. "I… was Kaelen."
"You were," the voice said. "Now you are Nullen. The gods do not forgive amusement turned against them."
Suddenly, the floating stones trembled. A piece of the castle fell and shattered on the ground near him.
The elephant-beast bellowed behind him. It was here.
He turned to face it, eyes wide. The chains still dragged behind him. He could feel the heat, see the drool of fire forming at its fanged mouth.
He had no weapon. No army. Not even shoes.
Just a name. Nullen.
He braced for death.
But something stirred in the floating ruin—an ancient, grinding sound of forgotten gears—and a single piece of stone from the castle lowered like a platform. It stopped before him, glowing faintly.
An invitation.
Nullen didn't hesitate. He leapt onto it.
The beast lunged—but the platform ascended, carrying him into the air just as fire tore across the cliff edge below.
The higher he went, the more the air seemed to clear—not just physically, but spiritually. The castle wasn't just a ruin—it was something he couldn't recall.
A memory long buried.
Now it hovered broken, just like him.
As he stepped onto the crumbling floor, dust swirling around his bare feet, he dropped to his knees. The weight of everything pressed on him—his failure, his curse, his last life.
He was not dead. He was not free.
The slave with a king's soul.
Dust curled in the air like ancient breath, disturbed for the first time in lifetimes. Nullen knelt among the rubble, his sigil. Half-erased by time, it still pulsed faintly beneath his fingers, as if remembering him, too.
Wind whispered through the broken archways, carrying distant echoes—laughter, battle cries, the ringing clash of steel. Ghosts of a glory long gone.
He rose slowly, every joint aching, body frail but mind alive. Pillars stood shattered around him, each one telling a story of past grandeur. Vines crept up from the cracks like time's fingers reclaiming what pride had once built. The floating castle groaned, suspended in the ether like a dying star, unsure whether to fall or fight gravity for one more day.
He walked through the ruins, barefoot, until he reached a large hall with a throne at its end—shattered, just like everything else. His throne. His pride. Carved from obsidian and silver once, now a broken skeleton of ambition.
But beside the throne, half-buried in rubble, something glowed.
He crouched and brushed the dust away, revealing a mirror—its glass cracked, the frame scorched, yet still reflecting. Not his current face, not Nullen's pale skin and grey, hollow eyes.
But Kaelen's. Golden-eyed. Crowned. Strong.
He recoiled.
Not out of fear… but out of shame.
"I wasn't supposed to return," he whispered.