Tale Spinster

EP 4: THE ALPHA KING OF BLACK ROSE

Kieran

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I can't remember when my life started to go down. But it did, and it kept falling down to a bottomless pit.

Years ago, there was an outbreak in our kingdom. The disease only affected werewolves and had similarities with symptoms caused by wolfsbane. But we quickly realized that it was not wolfsbane that caused it.

It started with one slave boy, who just returned from Malatai. He had very high fevers for days, weight loss, night sweats, and rashes. Those were the good symptoms.

A few months after, he started having trouble breathing, got delirious, had the inability to transform, and had intermittent severe headaches. Those were the bad symptoms.

The worst symptom was when he suddenly transformed out of the blue after two years of not being able to transform and started attacking other villagers rabidly.

We had to shut him down.

But we soon realized that the disease was infectious. More people in the same village had the symptoms. Only a few had the worst symptom and unfortunately, those few had to be shut down too.

We burned the bodies of those few and hoped the infection stopped.

It didn't.

Even people with no symptoms whatsoever can carry dormant pathogens in their bodies and infect people from other villagers.

In a year, the disease had spread all over our kingdom like a wildfire.

The pathogen was a small bacterium with similar proteins as wolfsbane. Once investigated, we found that the origin was a mining cave in Malatai.

After the discovery of the bacteria, we tried for two years to eradicate the disease. And we almost succeeded. We managed to prevent the worst symptom from appearing at all, and we were working to establish better health as our alchemists were finally able to propose a vaccine.

Our economy had floored, our human resources decreased because preventing the worst symptom from appearing unfortunately meant we had to kill a few percentages of our population. And we were in a state of vulnerability because almost half of our population couldn't transform. Which also means that our security was in danger.

But we had hope for the vaccine. We had hoped that once we started the vaccination, the disease would settle and our kingdom would finally be on the right path to recovery.

It had been a rough battle for years. Physically and mentally.

We were so ready to end the suffering.

But that nightmare of a day happened. 

King Judas of Malatai marched to our vulnerable kingdom and conquered us easily during our vulnerable state. He revealed right then that the disease was his device to weaken us.

Then he killed my parents and my big brother right in front of me. He made my people as Malatai's slaves and he tortured me, my sister, and my fellow knights beyond imagination.

I endured the horror for three years. There were days when I wanted to just follow in my parents' footsteps. To end the endless darkness.

But I endured.

For three full years.

I endured all the shame and the torture. I know King Judas tried to break me, yet I persevered. All the scars from when he tried to burn my body, from the endless whippings, from being Judas's punching bag; I endured them all. It had come to a point where I could numb myself whenever it happened.