Kiono POV
The afternoon sun hit the outside the lodge, throwing our shadows long across the path. Astelion walked a step ahead of me, her silent presence the only anchor keeping my mind from slipping entirely into the dark. Behind us, the faint, pathetic sound of Kris's sobbing finally died out, swallowed by the distance.
I didn't look back. I couldn't.
The past was a tumor I had spent years trying to forget, but it always keep coming back.
I still remembered the day the silence in our house truly began. I was only five years old when the great war between us and the dragons ended. My father, Cion, had returned to the palace in Diko the realm of light and dark one late evening, he hadn't returned alone.
Clutching a boy covered in blood. A five-year-old child with skin too pale, hair like fresh snow, and eyes that were not like any I have seen that held the absolute power, Castel.
My father had stood in the grand hall, his voice echoing "he is one of us, although he carries spirit blood he also carries the Astroling blood," Cion had declared. "He will become the King of all. "
It was a beautiful, lie. In reality, all Cion ever wanted was to wrap his hands around the child's throat and leach off his impossible, god-like power. My father didn't see a boy, he saw a weapon he could manipulate from the shadows.
The moment Castel came into the palace, the gravity of the palace shifted entirely. And I became completely invisible.
Before the King's arrival, I had a place, I had a voice but within weeks, I was erased. I became a ghost to my parents, an afterthought to my younger twin sisters, and a complete stranger to my own twin sister, Eina. My assigned spot at the grand dinner table the seat right at my father's right hand was given to Castel so Cion could watch over his prize.
I spent my childhood evenings sitting alone on the cold stone floor of my bedroom, or huddled in the dim kitchens eating scraps with the low-tier servants who actually bothered to look me in the eye.
But invisibility didn't protect me from my father's frustration. When Castel's power was out of control, or when Cion's political schemes faltered, he would find me in the corridors. He would beat me until my ribs cracked against the stone, his heavy fists coming down without mercy. Useless. A pathetic failure. A waste of space.
And my mother? She would simply stand by the doorway, her eyes entirely empty. She did nothing. She never once stepped between us.
Two years later, the front doors opened again. Cion returned with another child trapped in his grip a tiny, shivering girl with white hair streaked with pitch-black. He called her Kris.
"She is Castel's little sister," Cion announced to the silent room. "Separated during the war."
Castel had looked at her once, his seven-year-old face already hardening into the mask of a tyrant. He didn't believe it for a single second. From that day forward, he refused to call her his sister, referring to her only as his cousin. Yet, there was no denying the terrifying truth that ran through their veins and the shock-white hair.
But Kris's powers weren't vast like Castel's. She couldn't tear the sky apart, she could only manipulate a single element, her control cracking under the slightest pressure. And because she wasn't a perfect weapon, my father promptly ignored her, too.
We became ghosts together. In a house full of monsters, Kris was the only person who actually saw me. She spoke to me when the rooms went dark, sharing her food, sitting with me on the cold kitchen stairs while the rest of our family fawned over the young King.
By the time my teenage years arrived, the self-loathing had settled deep into my bone. Every time I passed a mirror, I felt a violent disgust looking back at those dark green eyes. They were my father's eyes. The same shade Cion wore when he looked down at me with contempt. I hated them. I hated my blood.
So, I used my telekinesis to change them. It wasn't a physical manipulation of the iris just a continuous, seamless illusion of the mind projected outward, forcing everyone who looked at me to see a sharp, piercing blue instead.
Then, the world shattered. Castel, entirely consumed by a sudden, surge of his raw power, accidentally killed his girlfriend while they were having a disagreement. The palace panicked. The King was unraveling, his magic threatening to level the mountain.
I was the only one who didn't run away. I stepped into his storm. I used my telekinesis not to fight him, but to wrap around his neural pathways, acting as his control, his anchor.
That was the exact moment my family finally noticed I existed. Suddenly, I was no longer the useless failure, I was the Captain of the Royal Guard. I was the King's keeper.
Castel and I grew closer in the years that followed, bound by the mutual weight of his crown. And through him, I finally realized the full scope of our childhood. My father's sickening cruelty hadn't been reserved just for me, Cion had terrorized every single person in that house, systematic and brutal, including Castel himself.
Through all the blood and the shifting political alignments, Kris had remained my light. She stayed positive, always smiling, always finding a way to laugh in the dim corridors of the palace. She was the one good thing I had left from the dark.
And then, Castel announced our engagement.
I didn't refuse him. I looked at Kris, and I told myself it would be enough. But I didn't love her not in the way she wanted.
The moment the announcement left the King's lips, Kris changed. The easygoing girl vanished, replaced by an suffocating, desperate attachment. She was always there, clutching at my uniform, demanding promises I didn't know how to give. I needed space to breathe. I suffocated under her gaze, so I naturally distanced myself, retreating for weeks on end. I tried, desperately, to find it within myself to love her. I tried to force my heart to match her pace.
But I couldn't.
That godforsaken night, I finally walked back to the palace. I had a bundle of blue silver-leaf flowers in my hand. I had made up my mind to go to her room, to sit her down, and to be entirely honest. I was going to tell her that I couldn't love her the way she deserved, but that I was willing to spend the rest of my life trying to make her happy anyway.
I made it to the third balcony of the west wing. The corridor was silent, save for the whistling wind outside.
Then, I heard it.
A loud, wet moan cut through the quiet. I stopped dead in my tracks, my boots freezing against the carpet. As I walked closer to her room door, the sounds only grew louder, sharper, more frantic.
My fingers felt numb as I reached out, turning the brass knob and pushing the heavy wood open, inch by slow inch.
The scene inside slammed into my vision like a physical blow to the sternum.
There, in the center of the silk sheets, was my fiancée. Kris was on her knees, her back arched, her face buried entirely between my twin sister Eina's thighs deep in her pussy. Eina was laid flat back against the pillows, her fingers gripping the sheets so hard the fabric was tearing, her throat bared to the ceiling as another loud, breathless moan tore from her lips.
The flowers slipped from my fingers, hitting the floor with a soft, pathetic rustle.
The sound shattered the room. Eina's eyes snapped open. Before I could even process the image, my sister sat up with a violent jerk, her hand flying down to wrap tightly around Kris's white hair, ruthlessly yanking her head up from between her legs.
Kris looked up at me, her chest heaving, her eyes wide with a wild, cornered shock.
Her face was entirely covered in my sister's cum and body fluids.
A wave of pure, disgust hit my throat so hard I tasted bile. The room felt like it was spinning, the air turning into liquid lead. It wasn't just the betrayal, it was the sheer reality of it. My fiancée. My own sister. The two people who had shared the dark with me, tangled together in the wet, frantic heat of a bed. It was sick.
I didn't say a single word. I turned on my heel and walked out, my strides long, blind, and furious.
"Kiono! Stop! Please, Kiono, stop!"
Eina's voice shrieked down the hall behind me. I heard the slap of bare feet against the stone. Before I could reach the stairwell, she lunged forward, her hand wrapping tightly around my wrist.
I ripped my arm away with a violent twist of my body . "What the fuck was that?"
"I can explain!" she scrambled, her face pale as death as she desperately tried to hold the edges of her silk robe together over her bare chest.
"Can you?" stepping into her space, my blue illusion eyes flashed green boring into hers. "Can you explain that, Eina?"
"We were just... we were so confused, and lonely, and it was just a moment of weakness!" she wept, her voice trembling as she reached for me again.
Suddenly, Kris came sprinting down the hallway, her breathing ragged, her white hair completely disheveled around her face. She stopped dead in front of me, her hands trembling against her thighs. "Please, Kiono. Let me explain. Just listen to me."
"Don't bother," I said, my voice dropping into a dangerous, icy flatline. "My sister just did. If this is the extent of what you do because you're lonely... then we can't work. We are entirely done."
"There's more to it than that!" Kris cried out, stepping closer.
I let out a harsh, mocking laugh that felt like glass tearing through my lungs. "Oh, so there's more? There are more reasons why you decided to fuck my sister? Please, Kris, do tell. I'm all ears."
Eina shot her hand out, firmly grabbing Kris's wrist, a silent, desperate signal to make her stop talking.
The contact broke whatever strength Kris had left. She dropped heavily to her knees right there on the hard stone floor, her fingers clutching at the hem of my trousers as she sobbed, begging through her tears. "Please, Kiono... forgive me. Please don't leave me."
Eina cut in, her voice dropping into a sharp, terrified whisper as she looked around the empty corridor. "You can't tell anyone about this, Kiono. Especially not Father or Castel. If the King finds out—"
I let out another loud, laugh, the absolute absurdity of their terror making my blood boil.
"Fuck you both," I whispered. "Better yet... go ahead and keep fucking each other."
I turned my back on them and walked away, their muffled sobs fading into the stone behind me.
I didn't hesitate. I marched straight to Castel and kicked open the heavy doors to Castel's private room. The King sat up in his bed, his white hair messy, his brow already furrowed in deep irritation at the intrusion.
Before he could even open his mouth to demand an explanation, I stood at the foot of his bed and delivered the verdict.
"I cannot marry Kris," I said, my voice cutting through the dark room like an iron wedge.
Castel shifted, his narrow eyes tracking the tension in my jaw. He parted his lips to ask why, his power shifting the curtains.
"I don't love her," I cut in before the question could leave his throat. "We are simply not a match that will ever work. Find someone else to marry her."
Without waiting for his response, without giving him a single second to command me otherwise, I turned and walked out of his room, slamming the heavy doors shut behind me.
As the months dragged on, I watched the world from a distance. I became a ghost within the palace walls, completely severing any thread that tied me to the name Cion. I moved my belongings out that very week, completely cutting off my parents, my sisters, and Kris.
I hardened. I turned my mind into a fortress, locking the memories behind iron bars so deep I swore they would never see the light of day again.
Until today.