I alone am the honoured

prologue

•Leysa Klawe•

Leysa never, from the bottomless pit of her soul, could muster the need and desire to have children. A flaming need for power and control replacing her maternal nature.

She thrived under the ideology of servants bowing to every whim muttered beneath her breath. Her status in life born from the blood of her enemies.

But, the idea of a public-appointed King after her death because she had no heirs leaves a foul taste on her tongue. She could not allow it.

Then she met her soulmate - a loving, passionate, family man.

He wanted children more than acquiring the invisible, omnipotent knowledge of Mother Earth itself. It ate him inside out at the loss of a small, joyous bundle of life in his arms.

So, then there were four.

Four babies born over the course of seven years.

Leysa viewed these vermin with disdain. These things she had birthed were not hers.

However, something bad, something terribly bad happened to their first child. A vale of dark hunger, one that rivalled Leysa's in magnitude, brewed within the infant. Even chaos stalked behind her in fear of falling beneath her touch. Something sinister possessed her soul. Leysa's bones shivered at night whenever she glanced at the crib, waiting for that forbidden, menacing aura to take form of a monster worthy of its oppressing scent.

Fear suckled at Leysa's lungs every waking moment of the day. She only interacted with the thing if necessary - otherwise she had maids and the father of her children to deal with it's needs. Either they ignored the quaking of their legs to dash the other way when they neared the babe or could not feel the lurking, transcendent void of power, of death omitting from its body in thick, dark waves.

Leysa did what she thought was right - what she thought was best to protect herself. She was firm, restricted their minds to only the knowledge of controlling a nation like a King, and building their bodies to withstand a God's might, and affirmed their intelligence to the greatest of Witches, Sphinxes and Vampyres so no room for questioning could be allowed. She diminished their freedom in return for control, for the power of life and death in ones grasp and to never let go.

No matter the tedious days of sweating, shredding and bleeding, the eldest always held that air of superiority over its siblings. It spoke to the ground that seemed to whisper back in strong gusts of wind. Animals fluttered from every and all direction at the sight and scent of its presence.

Despite the boiling prowess writhing underneath the surface, It was compliant. Obedient. Subservient. All the traits a master would want in a slave.

Leysa should've known better - to keep meat dangling in front of a starved lion for so long. Leysa truly did not understand the divinity of the creature searing Its ability under the skin. Not until someone - a selfish, stupid person - prodded the wrong bear.

Fangs as long and curved as a saber-tooth tiger glinted in the dawning sunlight before red splattered the ground, and sounds of crunching and cracking echoed around the bystanders.

Leysa was notified quickly and ice tickled her veins, a higher instinct - woven into the depths of life - tried to stop her. But her people were traumatised by the morbid sight of pure bone and flesh, so she acted; for the sake of her Kingdom's reputation, for the sake of her sanity.

A downright evil spirit had to be the answer to cause such a macabre scene.

Leysa followed everyone's attention and fixed upon themselves the monster she birthed fifteen years ago.

It was unrecognisable.

This was no man. It was no Daemon. It was something otherworldly. A sentient being that thirsted for blood at the sight and smell of it.

Leysa felt personally that her authority was attacked under the roof of her own Kingdom. Fear lived in her limbs and refused to move.

To solve the tyranny the public thought would outbreak after the unhinged efforts of the monster, she took the eldest to the best Vampyres around, whom beheld the canned knowledge of the Earth through their distinguished longevity, to examine the thing.

Nothing.

Nothing was wrong with it. So what takes over its mind as it devours its victims in battle. Leysa was able to conceal these moments from the rest of the Klawe Kingdom, to keep peace and ignorance over them, but after that day, Leysa could only smile.

She had found a way to rid of the beast, to kick It out, strip It of Its bare rights and mortality. The feeling dawned on her that this being would realise that Its mother was not treating her children with the love they deserved from a parent.

The creature was exiled, voted by the public and the King's Table, both in agreement that this thing could not terrorise their people the way It did to that victim.

For the first time, the monster grappled to Its feet once thrown out of the borders, and scraped at the walls, wailing to come back. Little legs kicked and screamed. Tiny hands banged and crashed. Its big, red eyes pooled with tears. It felt anguish, grief, and misery.

It felt human.