🌀 Year 50: The Sons 🌀

Two brothers. Two truths. One father falling apart.

The Older Son

Kael was twenty-five when he finally admitted what he'd known for years.

His father was not well.

Not "tired from ruling" or "stressed from council meetings" like Mother claimed. Not "distracted by important matters" like Admiral Angelo insisted. Not "perfectly fine" like his younger brother Theron kept saying.

Sick. Corrupted. Consuming himself from the inside out.

Kael had grown up watching Xanther's eyes change from warm brown to burning gold. Watched the bracelet fuse to his wrist. Watched the Obsidian Heart embed itself in his chest when Kael was fifteen, his father returning from some desert quest more monster than man.

Theron called it "power." Kael called it poison.

The Confrontation

It happened in the throne room. Fifty years to the day since Xanther had returned from the Whispering Woods. An anniversary no one acknowledged but everyone remembered.

Kael had asked to speak privately. Theron insisted on being present. "Anything you say to Father, you can say to me."

Fine.

"When's the last time you ate food that Diaglo didn't prepare?" Kael asked his father directly.

Xanther blinked. His golden eyes flickered, obsidian flecks swirling. "What?"

"Food. Diaglo brings you every meal. Has for fifty years. When's the last time someone else served you?"

Silence.

Theron laughed. "Are you seriously suggesting our father's own advisor is—"

"Poisoning him? Yes." Kael turned to Theron. "For fifty years. Every single day. And you're too busy worshipping the power to see Father is dying."

The Denial

"I'm not dying," Xanther said quietly. Too quietly. His voice had changed over the decades. Echoing now, layered with chaos magic. "I'm evolving."

Kael felt his heart break. There it was. The thing he'd feared most. His father believed it. Actually believed the corruption was transformation instead of destruction.

"Evolving into what?" Kael asked. "You can barely go an hour without channeling chaos magic. Your eyes glow in the dark. That thing in your chest—" He gestured at the Obsidian Heart visible through Xanther's robes. "That's not natural. That's not healthy. That's—"

"Power," Theron interrupted. "Something you're too weak to understand."

The Choice

Relana entered the throne room, drawn by the raised voices. She looked at her husband. At her sons. At the fracture tearing their family apart.

"Kael," she said softly. "Your father knows what he's doing."

"Does he?" Kael turned to her. "Or does Diaglo know what he's doing? Mother, when's the last time Father made a decision without consulting him first?"

Relana's expression hardened. "Diaglo serves this family. He has for decades."

"He serves someone," Kael agreed. "I don't think it's us."

Xanther stood. The movement sent ripples of chaos energy through the air. Reality bent around him, the throne room's geometry briefly distorting before snapping back.

"Enough," he said. Not a shout. Worse. A command backed by power that made Kael's bones ache. "You will not question Diaglo. You will not spread conspiracy theories about poison. You will accept that your King knows what is necessary for Nexus."

The Aftermath

Kael packed that night. Took what little he could carry. Left a note for his mother he knew she wouldn't read.

As he passed through the Royal Gardens—still dead from that incident forty years ago when Father had nearly killed a child—Angelo stopped him.

"You saw it too," the Admiral said quietly. Not a question.

"How long have you known?" Kael asked.

"Since the hallway. Fifty years ago. I carried the poison myself and never knew."

They stood in silence among the twisted oak trees and blackened rose bushes.

"I can't leave," Angelo finally said. "My oath binds me to the throne."

"I know," Kael replied. "But I never swore an oath."