Page 2 of Essence of the Throne

I send out desperate prayers to the Angel, begging for help, for salvation, foranything. But no divine intervention comes. Just more pain as they finish their preparations.

My head lolls as they finalize adjustments to the tubes connected to my chest. Through blurry vision, I watch light flow through clear piping toward me. My eyes widen past anything natural, the sight sending fresh waves of terror coursing through my body.

“Begin essence transfer.” The king’s voice sounds eager, almost giddy with anticipation.

The light reaches the device embedded in my chest, and immediately I know something is wrong. So devastating and wrong. Heat spreads from the entry point, but it’s not natural warmth—it’s like molten metal being poured into my veins.

I try to scream, but my voice is gone. Whether from the previous screaming or something else, I don’t know. All I can do is watch, helpless, as more of the bizzare, thick substance pumps into me.

The heat intensifies, transforming into something that feels alive. It writhes under my skin like thousands of snakes trying to burrow deeper into my flesh. My muscles spasm violently as foreign things flood my system.

“Remarkable,” someone says. “His body isn’t immediately rejecting the essence.”

Essence. They’re giving me essence from the chained body.

They sound pleased, but I'm unable to focus on their words. The invading power iswrong. It doesn’t belong in me. My own essence rises up to fight against it, creating a war inside my body that threatens to tear me apart.

Colors start bleeding into my vision—colors that shouldn’t exist. They swirl and pulse with each erratic beat of my heart, creating patterns that hurt to look at. I squeeze my eyes shut, but the colors are there too, more vibrant against the darkness.

“Heart rate increasing,” an emotionless voice announces. “Blood pressure rising at a steady pace.”

The wriggling under my skin becomes more aggressive. It feels like the foreign essence is desperate to consume me from the inside out, replacing everything that makes me,mewith something else. Something twisted and wrong.

My back arches off the table as a particularly violent surge rips through me. A scream not my own escapes my throat. The restraints creak but hold firm as my body contorts. Every muscle feels like it’s being shredded and reformed, over and over again.

“Fascinating,” the man with glasses murmurs. “The integration is progressing much faster than previous subjects.”

Integration. The word bounces around my head as another wave of agony crashes through me. They’re trying to force someone else’s essence into me. To make it part of me. But essence isn’t meant to be transferred like this—it’s tied to our souls, our very being.

The pressure in my head increases until I’m certain my skull will crack. My thoughts scatter like leaves in a storm, replaced by fragments of memories that aren’t mine. I see flashes of places I’ve never been, people I’ve never met, all tinted with those impossible colors that shouldn’t exist.

“Sir,” a worried voice cuts through the chaos in my mind. “His temperature is reaching critical levels.”

“Continue the transfer,” the king commands. “We’re too close to stop now.”

The foreign memories come faster, slamming into me with a brute force. I watch a young boy train with wooden swords, his movements graceful despite his age. But it’s not me—I never trained as a child. The guild found me much later.

Another flash: the same boy, older now, sneaking through castle corridors. The thrill of avoiding guards mingles with my own terror until I can’t detect which emotions belong to me anymore.

My heart pounds so hard I fear it will burst. Each beat circulates pulses of wrong essence through my system, trying to overwrite what’s already there. My own essence fights back, desperate to save me, but it’s losing. I can feel it being consumed, replaced by this corruption they’re pumping into me.

“His body is rejecting it,” someone far away shouts. “We need to—”

“Continue!” the king roars.

The pressure in my skull reaches unbearable levels. It feels like my brain is trying to expand beyond its confines. Blood trickles from my nose, then my ears. The taste of copper fills my mouth as my teeth clench hard enough to bite through my tongue.

Please, I beg silently.Angel, if you can hear me, make it stop. Please make it stop.

But no help comes. Just more pain as the essence war rages inside me. The foreign memories overwhelm my own. Who am I? Raine, or the boy from the castle? The one whose essence races through me? Both? Neither?

My vision fractures, splitting into prismatic patterns that make me nauseous beyond comprehension. The impossible colors expand in time with my lungs, each flash bringing fresh waves of misery. The pressure in my head builds and builds until I’m certain something has to give.

“Sir, his vital signs are critical. We need to stop or—”

“No!” The king’s face appears above me, his eyes wild with desperation. “This one has to work. He’s the strongest body from the assassin pool we’ve found. Keep going!”

More essence floods into me, but my body has no more room for it. It feels like my skin is splitting open from the inside, unable to contain the war being waged beneath it. The foreign memories come so fast now that I can’t process them. I can’t process anything. They blur together into a nightmare cascade of sounds and colors and feelings that aren’t mine. Maybe they are.

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