Keijo should’ve died. That’s what the healers said after Star Flame devoured half his body and left him so disfigured no glamour could hope to hide the damage. In a court where beauty was worshipped like a religion, his scars made him a blasphemy. Instead of celebrating his survival, his father called him an embarrassment and locked him away in a tower, hidden from a realm that feared ugliness almost as much as it feared him. His people recoiled in disgust at the very idea of him. And so, for years, Keijo lived only as rumor—the scarred prince, the ghost in the tower, the cursed heir nobody wanted to claim.

Keijo learned quickly that monsters don’t get mercy. And so he became one.

When the war finally ended and the throne stood empty, they hauled him back into the world that had abandoned him—expecting a shattered thing, compliant, quiet, desperate for scraps of belonging. But the tower had carved something else out of him. The fire had burned away everything soft.

What they got was the Monster of Midnarel.

Now Keijo rules a court that flinches when he enters a room, their gazes darting away from the melted ruin of half his face. He doesn’t soothe their fear. He doesn’t hide behind glamours or pleasantries. Sarcastic, bitter, and as morally gray as the twilight sky, he sharpens their assumptions into weapons. They wanted a creature to dread—so he wears the role like armor, every step a reminder of what they created.

He never asked for a crown. But he’ll be damned before he lets anyone—court, crown, or fate—make him powerless again.