Hey guys! I decided it would be fun to rewrite some fanfic to practice my creative writing skills a bit. Lmk if you have any you'd like me to rewrite as well! (I most likely won't be doing any more chapters of tnk, I'll just do one chapter of each fic :D) I might make a thumbnail if I'm feeling up to it later all credit goes to @-Renchanting- for the original fic! CW: daddy issues, some slightly disturbing similes PROLOGUE: Whispers spread through the kingdom, through each town, village, farm, everything the Red King had once ruled over. The rumors of a soon betrayal had come into fruition. For better or for worse, the old king was gone. The whispers spread like wildfire, as quickly as a knife thrown by the expert hands of an assassin, as thoroughly as a necrophage strips carrion meat from bone. The Red King was gone, the Red King was dead, the Red King’s rule had ended, the Red King was now carrion himself, the whispers said. The New King knew the whispers were spreading. They were perfect, perfect, exactly what he needed the people to hear. All his subjects would know, they would know to bow to him instead, they would know to reject the Red King’s ways. His coronation was that of a hero’s- a celebration more than a ceremony, the bright sun fell on petals flying through the air. The whole kingdom was there and the air was filled with laughter. The New King heard none of it; laughter was of no use to him. He carefully curated his every word, every idea, every thought of his speech about fairness and justice. He confidently played out how he planned to defeat the supposed great evil that plagued the kingdom. He said exactly what he needed to say, the subjects hanging on his every word. Just how he wanted them to. He smiled grimly. Fairness and justice… How gullible could the subjects be? CHAPTER 1 Joel pushed open the door, his hands slick from the heat of the sun. He entered his house, a modest home and the only place he’d ever lived, at least that he could remember. He ran his hand through the green stripe in his annoyingly oily hair- he had been kept late and made to work outside in the hot sun. The sun was really hot that day. He was tired and sweaty and wanted to take a shower and maybe a nap. He swung his bag around to land on the table with a CLUNK. His mother, who was sitting at a table in the other room, looked up. “Hey, mum…” he said, smiling tiredly. Cleo stood up and walked over to him. “Goodness, Joel, you need to stop coming home so late. Are you alright?” she said, looking him over. Joel frowned as she checked him for injuries. He rolled his eyes. “It’s fine, mum. I’m not injured, nothing happened. They just kept me a bit late, okay?” “Alright,” Cleo said, and didn’t say anything further. However, Joel couldn’t help but notice as she narrowed her eyes at him- in suspicion, of course, but in concern as well. She was always fretting over Joel- ever since his father left sixteen years ago, she had been worried and paranoid about him constantly. His father. Joel had never met him, never even seen him, but Joel did know one thing about his father: he hated him. He hated his father for leaving him- well, really, for leaving his mother. Joel loved his mum more than anything and hated almost everything that stressed her out or worried her, and his father was no exception. When Cleo had told him about his father for the first time, Joel saw his worst nightmare in her eyes: that there was something that could stand against his impenetrable fortress of a mother. She had hugged him tight as he fought back angry tears and whispered questions she couldn’t answer, and Joel made a vow: that if he ever had the audacity to come back, he would pay for what he’d done to his mother, no matter what.
