Chapter 4
Rain slipped through the city undetected, moving like a shadow across the rooftops.
But the moment he reached the border; the world shifted beneath him.
Armed forces had barricaded the streets below—rows upon rows of Red soldiers flooding the district, their numbers swelling with every passing second. Within minutes, he was surrounded.
The rooftop beneath him offered no escape, nothing but the thin mercy of nightfall to keep him hidden. He counted–
Eight hundred soldiers.
Eight hundred hearts pounding.
Eight hundred guns ready to fire.
And Rain—alone, exposed, trapped above them with no clear path back to Blue territory.
Of all the places for his control to slip, it had to be here. In the Red Kingdom. In a gated community reserved for the city council’s elite. The worst possible place for anything to go wrong.
He cursed under his breath, dread coiling tight in his stomach.
Below him, the soldiers moved with a terrifying unity.
Every soldier was on high alert, fully aware of who they were hunting.
Their fear was a living thing growing at a suffocating speed.
Rain felt it rising toward him in waves, prickling against his skin.
They knew what he was capable of. They knew what could happen if he lost control.
And that knowledge made them dangerous.
Adrenaline and testosterone still surged through Rain’s system, remnants of earlier intimacy leaving him raw, unsteady, and painfully vulnerable. His body felt volatile, his emotions too close to the surface. The energy inside him churned like a storm, threatening to break free.
He swallowed hard, nausea twisting in his gut.
Not now.
Not here.
Not like this.
Self-recrimination clawed at him. How could he have let this happen? How could he have been so careless? But he forced the thoughts away—self-hatred would only make things worse.
He inhaled slow, deliberate breaths, grounding himself.
I am strength.
I am power.
I have full control over that which is mine.
He repeated the mantra until the words steadied his pulse.
He longed for home—for the safety of his bed, the quiet of his room, the comfort of familiar walls.
Instead, he was preparing for a long, cold night on a rooftop, praying the soldiers would eventually disperse.
Praying Blue or Green authorities wouldn’t catch wind of this.
If they did… the fallout would be catastrophic.
A voice shattered the night.
“THE BLUE PRINCE IS ON THE ROOFTOPS! ALL EYES TO THE SKY!”
The words boomed through a speakerphone, echoing across the district.
Rain’s heart slammed against his ribs.
How?
How could they possibly know?
He pressed himself flatter against the tiles, breath shallow. From this vantage point, he should have been invisible. Hidden by darkness. But the energy below surged toward him, sharp and focused. Predatory. They weren’t guessing.
They had him.
Shit!
I don’t want to hurt anyone.
His pulse spiked, panic clawing at his throat. His breath came too fast, too shallow. He squeezed his eyes shut, begging silently to the gods who had cursed him with this existence.
Please…make them leave.
Let me go home.
Don’t let me lose control.
But the world answered with silence.
An eerie stillness fell over the street. Every hair on Rain’s body stood on end. Danger thickened the air, heavy and electric.
Footsteps shuffled to his left.
Rain crept to the edge; senses sharpened to a razor’s edge. Below, he felt hundreds of hearts pounding in unison, bracing for whatever came next.
He forced the internal noise aside, letting instinct take over. The soldiers had re-positioned, shields raised around their formation like an exoskeleton, with weapons poking through narrow gaps. Rain sifted through their swirling energies, searching for weakness, for intent.
Then he felt it.
A device.
A device with heat-signature tracking.
Every movement he made was being monitored.
Very fucking clever.
He pushed deeper, searching for clarity—but the emotions below were a chaotic storm. The Reds were masking their feelings, deliberately overwhelming his channels. Their tactics had evolved. They were countering him directly, using what they could to disorientate him.
Even so, he dug deeper, slipping past the strongest minds and into the weaker ones. From them, he gleaned everything he needed.
And before he could process what they had revealed—
A sharp, high-pitched screech tore through the night.
Without hesitation Rain threw himself off the four-story building, twisting mid-air, using his power to slow the fall. He landed in a crouch on the pavement below.
Hundreds of eyes stared back at him as he lifted his gaze from the ground. Weapons trembling, as he rose to his full height.
A thunderous explosion erupted above as the missile meant for him obliterated the rooftop. Debris rained down, sending massive chunks of brick and metal hurtling toward the soldiers.
Rain reacted on instinct.
He cast an energy barrier upward, deflecting the falling rubble and shielding them all.
Stunned silence followed.
Disbelief churned the air.
The soldiers slowly raised their heads, eyes wide with horror and confusion. Rain had just saved them from the downpour.
And still—they raised their weapons against him.
Scared men make bad decisions and they were petrified. Rain felt their terror like a physical force pressing against him.
He stepped forward, hands raised. His energy barrier shimmered above their heads, a visible representation of both his power and restraint.
“Please,” he called out, voice carrying across the crowd. “Let me cross into my kingdom. Nobody needs to get hurt tonight; I am not here to cause harm. I am just on my way home; we all have families to get home to.”
He stepped forward, weapons clattered as they were readied in response.
A voice cut through the tension.
“DO NOT MOVE, YOUR HIGHNESS!”
The Commanding Sergeant from earlier stepped forward, fear threading through his authority.
Rain stilled.
“You trespassed onto our land,” the Sergeant said, voice steady but trembling beneath the surface. “We have orders to shoot if you do not cooperate.”
Rain felt the man’s fear, it was sharp and acidic, desperate even. The weight of responsibility crushed him. Aware that one wrong move could ignite a massacre.
And Rain knew, with sickening certainty, that if they made a move… If he lost control now…
He would be the one to destroy them all.
The Sergeant repeated himself again, his tone steady but stretched thin, as though held together by sheer will. “Our orders are to shoot if you do not cooperate with us. You must surrender.” The air was thick with apprehension, the tension so taut it felt ready to snap.
“It would not be wise for anyone to shoot at me.” Rain warned, his voice edged with steel. “What are the terms?”
“You must surrender yourself willingly. Allow us to hold you captive, while our King negotiates your release.”
Rain nearly laughed. Negotiate? King Drazier would sooner see him dead than speak to the Blue King. The idea was insulting.
“We both know you’re not taking me captive, Sarj,” Rain said, incredulous.
He met the Sergeant’s gaze, reading the flicker of uncertainty there.
The soldiers shifted uneasily, weapons still trained on him, waiting for his next move.
Every second stretched unbearably long, the weight of consequence pressing down on all of them.
Rain slowly raised his arms. To them, it might have looked like surrender.
To him, it was a defensive brace, a way to steady himself against the storm gathering inside him.
His heart pounded as he stood surrounded by hostile faces, every finger hovering over a trigger.
The shimmering barrier above them flickered faintly, a fragile reminder of his waning restraint.
Despair crept in, cold and suffocating. He scanned the soldiers’ faces, searching for even a flicker of compassion. He found none. Only fear. Only suspicion. Only the belief that he was a monster.
What they failed to realise was that he wasn’t just the monster. He was the cage. The cage that imprisoned the monster, the bars where bending and the shackled chains had already been torn from the anchor.
He kept his posture open, hands trembling, clinging to the last thread of hope that someone—anyone—might see him as someone begging for peace. But deep down, he knew the truth. Negotiation was dead. The next moments would decide everything.
His eyes burned, but he refused to let his weakness be known.
Through clenched teeth, he addressed the Sergeant.
“Well then, Sarj… do you want to go about this the easy way or the hard way?” His voice softened, pleading.
“I’m not here with bad intentions. I was visiting a friend.
I want what you want. I want everyone to get home safely.
You have a wife and kids, right?” Rain’s lips twitched as the man’s energy confirmed it.
“I can feel how much you love them. Let me pass and go home to your family. Nobody needs to get hurt.”
“Surrender is your only option, Sir. You have no friends in the Red Kingdom. We are not your people.”
The words hit harder than any weapon could. Rain’s breath stuttered. His hands trembled. Something inside him cracked.
“WHY AREN’T YOU LISTENING TO ME? I DON’T WANT TO HURT ANY OF YOU—JUST MOVE OUT OF MY WAY!”
The aggression in his voice startled even him.
Fear rippled through the crowd. Rain felt the blunt force of it course through him.
He felt his own isolation like a blade. He was surrounded.
Distrusted. Alone. His heart thundered, each beat echoing the irreversible shift in the night’s fragile balance.
Rain tried to steady himself, but the pain of their enmity pressed down on him, threatening to overwhelm.
He clung to the last threads of control.
“I just want to go ho….”
A gunshot split the air.
Rain’s instincts snapped into place. His power surged, catching the threat mid-flight. The bullet hung suspended before him, frozen in the air. At the same moment, the barrier above them collapsed, sending debris cascading downward. Soldiers cried out, shields raised in panic.
Rain reacted instantly, casting a protective force that deflected the falling rubble away from them. Confusion rippled through the ranks as they realised he had protected them—again.
And still, they raised their weapons.
Their fear slammed into him, raw and poisonous. Rain felt every ounce of their hatred, their desperate wish that the bullet had found its mark. His control wavered as anger boiled at his core.
Kill.
The thought wasn’t his—not entirely. It was the echo of their terror, their rage, their desire for his death, all funnelled into him through his open channels.
The suspended bullet dropped with a metallic ping.
An distant order rang out.
Gunfire erupted.
Hundreds of shots.
Hundreds of intentions.
Hundreds of fears converging on him at once.
Rain’s power detonated outward in a single, devastating wave. Bullets carved through flesh and bone.
The world went silent. Until it wasn’t. A rhythmic thud echoed through the street as bodies dropped. Blood spatter clouded the atmosphere, traumatising Rain's vision.
A tidal surge of emotion crashed into him.
Fear. Pain. Shock. Regret. Acceptance. Dozens upon dozens of lives flickering out in rapid succession.
Rain felt every one of them. The final moments, the terror, the surrender, as though they were his own.
Yet he lived, Karma forcing him to endure every excruciating moment. Torture.
He collapsed to his knees.
A scream tore from his throat, raw and agonised, echoing through the ruined street. Tears streamed down his face as the weight of what had happened crushed him. The world blurred, the sounds around him fading into a suffocating silence.
He stayed there, fists clenched on his thighs, staring at the devastation he hadn’t meant to unleash. The pain slowly dulled into a hollow, numbing emptiness.
And Rain understood, with sickening clarity, that nothing about this night could ever be undone.
Eventually, Rain forced himself to move.
His legs felt like stone, his body hollowed out, but he pushed forward, step by step, through the grotesque aftermath of his massacre.
The journey home blurred into a haze. He walked through the devastation without flinching, numb to the bloody carnage around him.
His mind was too empty, too shattered to fully register the horror.
He didn’t look away. He didn’t allow himself the mercy of denial.
He simply moved, as though carried by momentum alone.
Blue forces waited at the border.
They did not approach.
They stood in rigid formation, watching him from a distance, their expressions a mixture of fear, awe, and something far more painful—resignation.
They knew what had happened. They could feel it in the air, in the tremor of Rain’s energy, in the silence that clung to him like a shroud.
None dared step closer. They understood the dangerous edge he walked, the volatile state he was in.
One wrong word, one wrong breath, could shatter what little control he had left.
Rain didn’t blame them.
He wouldn’t have approached himself.
Their eyes followed him as he crossed the threshold into Blue territory, each soldier silently acknowledging the devastation their prince had wrought. Another tragedy. Another catastrophe. Another entry in the long, damning list of disasters tied to his name.
Rain knew his actions would not go unpunished.
His father would demand answers. There would be consequences: political, personal, brutal.
But Rain found himself incapable of caring.
The emotional void inside him left no room for fear, regret, or justification.
He felt nothing. Nothing but the echo of the lives that had flickered out around him.
To the Blue troops, this was simply who he was.
The harbinger of death.
The cursed heir.
The weapon they could not control.
Despite his intentions, despite the fact that he had never wanted any of this, Rain knew the truth: he would be remembered not for the peace he begged for, but for the destruction that followed him.
A legacy inherited.
A fate he could not outrun.
A burden he would carry alone.