It was fun, I lost by mistake
King Reed had always believed the world began with him.
Every stone, every banner, every beating heart in the white valleys existed because his name was spoken into them long ago. That was the story he told himself when the dawn horns cried. That was the story the winds repeated when they passed through his halls like obedient ghosts.
Across the ashen plains stood another kingdom, dark-spined and quiet as a wound that would not heal. At its center lived King Morgan, a ruler carved from shadow and silence. Reed did not hate him for what he had done, nor for what he would do.
He hated him for being there.
Two kings could not exist under the same sky. That was undeniable truth. As real as blood.
So Reed raised his hand, and the world moved forward.
The war began not with a scream, but a step. A thousand feet followed it.
Behind Reed came his life in moving flesh: Queen Serena with eyes like winter fire; the twin towers of the realm,
Old iron-hearted brothers who never bent; the knights whose families had bled into his soil for ages; theishops his quiet hands, his faithful thinkers; and the pale ranks of the devoted, boys who marched not knowing if their deaths would mean anything, only that history would devour them regardless.
Reed did not weep for that.
Kings were not built to weep. They were built to conquer.
The first days tasted of victory. The black lines wavered. The enemy bled. The ground learned Reed’s name and swallowed it with reverence.
But the war did not end. It widened.
And then the valley began to fill with bodies.
One knight never returned from the dusk. Then another. A bishop was pulled from his horse by something unseen in the fog. One of the twin towers fell in the night without a sound loud enough to be remembered.
Reed told himself it was necessary.
All wars eat something.
Still, the world felt smaller.
One morning, a boy with shaking hands placed a helmet at Reed’s feet.
“My king… there are no more of us left to March.”
“And you? yu are still left alive aren't you?” Reed said.
The boy did not answer.
Because he was already dead.
Still, Reed stood unbroken. His eyes were fire. His voice stone.
He refused to see the thinning lines. Refused to count the faces missing from dawn.
Only Serena noticed the cracking beneath him.
She felt it when he stood too long at the edge of the battlefield, staring not at enemies but at absence.
“You are not made of iron,” she told him once in the night, touching his brow. “You are made of loss pretending to be a crown.”
“Do not speak to me of loss,” he said. “I am the reason loss fears us.”
She smiled like a woman already mourning.
By the twelfth dawn, only a handful stood behind Reed.
The towers were gone.
The bishops burned.
Knights lay as bones beneath history.
The devoted were unrecognizable ash.
And the dark kingdom still stood.
Reed’s voice grew harsher. His orders tasted of fear.
When a final tower fell with a sound like an era folding, Reed dropped to one knee.
Not in defeat.
In disbelief.
“My world was built on strength” he whispered.
Serena stood beside him.
“The worlds have endings too.”
And then the enemy came like night pretending to be morning.
Blades sang. Smoke swallowed screams. Blood darkened the air into something thick as thought.
Reed fought like a dying god.
But gods bleed when belief runs out.
One by one, the last remained of everything he was died before him.
And then—only Serena stood between him and everything else.
She turned once.
Not toward the enemy.
Toward him.
There are moments that fracture time.
This was one.
Her eyes were not afraid.
They were… Accepting.
“Do not mourn me” she said gently.
“Wait!-” he shout.
But there are words that cannot survive moments like these.
And so she moved.
She did not scream.
She did not beg.
She did not curse the sky.
She charged towards death itself as if it were a door she had always known.
Steel swallowed her name.
The world exhaled.
Reed felt something rip open inside him that had never been flesh.
A king alone does not remain a king.
He becomes a shadow.
He stood when the dust settled.
No army.
No queen.
No past.
Only him.
And the dark king across a battlefield that now looked like a grave pretending to be land.
Morgan watched silently.
Not as a villain.
As a mirror.
Reed tried to walk forward.
His feet did not obey.
He tried to speak.
The world did not listen.
A king without witnesses is only a man.
And a man without love is only a memory waiting to disappear.
Reed sank to his knees.
And for the first time since the world had begun with him
He heard... someone.
He looked up. THe sky first time felt unfamiliar, two faces unknown... looking down on battlefield... Who are they? he asked himself...
"Oh man it was fun, I got cornered, lost my queen by mistake"
one of them said, but why did it sound familiar? cornered? lost queen by mistake?
"No worries man we will play sometime else... on chess.com maybe?" other replied
"Yea sure"
This war had never been about land.
Or pride.
Or another king.
It wasn't even the war, Reed realised he was just a piece on the board of chess, just another piece fighting nail and tooth. but the one who was moving them were friends?
And now… he was.
Cornered by the truth.
Surrounded by the dead.
Held hostage by a crown that felt heavier than the sky.
He whispered Serena's name into the earth like a broken prayer.
The earth did not answer.
And the world, having taken everything from him.
...
...
...
...
King Reed had always believed the world began with him.