There is a place in the kingdom no one dares to cross.
A barren patch of land, far too wide to be natural, far too silent to be safe —a void where even the wind holds its breath,
and echoes, cowardly, retreat before being born.
At the center of this urban desert rose the most feared structure in the nation:
The Execution Tower.
It dominated the space like an inconvenient truth.
Tall enough to watch the entire square,
low enough that no one could pretend not to see what happened at its peak.
It was built to be witnessed —and to teach fear.
A black cylinder, compact, mineral, as if carved from a single block of petrified night.
No ornaments.
No windows.
Nothing that resembled humanity.
Only presence.
A monolith the people called "the finger of the end," always pointing toward the sky,
as if accusing the gods for every death it had seen —or worse, asking permission for the next.
Around it stretched a vast square — wide as a collective silence, capable of cramming fifty thousand people without losing breath.
A crude amphitheater, open to the sky, made not to welcome… but to watch.
Today, every inch was filled.
Men, women, elders, children — all compressed, tense, dragged by the same mass summons hanging over the city like a decree carved in stone.
No one wanted to be there.
But no one dared to not attend.
The crowd stared upward, toward the top of the tower, where someone's fate would be displayed as a warning to the entire world.
The square looked like a giant eye, forced wide open, unable to look away from what was about to happen above.
Higher still, a second open floor — a broad balcony, held by columns so polished they reflected the light like blades.
There sat nobles and royalty, watching from high enough not to smell the people, but close enough to witness the spectacle they themselves legitimized.
The social difference wasn't just visible.
It was exposed, written into the architecture itself:
the ones above watching,
the ones below enduring.
While the crowd was crushed on the stone ground, up there the seats were spaced, comfortable, decorated.
Shade protected their skin.
The wind reached them first.
Even the building seemed to know who had value…and who existed only to fill space.
The gate linking the castle to the square was a wall with hinges.
Ten meters tall.
Steel thick as medieval bulwarks.
Deep runes carved so far in they looked like claw marks.
When it began to open…
— GRRHHHHHHHH…
The grave metallic groan rippled through the crowd.
Adults swallowed hard.
Some stepped back without knowing why.
The two halves slid apart slowly, exhaling a cold dungeon-like breath.
And then he appeared.
YUTA.
A boy with empty eyes.
A small, trembling body.
A mind crushed by fear, pain, confusion, and rage —emotions mixed until they became an unbearable weight.
He could only think:
I did exactly what Father said… I told the truth…
Why is this happening to me?
What did I do wrong?
I just wanted to help… is that wrong too?
I should've gone home… I should've stayed quiet…
— MOVE. — shouted one of the guards, shoving him.
Yuta stepped forward.
Then again.
Each step heavier than the last.
The metal shackles around his wrists reflected the light —cold as the sentence waiting for him.
The crowd was separated from him by small iron railings —so low anyone could jump over them.
Too low to protect him.
Too high to let him flee.
A symbolic frontier — thin as contempt.
And something crossed the air.
A sudden wet impact.
— SPLASH!
It burst against his face.
Tomato.
Warm, acidic, almost alive.
It dripped down his cheek like a liquid scar, staining him in a red that wasn't his.
The smell crawled into the back of his throat, a mix of sourness and humiliation that burned worse than slaps.
— DIE, YOU FILTHY CRIMINAL!!! — screamed a woman, eyes wide, consumed by her own rage.
Then came the flood:
— Monster!
— Freak!
— Touched royalty and thinks he lives!?
The words weren't just words.
They had blades at the tip.
Each insult stabbed him, carving pieces off his name.
For an eleven-year-old child…his wasn't hostility. It was hell, spoken by fifty thousand mouths.
The guards lost patience —they grabbed his arms like an inconvenient object
and dragged him across the rough ground toward the tower.
The world screamed.
He trembled.
The tower waited —immense, indifferent.
The entrance was a massive arch carved in smooth, cold stone, so perfect it seemed polished by silence itself.
No cracks.
No human marks.
Just the feeling that this arch didn't welcome — it passed judgment.
The automatic door slid open with a shhhk.
It didn't sound like metal moving.
It sounded like a mechanical tongue retracting to let the condemned in.
Inside, there were no corridors, no walls, no comfort.
Only a suspended metal platform held by a single thick cable —so old it looked like it had carried centuries of fear.
A brutal elevator, exposed, without walls, without protection.
Only a perforated floor where wind rose through the holes, and a thin rear bar too fragile to give comfort.
A cold breath rose from below, the breath of something that lived down there…or died there.
— Get in, child. — ordered the guard, his voice soulless.
Yuta obeyed.
Alone.
The platform accepted his weight with a dry creak,and before he could breathe in, the automatic doors closed behind him —slow, calculated —as if sealing a sentence written long before he was born.
The final click echoed sharply through the emptiness.
It felt like the world locking him out.
The elevator jerked upward, waking like an old creature.
It climbed slowly, groaning each meter, every bolt protesting —not under the weight of a child…but under the weight of the world on her shoulders.
The city shrank beneath him.
The wind grew colder.
The silence grew crueler.
When he finally reached the top, the platform opened without warning, exposing Yuta directly at the center of the elevated structure —a suspended stage where even breathing felt watched.
And there he was.
The Executioner.
A tall man, broad-shouldered, muscles visible even beneath battered black armor.
That armor looked like it had seen more deaths than days of sunlight.
Deep scratches along the edges.
Dents on the chest like old scars.
He held a spear whose blade seemed newly awakened —cold, clean, sharp enough to split silence itself.
The metallic surface reflected the overcast sky, as if carrying a piece of the coming storm.
The executioner had no expression.
No anger.
No satisfaction.
Only duty — pure, unshakable —a human machine built to escort lives to their end.
His eyes passed over Yuta as if measuring a number, not a life.
The tower breathed.
The boy trembled.
And the gray sky seemed to have come just to watch.
He grabbed Yuta's shoulder and pushed him down with the firmness of someone handling objects, not lives.
The boy's knees struck the cold metal — a dry thud that echoed across the platform.
From the upper balcony, beside the king, an amplified voice spread through the air like a poisoned decree:
— "For the crime of lying and harming a member of the royal family… this boy, a SCARCITY… shall be sentenced to death."
The word Scarcity sliced through the crowd like toxic breath.
It was a seal.
A brand.
A reminder that this boy was worth less than dust.
The crowd's eyes shifted instantly:
Disgust.
Contempt.
Automatic certainty of guilt — not because there was proof, but because society had already decided that a Scarcity could not be innocent.
The executioner checked his watch, unmoved.
The capital's bells rang.
Noon.
The traditional hour for removing lives from the world.
— "We begin the execution now."
The spear lifted.
The blade aligned precisely with the boy's heart — as though destiny itself had been calibrated for that single point.
— Last words? — asked the executioner, without emotion, without haste.
And in that moment, in that glass-sharp silence, Yuta finally understood everything.
He had been used.
Accused for something he didn't do.
Condemned before the trial even began.
And the man in white…
he had revealed Yuta's class on purpose.
To feed hatred.
To blind doubt.
To suffocate any defense.
Because killing an ordinary child would spark revolt.
But killing a Scarcity?
To them, it was social maintenance — like crushing an insect in the palace hallway.
Yuta clenched his teeth.
His chest burned.
Tears streamed down, but they weren't fear.
They were fury — buried, boiling, ancient.
And his last words emerged from him with a voice that didn't belong to an eleven-year-old.
It belonged to something older.
Darker.
— "I like those eyes. You can kill me, tear my body apart, but I will return… and please, keep that look of disgust. So that I can personally rip those eyes out and end every single one of you."
The moment the sentence ended,
the world seemed to tear open.
A colossal aura exploded behind him.
Dark.
Cold.
Hungry.
It was as if the concept of death itself leaned over the square, touching the neck of every person present with its invisible scythe.
Anyone who dared move…
would lose their head before understanding why.
Fifty thousand hearts stopped at once.
Even the wind fell silent.
The only one able to move — trembling violently, fighting against the overwhelming pressure — was the executioner.
And with the last scraps of his human strength, he thrust the spear forward.
The blade sank in with a wet sound.
It pierced the heart.
It pushed life out.
— Ghh… — Yuta coughed blood, his body shaking,
pulled by invisible strings, as if death itself were dragging him in.
He fell.
The cold stone received him without compassion — the same way it received all who died there.
No ceremony.
No pity.
No witnesses willing to remember.
And there, on the exposed top of the tower…his life's thread was cut.
At least…
for now.