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MERCYBLADE

Neha Priyan
WAR STORY
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Submitted to Contest #4 in response to the prompt: 'You break the one unbreakable rule. What happens next? '



There were many kinds of cold in the Northern kingdom.

There was the kind brought forth by the winter gods, that brought dropping temperatures with them – it was the kind that was dragged down from the mountain spires like the reapers scythe across the land. A cold that crept into bones and stayed there long after the frost had melted.

There was the cold that made the marble floors beneath your feet be the bane of your existence.

There was also the kind that sat alongside the ruthless ruler as the iron crown was placed upon his head.

But nothing – neither blizzard, nor steel nor death could compare to the cold in the silence that held the air in a chokehold moments after a life is separated from the body.

It was the cold that Chrys Asphodel had come to terms with when she was as little as a bud. She now knew it better than her own heartbeat.

Because Chrys Asphodel was the Mercyblade.

She delivered death as an order – with no hesitation and no mercy.

She hadn’t blinked when slicing the throat of a poisoner who wept and begged for his child. Hadn’t flinched when executing a woman who had assassinated a duke at her own wedding. She hadn’t blinked.

She swung the blade because she was ordered to.
It’s all she had known to have been seeing since she was six years old, and all she had been learning to do since she was thirteen.

Why? Because the king gave her one rule –
A rule as unbreakable as the ties one has to the Earth.

Do. Not. Look a prisoner in the eye.

Eyes make you hesitate.
Eyes make you remember they are people.
Eyes act as a window into their souls.

And pausing?

In the king’s book, the Mercyblade pausing is treason.

She never did break the rule. Not until the day she was sent to sever the head of a man tried and sentenced for plotting against the state.

It wasn’t a deliberate attempt. It wasn’t defiant.

He whispered words that forced her to meet his striking gaze and that’s when she noticed something she should not have.

Familiarity.

The prisoner turned to face her as the guards ripped back his hood.
And he had the same Caribbean-blue eyes she had known only two people to carry. Two people who once belonged to her. Two people who were once her blood.

One was ash, and for reasons unknown, the other knelt before her now.

No.

She was not allowed to hesitate. She was the reason the capitol worked the way it did. People feared her. Her mercilessness was why the kingdom followed the rules – for their mistakes were raised to her blade.
Everything about those eyes were familiar. They reminded her of someone who was named Theodore “Theo” Asphodel.

But she once called him brother.

As she held the blade high above her shoulder, she shuddered as those eyes tried to read her expression. His whisper had been one word that asked a question - “sister?.” Why was he here now?

Theodore.
Theo.
Her brother.

Dead for ten years. Or so she had believed.

His eyes begged for nothing. He simply wanted to know. Was it really her?

“Executioner,” the king’s voice rang out, cold, measured. “Why do you pause?”
Her blade wavered.

Her knees nearly buckled.

She had never paused before. "...I don’t know how to kill you."
His lips twitched—not in triumph, but in something dangerously close to sorrow. “Then don’t.”

The silence of the court fractured.
The king’s chair scraped violently against the stone as he stood.

“Seize her.”

Guards moved instantly. Chains rattled. Boots thundered. She dropped the blade.

It struck the ground with a sound that silenced even the nobles.

The soldiers grabbed her, tore her away from the execution platform. Another set seized Theo, dragging him to his feet. For the first time in her life, she did not resist the shackles that almost went on her wrists.

Her brother looked at her as they pulled them in opposite directions.
And as if no time had passed at all, as if they were still children running through the wildflowers behind their village, he called her by her childhood name.

Chrysanthemum. A name given to her after her mothers’ favorite flower.

The guards seized Chrys by the arms, dragging her back, her boots skidding over stone. Her blade lay abandoned on the execution platform—too far, too late.

She didn’t fight it. Not at first. Her pulse thundered in her throat, her heart splitting wide open as Theo sagged in his captors’ grips, chained and helpless, breathing in ragged pulls like each one might be his last.

“Move.” One of the soldiers snarled, yanking her forward. “You’ve earned the noose for this.”

Her vision blurred, a kaleidoscope of marble columns and watching nobles and—

Theo.

The guard beside her rammed the butt of his spear into Theo’s ribs. Hard.

His breath left him in a choking sound. His knees buckled.

And just like that—

Something inside her switched.

The Mercyblade did not feel.
The Mercyblade did not break.
The Mercyblade did not hesitate.

But Chrys did.

She took a deep breath in and slammed her heel down on the guard’s boot with all her might, hard enough to hear a bone crunch. He hissed, loosening his grip for a split second. It was all she needed.
She twisted free, spun low, snatched his dagger from his belt and shoved it deep beneath his ribs. She didn’t wait for him to fall.
Her blade. She needed her blade.

Chrys sprinted. Her lungs burned. Her muscles hurt from the force they dragged her with. But for that one breath in time, the world seemed to halt—her blade, the Mercyblade, catching the sunlight where it lay abandoned on the stone.
For a moment, the world just stopped—the Mercyblade glinting in the sunlight where she’d left it behind.
A guard lunged. She turned on instinct, her blade as it arced up and across—steel met flesh and the man collapsed.
Don’t look at the soldier. Don’t look. Don’t—

Her eyes snapped to Theo, still pinned, still shackled, struggling against the men who tried to drag him to the cells below.
Not today.
Not this time.

She crossed the platform in three long strides, fast enough to ensure that the guard would not have time to shout before her blade would come down, severing the chains on Theo’s wrists in a shower of sparks.

His gaze snapped to hers, stunned. “Chrys—”

“Run,” she hissed, spinning to block the next strike. “Run now.”

“But the people. They’re going to get both of us,” her brother said, but she just dragged his arm along, as she ran.

They reached the edge of the wooden platform and dove towards the crowd—And then the impossible happened.
The people parted.

A woman dragged her child out of their path. A merchant stepped back, lowering his crates. A soldier’s wife shoved aside a barrel, clearing their way.
One by one, they made way.

The Mercyblade, the weapon of the crown—their executioner—was no longer theirs.

She was running.
They weren’t going to stop her.

Theo grabbed her arm, breathless, yanking her into the alleyway as the guards scrambled to catch up. He knew the kingdom better than she did, for all she knew since a child were the basements of the palace.
“You—” He gasped, “You picked up the blade—on them. On the wrong people.”

“No.” She grit her teeth, heart racing like it would break her ribs.

“I finally picked up the blade for the right ones.”

Theo’s laugh broke out, wild and disbelieving as they ran, the crowd’s roar echoing behind them. “That’s my Chrys.”
The Mercyblade had run.

So they let her.

Because if the king’s death bringer could break her unbreakable rule, maybe they could too. Maybe the kingdom did need a rebellion – maybe they needed to sing the song of angry men.

They ducked into a dark corner of the lower city, slipping into a crumbling warehouse that smelled like mildew and dust. Chrys slammed the rusted door shut and braced her back against it, lungs dragging in air like they had never before felt air.

“I haven’t run like that since the meadows outside our old home,” she laughed.
Theo dropped to his knees, hands shaking as he raked them through his hair. "I thought—" He broke off, laughter rasping from his throat, as wild as it was raw. "I thought I was seeing things back there. That you’d—seven hells, Chrys, you were going to—" His voice cracked. "You hesitated. You looked me in the eye."

She had missed that laughter.
Her throat burned, her heartbeat pounding so violently she thought it might tear through her ribs. She slid down beside him, their shoulders brushing. "You died. Ten years ago, I buried you in my head."
He looked at her then, really looked at her, like they were children again, racing through the wheat fields behind their home, before fire and soldiers and crowns split them apart.

"I tried to find you, Chrys. I swear to the gods. They told me you were dead too."

"I deserve to be," she whispered. "Parts of me are."
His gaze flicked to the blood staining her tunic, her hands still trembling around the hilt of her blade. "But you chose me. You picked me over him. Over them."

"I didn’t choose." She tipped her head back against the door, her chest rising and falling in sharp, ragged pulls. "I just… couldn’t kill you. Not again"
"You broke his one rule."
"Yeah. I did."

And now the king would burn the entire city to find them – it was a matter of pride.

And Rebellion.

The next few days had all seemed like a blur as they constantly stayed in hiding – sleeping in cellars, trading stolen jewels for scraps, and dodging the patrols that stalked the streets like the hungry wolves they were.

Chrys should have been terrified. She should have been running in the opposite direction, and a few years ago, she would have. But every time she caught a glimpse of her long lost brother’s crooked smile, something warm and loving inside of her flared to life.

It suddenly all felt worth it.
Word had traveled fast.

“The Mercyblade has hesitated,” said the news. She’d dropped her weapon. She’d run.

And the people?

The people began to wonder.

If she could fight back—if the blade of the crown could snap her chains—then maybe they could too.
Graffiti bloomed on stone walls overnight. Crude sigils of a blade split in two. Scrawled words: Mercy Lives.

Bread lines turned to secret revolution meetings. The guard’s hold on the city faltered, shaky and desperate.

They were no longer hunting a traitor. They were hunting a symbol. All because one rule had been broken.

It was a spark.

"You realize you started this, right?" Theo murmured one night as they crouched behind a tanner’s shop, listening to the bells of the night watch.

"I didn’t start anything," Chrys muttered, pressing the bandage tighter against the gash on his forearm. “Or at least I didn’t mean to.”

"You did. You broke your one rule, and now the kingdom’s on fire."

She didn’t answer. Because he wasn’t wrong.

They moved through the underground channels, joined by rebels she’d once condemned to death. People who should have spat on her, but instead offered shelter and whispered: You showed us we can fight.

Chrys caught sight of a boy no older than fourteen painting the split-blade sigil on a tavern door. Her chest twisted painfully.

The Mercyblade was no longer the king’s.

She was theirs now.

One morning, as dawn split the sky in bruised gold, Theo pressed a crumpled map into her hands.

"There’s a caravan moving out of the city. It’ll take us across the border, away from this." Away from the king’s noose. Away from the rebellion brewing in the streets.

"We could go," he said, soft. "Start over. Be Chrys and Theo again."

Her thumb brushed the frayed edge of the bandage, as she tried to change the dressing. She could almost taste freedom on the tip of her tongue. But the weight of the blade on her back had suddenly begun feeling heavier.

“The innocent will feel the pain of your rebellion,” her conscience seemed to say.

"I can’t," she breathed. "Not yet. Not when they’re finally standing up."

Theo’s jaw flexed. "They’ll kill you, Chrys. You’ll burn in their place."

"Maybe." Her eyes lifted to his, steady now. Certain. "But I’d rather burn with them than run from them."

His throat bobbed. And then, his hand closed over hers.

"Then I stay."

The Mercyblade had hesitated.

And the kingdom would never be the same again.



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Neha, your story is an electrifying and heart-wrenching triumph! - I gave it a full 50 points. If you get a moment, I’d be grateful if you could read my story, “The Room Without Windows.” I’d love to hear what you think: https://notionpress.com/write_contest/details/5371/the-room-without-windows

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Good One. Added 50 points. If you could take sometime, please read my story as well and vote for me, each vote is valuable for me : https://notionpress.com/write_contest/details/5442/this-time-too-shall-pass

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I have awarded points to your well written story! Please vote for my story as well “ I just entered a writing contest! Read, vote, and share your thoughts.! https://notionpress.com/write_contest/details/5320/when-words-turn-worlds”.

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