The imperial palace hummed with its usual activity, the clatter of servants, the rustle of court papers, and the soft murmur of political whispers. Yet there was one thing that had changed since Simone took his position as Crown Prince—an unsettling stillness in the air when he passed by, a weight in the room that no one could quite place.
In the Crown Prince's private chambers, the sunlight barely filtered through the thick curtains, casting the room in perpetual twilight. The desk was cluttered with documents—laws to be reviewed, treaties to be signed, reports on the empire's progress—all of it piled high and never once seeming to diminish. Simone sat hunched over them, his midnight black hair falling over his brow, his pale fingers moving swiftly across the papers as he worked.
The air around him was charged, as if the very space he occupied resonated with his immense power. His eyes, once warm and expressive, were now distant, his mind sharp but detached. He hadn't slept. He hadn't eaten. The last meal he had was a distant memory, and his body no longer required sustenance. His once soft and pale skin had hardened, his form lean and muscular, but it wasn't just his body that had changed. The Prince who had once been shy, overweight, and awkward, had become something colder—more efficient, more calculating, but also emptier.
A soft knock on the door interrupted his work, though Simone barely reacted to it.
"Your Highness," a servant's voice drifted through the crack. "Forgive the intrusion. I... I wanted to ask if you needed anything."
Simone did not lift his head from his paperwork immediately. He had long since stopped calling for his servants as he once did, a simple "please" and "thank you" now replaced with silence or curt nods. He'd distanced himself from the trivialities of his former life, the warmth of human connection replaced by the cold demands of his new reality.
After a beat, he finally spoke, his voice low but polite, devoid of the warmth it used to carry. "No, thank you for your concern, Lena," he said, glancing up just enough to catch the servant's eye.
Lena froze, her heart skipping a beat at the sound of her name. It had been months since he had addressed anyone with such directness, much less with the recognition of their name. She stood, her mind racing. Simone hadn't called for her, hadn't needed her, and yet, he still remembered her name.
He didn't smile brightly like he used to, but the polite curve of his lips—an attempt at a semblance of his former self—felt alien now. The smile, though practiced, seemed to mask something darker, something unsettling.
"Is there anything else you require, Your Highness?" Lena asked hesitantly, her voice tight with the unspoken fear that hung in the air around him.
Simone's gaze lingered on her for a moment longer, his expression unreadable. "No. You may go. I have much to do."
The servant nodded quickly and retreated, leaving Simone to his work. But as she closed the door behind her, her thoughts churned, mixing with the others who had witnessed the same transformation in the Crown Prince.
Inside the chambers, Simone's gaze returned to his papers, his mind once again lost in the sea of politics and power. His hands moved mechanically, ticking off boxes, signing off on treaties, and executing judgments with a precision that only someone with his intellect could manage. But there was a hollowness behind it all. No satisfaction, no sense of accomplishment—just the next task to be done.
Simone could hear everything, see everything—his power had grown to such an extent that it almost overwhelmed him at times. The servants' whispered fears, the anxiety of his siblings when they saw him across the court, the thoughts of the officials who tried to second-guess his decisions. Everything flowed to him, everything was visible through the lens of his darkness.
But there was nothing inside him anymore to react to it. There were no emotional ties left—only the cold clarity of his purpose.
The kingdom was flourishing under his rule. His decisions had been sharp, insightful, and, at times, ruthless. The empire was expanding its borders, its trade, and its influence. The weight of those accomplishments did not bring him joy, however. It was simply the next thing to do. The next step to take. The next person to eliminate, the next decision to make.
The servants, the courtiers, and even his family began to notice the same pattern in Simone. He was no longer the naive, soft-hearted prince they had known. He was a machine—a shadow who worked tirelessly, who saw and heard everything, but who felt nothing.
Yet, every so often, he would pause, his expression betraying the slightest flicker of something beneath the cold exterior. A pang of memory, perhaps, of the boy who once smiled at his friends in the academy. The boy who had wanted nothing to do with power. But that boy was gone now.
And so, he worked. He worked until there was nothing left for him to do, nothing left for him to feel.
And the empire, for all its newfound prosperity, would never see the prince it had once known again.