Chapter 136

Chapter 136
Arthur's POV


Dear Arthur,

If you’re reading this, it means somehow I managed to finally get to you after all these years. Perhaps it is fate, perhaps just the way life arranges itself. By now, you will have lived long enough to carry the weight of my absence—and long enough to curse my name for the things I did to you. I would not blame you if you had.

I raised you with cruelty. I raised you with iron and with fire, believing at the time that it was the only way to mold you into something stronger than the world around you. My words were sharp, my punishments sharper still, and I know that to you it must have felt like hatred. But it was not hate. It was fear. Fear that if I left you gentle, if I left you soft, the world would devour you whole.

In trying to prepare you, I forgot you were still a boy. I forgot that sons are not soldiers, that they are not forged like weapons but grown like trees. I took away pieces of your childhood and replaced them with scars. For that, I am sorry in a way words will never be enough to mend. If I could sit with you now, I would tell you that my hands were too heavy, my heart too broken to teach you the way a father should have.

Inside the bundle of documents you’ve received, you will find not just paper and ink, but a sword—one that cannot be swung with muscle, but with will and mind. These papers are my legacy, the map of what I built, the mistakes I made, and the enemies I left behind. Use them as you see fit. Wield them not as I wielded my fists and rage, but as a man who has learned to carve his own path.

Do not become me, Arthur. Become better than me. That, above all else, is the truest apology I can offer you: the hope that my brutality might fuel your kindness, that my failures might drive your victories.

You are stronger than I ever allowed myself to admit, and if you’ve carried my memory as a chain, I ask that you let it fall now. Take what I have left you—not the scars, but the sword—and walk forward.

Your father,
Elias King.

I clenched my jaw so hard it ached, then dragged both hands down my face as if I could scrape away the storm of emotions that letter had dug up inside me. My skin felt hot, my palms damp, but it did nothing to ease the pressure building in my chest. The words on the page blurred at the edges, not from tears—I refused to cry—but from the sheer force of memory clawing its way out of the dark corners I’d shoved it into for years.

His handwriting… even that was enough to strike me. Bold, deliberate, just like his presence had always been. It carried weight, as though each letter was a command. My father never spoke lightly, never acted without conviction, and here—on paper—he was no different. Except this time, the conviction wasn’t punishment or demand. It was… regret. An apology.

I didn’t know what to do with that.

For years, I had built my walls on the certainty that Elias King had never once regretted how he raised me. Every scar, every bitter memory, every sleepless night—it was all proof, in my mind, that cruelty had been his language, his legacy. To hear him say otherwise, to admit fear, to confess that he’d confused molding me with breaking me… it left me disoriented, like the ground I’d been standing on had shifted beneath my feet.

And damn it, a part of me wanted to believe him. That small, treacherous part of me that still longed for a father, not a tyrant. That boy inside me—the one I thought I’d buried years ago—he wanted to grab onto these words and let them heal him. To imagine that all those nights spent trembling under his shadow weren’t for nothing, that the man who had loomed over me with fists and fire had, at least at the end, understood the damage he caused.

But another part of me, the louder part, curled its lip in contempt. Regret written on paper means nothing when it comes too late. Apologies can’t stitch back the boyhood ripped away. His words couldn’t take the welts from my back, couldn’t erase the memory of the fear that lived under my skin for so long it had become a second skeleton. He wasn’t here now—he would never be here—to say any of this to my face. And maybe that was easier for him. Maybe it was easier to let the dead man be noble on paper than to stand before his son and admit his sins.

My hands trembled as I folded the letter shut, too harshly, as if punishing the paper for daring to soften me. My jaw ached again. I realized I was grinding my teeth, holding back everything that wanted to spill out. Anger. Grief. Confusion. An ache so raw it burned like fire in my lungs.

I pushed back from the desk, pacing the room like a caged animal. Every step felt heavy, yet restless. My father was gone, his voice reduced to ink, and I couldn’t decide if I hated him more for writing this or if, in some twisted way, I was grateful. Grateful for the crack it left in my armor, even if I wanted to slam it shut again.

I caught myself whispering under my breath—words I wasn’t sure were curse or prayer. Maybe both. My throat tightened. I wanted to throw the letter into the fire and watch it burn, to see the words curl into ash the way he had once curled my childhood into something unrecognizable. But another part of me… another part wanted to keep it. Not as forgiveness, not as absolution—but as proof. Proof that he had known. That he had carried his own guilt, even if he’d hidden it too well for me to ever see while he lived.

I rubbed my face again, palms pressing into my eyes until stars burst behind my eyelids. My body felt heavy, like I’d been carrying weights I didn’t realize were still chained to me. His apology hadn’t freed me, not really. But it had unsettled me. And sometimes, being unsettled hurt more than being angry.

When I finally sat back down, the envelope sat where I’d dropped it, white and unassuming. A small, fragile thing that had somehow cracked open wounds I thought had already scarred over. My father’s voice lingered in my mind, not as a command, but as a plea for something I've always tried to make out for myself.

'Do not become me, Arthur. Become better.'

The words echoed until I didn’t know if I wanted to scream or break.