The kingdom of Dark Cacao was a kingdom of silence.
Snow fell in thick, unrelenting sheets beyond the frosted windows of the throne room, burying the courtyards and the statues of warriors long past. No birds sang. No merchants shouted in the streets. The gates, massive and wrought with iron, had not swung open in months.
At the heart of it all, upon a throne carved from a single block of obsidian, sat the king.
His cloak pooled around him like spilled ink, dusted with a fine layer of frost that no servant dared brush away. His head rested against one gauntleted hand, eyes half-lidded, the ghost of a furrow etched deep between his brows. The Grapejam Chocoblade lay propped against the armrest, its edge dull with disuse.
He was not asleep.
Nor was he awake. He drifted — somewhere between memory and the cold, hollow present — through battlefields of dark flour and the echoes of a son's blade turning against him.
The throne room was empty.
It had been for a long time.
???
a hesitant footstep
A guard hovered at the threshold. He wore the heavy plate armor of the Cacao Knights, but his posture betrayed a deep unease. He swallowed, his voice barely above a whisper as if speaking too loudly might shatter the fragile quiet.
Guard
Your Majesty.
No response.
Guard
louder, trembling slightly Your Majesty... I — I apologize for the disturbance, but there's something you need to see.
The king's eyes opened, slowly, like stone grinding against stone.
Dark Cacao Cookie
his voice low, gravelly Speak.
Guard
flinching W-We found something in the forest, sire. Near the eastern border. Tracks. And... he hesitates ...a cookie. Still alive.
The silence stretched, thick as the falling snow outside.
Dark Cacao rose.
The movement was slow, deliberate — the weight of his armor shifting with a sound like distant thunder.
Dark Cacao Cookie
his gaze fixed on the guard Show me.