The Knight Who Forgot How to Hate

Dawn came like a thief.

Gray.
Quiet.
Unwanted.

Rose sat awake, back against the hollowed oak, eyes fixed on the knight who had fallen at the edge of the firelight.

He breathed — shallow, uneven — but he lived.

His armor was scorched, etched with runes that flickered faintly, like dying embers. One gauntlet was missing. Blood streaked his temple, dried black in his dark hair. His broken sword lay beside him, its blade snapped clean — not melted, not shattered. Severed.

By magic.
Divine magic.

Rose didn’t touch him.

But her hair did.

A single strand curled around his wrist, testing.
It pulsed once — a slow, dark throb — and retracted.

Not corrupted.
Not lying.
But… hollow.

Like a vessel with no memory of what it once carried.

Niam stirred beside her, blinking sleep from her eyes.

“He’s still alive,” she whispered.

Rose nodded.

Niam sat up, hugging her knees. “Do you think he really came to kill you?”

“I think he thinks he did,” Rose said. “But the body remembers what the mind forgets.”

As if on cue, the knight gasped.

His back arched.
His fingers clawed at the earth.
And then his eyes snapped open — one clear blue, the other clouded like storm-churned ice.

He saw Rose.

And for a heartbeat, something burned behind his gaze.

Hatred?
Duty?
Grief?

Then it faded.

“…You’re real,” he croaked.

Rose didn’t answer.

He tried to rise. Failed. Collapsed back with a groan.

“Don’t,” Niam said, surprising herself. “You’re hurt.”

The knight turned to her. “You… were at the pyre.”

Niam nodded.

“You’re… not burned.”

“No,” she said. “She saved me.”

His eyes flicked to Rose. “Then I failed.”

“You didn’t do anything,” Rose said. “You just showed up. Collapsed. And started talking.”

“I was sent,” he muttered. “To end the Silent One. To seal the Sorrow.”

“And now?” Rose asked. “Do you still want to?”

He stared at her — really stared.

Not at the crown of shadow.
Not at the writhing hair.
But at her.

The girl beneath the myth.

And then, softly:
“…I don’t know.”

Silence.

The wind rustled the trees.

Niam leaned forward. “What’s your name?”

The knight blinked. “I… don’t remember.”

Rose tilted her head. “You don’t remember your name. But you remember your mission?”

“I remember pieces.” He touched his temple. “Flashes. A temple. A vow. A voice saying, ‘The Demon Lord must not rise.’ And then… pain. Like my mind was being scrubbed.”

Rose and Niam exchanged a glance.

“Magic,” Niam said. “They wiped you.”

“Not all of it,” the knight said. “Some things… linger.”

He looked at Rose again.

“I saw you die.”

Rose froze.

“What?”

“In my memories. A city. Rain. A girl with black hair… stepping into the street. A bus. And then—” he pressed his palms to his skull “—light. A divine hand. Pushing her. Not an accident.”

Rose’s breath caught.

She had always assumed it was her fault.
That she wasn’t paying attention.
That she let it happen.

But someone… pushed her?

“Who?” Niam whispered.

The knight shook his head. “I don’t know. But the voice said… ‘Let sorrow take root in the unseen. When it blooms, we will contain it.’”

Rose stood.

Her hair rose with her, coiling like a serpent ready to strike.

They planned this.

They didn’t summon her.

They engineered her death.

Used her loneliness.

Her invisibility.

And dropped her here — like planting a seed in poisoned soil.

To grow into a monster they could control.

A scapegoat.

A sealed evil.

So they could stay the light.

And she could be the dark.

Niam stood too. “They’re afraid of you.”

“Not of me,” Rose said, voice low. “Of what I represent.
Sorrow they refused to heal.
Pain they refused to see.
And now… it walks.”

The knight looked up at her. “Then I wasn’t sent to kill a demon.”
“I was sent to clean up one they made.”

Rose turned to him. “And now that you remember… what will you do?”

He tried to stand again. This time, he made it to his knees.

“I don’t know my name.
I don’t know my past.
But I know this —
I don’t want to serve the ones who erase minds to keep their hands clean.”

He reached for his broken sword.

Rose tensed.

But he didn’t raise it.

He placed it at her feet.

“I don’t know who I was,” he said.
“But if I have to choose between the light that lies…
And the darkness that feels…
I’ll walk with the shadows.”

Silence.

Then, Niam smiled.

Rose didn’t.

But her hair — slowly, gently — curled around the broken blade and lifted it.

She studied the fracture.

Then closed her hand around it.

Black threads — strands of her own hair, infused with sorrow — wove around the break.

Not repairing.
Transforming.

When she opened her hand, the sword was whole.

But changed.

The blade was no longer steel.

It was shadow-forged, etched with veins of deep violet — like bruises in metal.
The hilt wrapped in braided black, pulsing faintly.

A weapon born of grief.

The knight reached for it.

The moment his fingers touched it, he flinched.

Memories flooded back.

A training yard.
A white banner.
A vow: “I will purge the darkness.”
Then fire.
A scream.
A girl’s voice: “Why won’t you just let me cry?”
And then — the erasure.

He gasped, falling back.

“I… I was there,” he whispered. “At the pyre. Years ago. I watched them burn a girl… for weeping too long. I did nothing.”

Niam’s eyes widened. “You… you saw someone like me?”

He looked at her. “I didn’t stop it. And for that… I was punished. Rewritten. Sent here to fix what I failed to prevent.”

Rose stepped forward.

“Then you’re not here to kill me.”
“You’re here to redeem yourself.”

He looked up at her — the Demon Lord, the girl, the vessel of sorrow.

And for the first time, he didn’t see a monster.

He saw a mirror.

“I don’t know my name,” he said again.
“But if you’ll allow it…
Call me Kael.”

Rose studied him.

“Kael means ‘pure’ in the old tongue,” she said.
“Do you think you are?”

He looked at his hands. At the shadow-blade. At Niam, watching him with quiet hope.

“No,” he said. “But I’d like to stop pretending I was.”

Rose turned away.

The wind lifted her hair like a storm.

“Then stay,” she said.
“But not as a knight.
Not as a killer.
As something new.”

And as the sun rose over the trees, three figures stood together in the ruins of the night:

And the world, far away, began to tremble.

That evening, as they walked toward the northern woods — where ancient ruins whispered and the earth still bled magic — Niam asked:

“Do you think there are others like us?”

Rose didn’t answer.

But her hair brushed against a stone marker, half-buried in moss.

It pulsed once.

And from the ground, a single black rose bloomed — thorned, silent, beautiful.

Kael looked at it. “That wasn’t there before.”

Rose touched the petals.

They didn’t cut her.

They whispered.

Not in words.

In sorrow.

A hundred voices.
A thousand tears.
All buried.
All forgotten.

And now… waking.

Rose closed her eyes.

And for the first time, she answered.

Not with words.

With a thought.

"I hear you."

And deep beneath the earth, something stirred.