SLAUGHTER KING’S REBIRTH (Taekook/Vkook)
Chapter— 1
The scent of burning tobacco hung thick in the air, curling in sinister patterns through the shadows of the underground chamber. Smoke slithered past low-hanging lights like ghosts, mingling with the iron scent of blood and the raw sting of sweat and fear.
The walls, though once pristine limestone, were now pockmarked with rust-colored splatters and streaks of dried agony. Chains clinked faintly in the background, swinging ever so slightly as if they remembered the last man who’d screamed against their pull.
At the heart of this subterranean nightmare stood a figure carved from power and cruelty. Wei Zhaotong, the King, the Devil in designer silk, looked like something conjured from a sinner’s fever dream—six feet of sculpted muscle, a face too symmetrical to be real, lips curled in contempt and eyes as dark as coffins.
His tailored shirt, once pure white, was soaked through with a vivid crimson that stuck to his skin like a second layer. His sleeves were rolled to the elbows, revealing veins bulging beneath blood-slicked skin, and his fists were still wet, still twitching from the raw memory of violence.
He wasn’t supposed to dirty his own hands. He had men for that. But tonight? Tonight was personal.
At his feet, a man whimpered—a crumpled wreck of flesh and bone whose whimpers barely qualified as human. One of his eyes was sealed shut by a bloated, purple bruise. Blood leaked from his mouth in thick ropes, pooling beneath his cheek.
Teeth—no longer in his mouth but scattered across the dungeon floor like shattered porcelain—glimmered faintly under the torchlight. The man convulsed, a tremor rattling through him like death’s hand brushing his spine.
Wei Zhaotong stood over him, inhaling slowly. His lungs expanded with the scent of smoke, steel, blood, and fear. A cocktail he had long since grown addicted to. His tongue ran lazily along his teeth before he turned his head ever so slightly.
He said, his voice low and velvety, laced with danger like silk hiding a blade.
Akk stepped forward from the shadows, his breath catching slightly as he emerged into the full view of the carnage. His knuckles were still swollen from earlier, the skin split, caked with the blood of the man now writhing on the floor. He didn’t complain. He wouldn’t dare.
He stood tall, despite the pain in his ribs, the dull ache blooming across his jaw where a stray elbow had caught him.
Wei Zhaotong didn’t look at him. He didn’t need to. With the mere twitch of a bloodstained finger, he pointed toward the iron table set along the far wall.
The table gleamed like a shrine to agony. Lined meticulously with instruments of pain—blades curved for flaying, tongs designed for the removal of nails and teeth, and a branding rod resting in an iron pot of coals, its tip glowing molten orange—it was a butcher’s altar, a surgeon’s mockery.
Some of the tools were antique, medieval even, remnants of a time when pain was both punishment and performance. Others were more modern: pliers, clamps, scalpels, syringes filled with unknown liquids. Every item glistened under the flickering torchlight.
Wei Zhaotong
Bring me the pliers.
The King said, still not looking at Akk.
Without hesitation, Akk moved. He stepped carefully around the man on the floor, whose breathing came in choked, wet wheezes. Akk selected the tool with steady hands, the weight of it familiar. He’d used it before—many times, under the King’s gaze, under his guidance. He returned and knelt, offering it handle-first like a knight presenting his sword.
Wei took the pliers with a soft hum of approval, the simple sound sending a shudder down Akk’s spine.
He crouched then, like a lion playing with its prey, leveling his gaze with the broken man on the floor.
Wei Zhaotong
Do you know what this is?
Wei asked softly, almost sweetly. He lifted the pliers and opened and shut them slowly—clack… clack… clack—right in front of the man’s face.
Wei Zhaotong
These are for your fingernails. But I think we’ll start with your toes.
The man screamed—not in protest, but in a feral, animalistic panic. He tried to writhe away, but his legs were already bound to the cold floor with chains, his ankles swollen and red from earlier resistance. He whimpered, pleading, his mouth forming words he no longer had the strength to scream.
But Wei Zhaotong didn’t listen. He never did.
With cold precision, he placed the pliers around the first toenail. The sound was not immediate. First came the pressure, then the slow creak of bone and nail separating, and then finally, the wet pop as it came loose. The man screamed, the sound raw, piercing. Wei tossed the nail aside like garbage, barely blinking.
One by one, he removed them—slowly, carefully, like a painter savoring every stroke of his brush. Sweat rolled down his temples, but it wasn’t from strain. It was from the proximity of madness—the intoxicating power of owning someone so completely that you could dismantle them, piece by piece, and still keep them alive.
By the time the fourth nail was yanked free, the man had nearly passed out, eyes fluttering in delirium. Wei stood abruptly and turned his back on the mess.
Akk didn’t need to ask how. He stepped forward, grabbed the steel pail resting nearby—ice water, clean and brutal—and dumped it over the man’s head. The man lurched with a gasp, the shock wrenching him from unconsciousness.
He trembled violently, coughing up more blood, and for a moment, he made a sound like laughter—or maybe it was just hysteria.
Wei Zhaotong walked to the branding iron.
The rod was now white-hot, the metal tip humming softly from the heat. Akk stepped back instinctively as the King grasped it, the flames licking at the cuff of his already ruined shirt.
Wei said idly, turning the iron slightly, inspecting the heat,
Wei Zhaotong
In some countries, they brand cattle to show ownership. I find it poetic.
He turned, iron in hand, and crouched once more beside the man.
Wei Zhaotong
You belonged to me, *he said* And you betrayed me. So, I will mark you. As mine. Even in death.
The man tried to jerk away, tried to scream, but all he managed was a pitiful moan as Wei pressed the brand to his chest.
The scream that followed was unlike anything that had come before—ragged, long, guttural, torn from the very core of the man’s soul. Flesh sizzled under the searing metal, smoke curling from his skin as the smell of burning meat filled the chamber. The mark—a dragon wrapped around a crown—burned into his flesh with agonizing clarity.
Wei Zhaotong finally stood.
And then, casually, like a man brushing lint from his coat, he drove his boot down onto the man’s head. The skull cracked under the weight with a grotesque crunch. Blood sprayed across the stone floor in a sickening halo. The body twitched once, then stilled.
Silence fell. Not peaceful—never peaceful—but thick, heavy, final.
Akk fell to his knees without being told, his head bowed. The scene before him was holy in a twisted way. He wasn’t afraid. Not of the blood, the death, the cruelty. No, what clenched in his chest now was reverence.
The King turned, his face impassive as he approached Akk. He reached out with one bloodstained hand and placed it gently on the young man’s head, fingers sliding through his sweat-drenched hair.
He murmured. His voice was low, nearly a whisper, but it echoed in the vast dungeon like the toll of a death bell.
Wei Zhaotong
You didn’t flinch.
Wei’s thumb grazed along his jaw, tilting his face upward. Their eyes met—obsidian and stormcloud, both unreadable.
Wei Zhaotong
You’re going to take my place one day.
Akk’s breath caught. His chest tightened—not with fear, but the weight of something heavier. Responsibility. Devotion. The desperate hunger to be enough.
He whispered. The King nodded once, satisfied.
Akk stood, straightened his spine, and looked again at the body now growing cold on the floor. One day, he would do this alone. One day, he would give the orders. One day, he would be the Devil.
But for now, he was the favored disciple.
And blood was the price of loyalty.
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