Chapter 02

Chapter 02

The King Who Would Not Die

They wrapped Sampson Dotse in burial cloth before dawn.

No king in the history of the Wagadu Kingdom had been prepared for burial so quickly, and no court had ever moved with such fear. The elders spoke in whispers, their eyes refusing to linger on the body laid before them. His skin was cold. His breathing had stopped. His chest no longer rose.

By every law of man, King Sampson was dead.

Yet none of them could forget the way his eyes had glowed when he fell.

The drums of death sounded at sunrise. Slow. Final. Unforgiving.

They lowered him into a stone-lined grave beyond the palace walls, away from royal ancestors, as tradition demanded for kings who died under “unclean signs.” Earth covered him. Incense burned. The final prayer was spoken with trembling lips.

And then the people fled.

Because even in death, Sampson Dotse felt wrong.

Darkness pressed in around him, thick and suffocating. The weight of the earth crushed his limbs, pinned his chest, stole the last memory of air. Time stretched and twisted. Seconds became years. Years became nothing.

Then hunger came.

Not the hunger of an empty stomach, but something deeper—older. A burning ache that clawed at his insides, screaming for satisfaction. The beast’s heart within him thudded once… twice… and then began to beat with terrible insistence.

Sampson’s eyes snapped open.

He inhaled—earth, rot, stone—his lungs filling painfully. Panic surged through him. He screamed, but soil filled his mouth. Instinct overrode reason. His fingers curled, nails hardening into something sharp and unnatural.

He clawed upward.

Stone cracked. Earth burst. Roots tore free as Sampson erupted from his grave like a demon dragged from the underworld. He collapsed onto the ground, coughing dirt and blood that was no longer entirely his own.

The moon stared down at him, pale and indifferent.

Sampson screamed again—this time in fury.

Days followed that should not have existed.

He wandered through forests and abandoned villages, hiding from the sun, learning the limits of his new existence. He did not tire. Wounds sealed themselves before his eyes. Spears shattered against his skin. Fire burned him—but did not kill him.

And the hunger never left.

Animals were first.

A goat, its neck snapped with shocking ease. Then a deer, its blood hot and intoxicating. Each feeding sharpened his senses, strengthened his limbs, and buried his humanity a little deeper.

But animals were not enough.

When bandits crossed his path, blades raised, laughter cruel, Sampson did not run. He moved faster than thought, stronger than ten men. When it was over, their bodies lay broken and bloodless, eyes wide with terror.

Sampson stared at his hands, slick with red.

“What have I become?” he whispered.

The answer came not in words, but in silence.

Years passed. Kingdoms fell. Names turned to dust.

Sampson watched from the shadows as the world reshaped itself. He saw iron replace bronze, heard new languages born, witnessed gods rise and fall in the mouths of men. Yet nothing touched him. He did not age. He did not sicken. He did not die.

He tried.

He stepped into rivers swollen with crocodiles and did not drown. He leapt from cliffs and rose with bones knitting themselves whole. He allowed enemies to pierce his heart again and again—only to feel the beast-heart beat on, unbroken.

Death refused him.

Madness nearly claimed him instead.

There were nights he raged like a monster, slaughtering anything that crossed his path. Other nights he wept beneath the stars, clutching his chest where his true heart no longer lived, begging gods he no longer believed in to end his suffering.

Once, in desperation, he returned to the ruins of his old palace.

The throne lay shattered, vines curling through cracked stone. The name Dotse was spoken no more. His people had scattered, absorbed by time and conquest.

He knelt where his throne once stood.

“I was king,” he said to the empty hall. “I was chosen.”

The wind answered him with mockery.

That was when he understood the cruelty of the curse.

He was not meant to rule.

He was meant to endure.

The beast within him grew stronger with every century, urging him to abandon restraint, to embrace the hunger fully, to become the monster the prophet had named him.

And for a time… he did.

Sampson became a shadow whispered of in villages. A demon. A punishment sent by angry gods. Mothers warned their children to stay indoors when the moon was high.

Yet even then, something within him resisted complete surrender.

Memories—of drums, of prayers, of a God he had mocked—returned unbidden.

It was on one such night, weak from hunger and fleeing the sunrise, that Sampson stumbled upon a structure unlike any he had seen before.

A small building of stone and wood.

A cross stood above its door.

As he crossed its threshold, something unseen slammed into him like a wall of fire. He collapsed, writhing, the beast screaming inside him.

But for the first time in centuries…

The hunger quieted.

Sampson lay on the cold floor, shaking, as light filtered through stained glass and painted his skin in colors he no longer recognized.

Tears streamed from his eyes.

Because for the first time since the bell rang thrice…

The darkness had loosened its grip.

And Sampson Dotse, the king who would not die, had found a refuge he did not deserve.