"Father!" Myra's voice, though hushed, cut through the fog like a knife.

Horror etched every line of Godrick's face as he turned to find his daughter stepping out of her hiding place, her eyes wide with a mix of fear and thrill.

"Gods be good, Myra! What madness possessed you?" he hissed, drawing her away from the water's edge and towards the relative safety of the guardhouse.

The guard's quarters were a stark contrast to the opulence that once graced the halls of the castle. Godrick's haven was a modest chamber, forged of necessity, a shelter from the relentless storm of his duties. The room was bare, save for a narrow bed, a rough-hewn table, and a flickering lantern that cast more shadows than light. Here, the walls whispered of vigil and solitude, and the air hung heavy with the weight of unspoken secrets.

But before he could secure her in the cramped confines of his vigil post, a bone-chilling growl echoed from the castle, a sound that seemed to draw the very warmth from the air and replace it with frozen dread.

Myra's breath came in short bursts, her small frame trembling not just from the chill of the stone walls but from the shock of the otherworldly growl that still rang in her ears. Godrick's eyes were alight with a protective fury as he implored, "Stay here, do not move!"

"You must not enter the castle," he commanded, his voice a mix of fear and authority. "Horror dwells within those walls, and I will not have it lay eyes upon you."

With a warrior's reflex, Godrick ignited the cannon, sending a signal bursting into the sky, its fiery trail a silent scream for aid. He turned his back for but a moment, believing the danger impressed upon his daughter. But curiosity is a siren that sings sweetly to the brave, and Myra was her father's child.

She slipped away, her small form finding passage through a gap in the ancient stones, into the belly of darkness itself. The castle's interior was a mausoleum of grandeur, a husk of majesty that echoed with the memories of the damned. Tapestries, once vibrant and teeming with the colors of life, hung in tatters, their threads pulled apart by time and sorrow. The marble floors were cracked, every fissure a testament to the decay of a lineage forsaken. Dust lay like a shroud over the furniture, and the air tasted of mildew and rot.

The stench of death, thick and cloying, clung to the air, a perfume of the charnel house. And there, amidst the ruin of what might once have been a grand hall, was a creature so grotesque it seemed a thing of nightmare.

Its form was twisted, hulking, covered in tattered remnants of what once could have been skin or cloth. It feasted, its maw slick with the blood of rodents and the remnants of men, a tableau of terror rendered in flesh and bone.

Myra stood frozen, her heart a drumbeat of fear, her body a statue in the face of monstrosity. The truth of her father's duty, the reality of the cursed child Astel, lay bare before her in this grotesque feast. The child who was not a child, the monster who was once a prince, consumed his horrors in ignorance of the green-eyed girl who beheld him.

The monster's eyes met Myra's, a savage gleam within their depths that knew not of kinship or mercy, only the hunger that gnawed ceaselessly at its soul. With a guttural roar, it lunged, its grotesque hands ensnaring the girl, claws rending cloth and flesh alike. Blood welled from Myra's arm, a bright crimson that seemed to glow against the darkness.

Her scream, piercing and raw, tore through the night, finding its way to Godrick, who felt it as a physical blow. He charged into the bowels of the castle, a place he had kept vigil over but had hoped never to enter again. His heart thundered in his chest, a frantic drumbeat heralding his dread.

The confrontation between Godrick and the creature that was once Astel tore at the very fabric of his being. He faced the abomination, his stance firm, the blade in his hand a silent oath to protect, to serve, to end the nightmare that had begun with a queen's desperate plea. His eyes, those wells of fatherly warmth, now flickered with the flames of hellish resolve.

"Astel, forgive me," Godrick murmured, a prayer for the lost boy as his blade found its mark. The strike was true, born of countless hours of training, and years of a heart torn between duty and compassion. He drove the cold steel into the beast's back, aiming for the heart, if such a creature possessed one akin to a man's.

The creature shuddered, its grip loosening. Godrick saw it then, a flicker in its eyes, a glint of something lost, something human that struggled against the dark veil of its cursed existence. The beast's roar was not just of pain but of betrayal, the very sound wrenching Godrick's heart from his chest.

The beast, Astel, fell to the stone with a thud that echoed like a tolling bell, yet the triumph was short-lived. Godrick turned to gather Myra, his mind aflame with the need to escape, to save his daughter from this nightmarish fate.

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But as they fled, a searing pain exploded in Godrick's side. A spike, cruel and unforgiving, had impaled him, its tip glistening with the evidence of his lifeblood. Twisting in disbelief, he saw Astel rising, a hole in his chest that would have spelled the end for any mortal creature, yet it was naught but a minor hindrance to the spawn of the devil's pact.

The beast, wounded but not vanquished, turned its feral gaze upon him, and in that infernal visage, Godrick saw the ghost of the child he had sworn to protect. His resolve faltered, but only for a heartbeat. He could not—would not—fail Myra. She was innocence incarnate, the very soul of what he had once vowed to uphold.

"Run, Myra!" Godrick cried out, his voice a command that brooked no disobedience.

The creature lunged, a mass of fury and fangs and claws, and Godrick met it with a cry that was both a battle cry and a lament. Their struggle was a dance of desperation, a father's love clashing against a darkness borne of ancient sorcery.

As Godrick was struck by the creature's vicious counter, he felt the hot spill of his blood and knew the grave cost of his hesitation. His world narrowed to the sound of Myra's cries, the sight of her terror-stricken face, and the knowledge that his time had run out.

The fishermen, summoned by the signal, burst through the door just in time to witness the horror unfold. They seized Myra, dragging her away from the carnage, her eyes locked on her father for one final, haunting moment.

Godrick's gaze held Myra's, his lips moving in a silent goodbye, an apology that he would not be there to watch her grow, to protect her from the shadows. As the door closed, his world darkened, not from the loss of light but from the eclipse of his soul, as the creature reclaimed him in a savage retribution for the pain it had endured.

As the fishermen pulled Myra into the night, her gaze captured the sight of Godrick, a man who had stood as her protector, now helpless in the grip of the immortal abomination. The castle door slammed shut, severing the last thread of light from Myra's sight, the image of her father's final, desperate struggle etched into her memory as the monster dragged him into the suffocating dark to feast.

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When the orb of night bloomed full and silvered the world with its borrowed light, the curse lifted its merciless grip from the boy. Astel awoke to a reality more harrowing than any nightmare that had ever tormented his slumber. Beneath him lay Godrick, the man who had been both sentinel and sire to his accursed existence, now naught but a macabre effigy of his once robust form.

Astel's small hands, so delicate and human now, trembled as they brushed against the matted hair of the man who had shown him a fragment of tenderness in a world that had only ever spoken to him in the language of horror and violence.

The body of Godrick lay silent and desecrated; the vestiges of the carnage wreaked upon him by the creature that Astel could no longer deny he was. The fabric of his garb was but tattered shrouds clinging to the desecration that the beast had wrought. The boy's tears fell, mingling with the blood and filth that coated the remains, an innocent's lament for a sin so grievous that even the moon dared not shine too brightly upon it.

With the tender care of a son, Astel prepared a resting place for the man who had become his unwilling executioner, his mentor, his protector. He dug with hands that were not made for labor but for the parchment and quill he had never learned to hold. Each spadeful of earth was a penance, a silent oath to the memory of the man who had stood between him and the world that would never understand his curse.

As he laid Godrick's body into the earth, Astel's mind betrayed him, unfurling memories of feral rage, of tearing flesh, and the warm spray of blood that had felt so primal, so satisfying to the beast within. Yet now, those memories were poison, each one a dagger to his soul, revealing the grotesque tableau of his existence.

He remembered Godrick's eyes, filled with a complex brew of fear, resolve, and an aching sadness when the beast's gaze met his. Had the man known then, that the creature he sought to cage, to tame with kindness, would be his undoing? Astel's sobs grew ragged as the memories played before him, a cruel spectacle that he could not escape.

The monstrous recollections flickered, offering glimpses of Godrick's daughter, Myra, her image a stark reminder of the life Astel would never know. A life of daylight, of love, of belonging. His grief-stricken howls shattered the silence of the island, the keening of a child who understood, at last, the depth of his curse.

The boy, with the burden of such grievous knowledge, sought to mark the grave with words of love and remembrance, but the cruel irony of his ignorance mocked him. Letters and sounds were strangers to his mind, enigmatic symbols that Godrick had danced upon his lips in stories under the light of the moon.

In his despair, Astel wept anew, for in this moment, he understood the profound abyss between the creature of darkness he was, and the boy of light he longed to be. With trembling fingers, he took a shard of stone, and with every ounce of his will, he drew upon the makeshift gravestone not words, but an image of the sun—the sun that Godrick had described in tales, the sun that symbolized the warmth and love of which Astel dreamed but feared he would never know.

The simple carving was the child's epitaph to the only man who had dared to love a monster. In that crude depiction of the sun, Astel poured all the love and yearning of his fractured heart, a silent prayer that in some way, it would guide Godrick's soul to the light he deserved.

"Forgive me," Astel whispered into the night, a plea to the stars, to the gods he did not know, to the man who lay cold in the earth, "Forgive me, for I am the monster that devours the good and the innocent. I am the shadow that you fought against, the darkness you sought to shield me from."

With that, Astel's small body crumpled beside the fresh grave, his chest heaving with the weight of sobs that seemed to have no end. For the first time, the beast wept human tears, not for the fear of what crept in the shadows, but for the excruciating clarity of what it meant to be both the monster and the mournful child.