The Cruel Prince

They said he was born with a failing breath,

A brittle bone, a cursed start,

A child the healers shook their heads at,

A body weak, a sharpened heart.

He should have died before first snow,

But hate kept pulling him through—

A fire that burned where hope ran out,

And made the impossible true.

Oh the Cruel Prince, cold as steel,

With a crown of wrath and flame,

The greatest witchkiller ever known,

And terror was his name.

He loved no land, he spared no life,

He walked where mercy died—

If you stood between him and his war,

You stood too close to hide.

He named the witches plague and rot,

A sickness in the land,

And raised his blade like holy law

No one could countermand.

Not child nor elder, kin nor friend,

No voice could make him stay—

For all were enemies in his path

If they slowed his chosen way.

Oh the Cruel Prince, iron-willed,

With eyes that never wept,

He burned through towns and broken vows

And promises he never kept.

No god could turn him from his course,

No plea could make him cease—

He traded all the world had left

For war that never sleeps.

They whispered sickness shaped his soul,

That pain had taught him rage,

That every breath he fought to draw

Was paid for with an age.

Some say it wasn’t strength at all

That kept his heart alive—

But hatred, sharp enough to cut

The thread that lets men die.

He didn’t fight for crown or kin,

Nor glory sung by men,

He fought because the war itself

Was all that lived in him.

So remember the Cruel Prince,

When anger wears a face,

When justice rots to obsession

And mercy finds no place.

He fell at last in witchborn fire,

As all such men must fall—

And left behind a scorched-out land

That mourned him not at all.

They say his hate outlived his breath,

Still pacing field and stone—

A warning carved in ash and bone:

No war is fought alone.