They called him King Alaric the pure, not for his soul, but for his obsession with cleanliness. His halls gleamed white marble, his guards wore white Armor polished daily, his servants scrubbed tirelessly, their hands raw and sore. Dirt, to him, was sin and those who toiled in the mud committed a crime punishable by death. When the raining season came, it came with massive floods, mud was thick, black, and endless. Water swallowed the crops. Villages sank. And the poor, caked in filth, crawled to the palace gates for mercy. He gave none, he hardly ever went out, in his 10 years of rule, he went out a total zero times. He called himself the divine one. “Let the earth eat them,” Alaric said from his throne of ivory. “If they are covered in rot, then they belong to it.” One day, a woman came. Cloaked in rags, skin dark with dirt, eyes sharp as thorns. The guards tried to stop her, but she walked untouched through the courtyard. The rain parted for her like frightened dogs. She stood before the king, dripping mud onto his polished floor. “You should not be here,” Alaric said,with disgust in his gaze. The woman smiled, and with a single flick of her hand, flung a fistful of wet, black mud into his face. It struck his eye. Mud in his eyes, He screamed not in pain, but rage. The guards rushed her, but she was gone. Vanished into the rain. That night, the king’s eye festered. Physicians cut, bled, and burned, but the rot spread. First to the socket. Then his face. Then his mind. By dawn, King Alaric stood at the highest tower, scratching endlessly at his own skin. His once-white robes were soaked in blood and grime. In his momentary madness, he tripped and fell from the highest point of the castle. No one saw the king again, he was given an unceremonious burial, the streets were filled with joy and his reign of tyranny ended.