I really like the visual of prominent death scars on Shadow Knights and the idea that Gene’s is around his neck. There’s no canon for how he died as far as I know, but popular fanon is hanging and beheading.
Personally, I like to go with beheading, but there’s no guillotine in my version of fantasy land! That means they have to do it by hand, old-school. Gene is made to kneel, hands bound, head down, and someone stands over him with a freshly sharpened sword. It’s probably a guard, one of his own men, maybe even one who regrets having to do this. If he’s lucky, the angle will be just right and the first strike will sever his spinal cord.
Oh, but Gene wouldn’t go quietly, would he? He’s been betrayed by his own brother, his own soldier is being made to kill him, he’s furious, he’s fighting against the guards forcefully escorting him through the streets. He’s acting like an angry animal, spitting and snarling and struggling. Swearing bloody vengeance on his twelve year old brother, blaming him for everything, looking into his horrified face in the front row of Gene’s execution and calling him a little fucking monster with all the venom he has to spare.
The image of having to be held down while you’re killed. Of fighting so hard that three grown men have to hold you down, pin you face-first against the dirt with all their weight pressing down on you. Your executioner is a kid you trained, one who looked up at you with admiration just a few days ago, and now his hands shake around the hilt of the sword that will kill you. He says he’s sorry; he says a prayer for your soul. You say a few vile curses in return.
You’re still struggling, bucking up against the men holding you down with all your strength, when the sword comes down the first time. The angle is bad, the man—the boy—holding the blade hesitated, and the strike was nowhere near heavy enough to kill you. The executioner lifts the blade to try again, and as it tears from your neck you scream like you never have before, gurgling and bloody and maybe terrified, if you had any energy not feeding the fire of your rage left to be terrified.
The second strike doesn’t kill you either, but it makes your hands and feet go numb, and this is part is what scares you. Your strings have been cut. If they left you to bleed, you’d be dead in minutes, but the way the blood loss makes you so woozy and tired and weak doesn’t scare you half as much as not being able to feel your body, as going limp and pliant through no will of your own. They don’t need three men to hold you down anymore, just one hand tangled in your hair to keep you face pressed to the dirt, gasping into the pool of blood gathering around your mouth. All you can do is scream and curse and cry.
The third strike comes down. You scream and scream and—
The man who greets you in the darkness of death, a shadow of the greatest traitor in your history books, opens his arms to you and promises your vengeance, if you’ll stand at his side. Vengeance on your Lord, on his daughter, and on your brother most of all, with a power you’ve never before felt running through your veins. He promises that none will ever kill you again, and the scar twisted around your neck, eating through your throat, will be the last.
You go. You behead the Lord of what was once your village in three strikes like he did you.
