1
LORD IMAS
The incense in the ritual chamber does not smell of devotion. It smells of rot disguised as lilies, a cloying, sugary thicket that coats the back of my throat and refuses to be swallowed.
It is the scent of The Serpent, and tonight, He is screaming.
I stand before the black altar, the stone cold enough to leech the heat through the soles of my boots. My breath mists in the damp air of Lliandor, mingling with the curling smoke of the brazier. But I can barely feel the cold. I can barely feel my own skin.
My head is a cathedral of bells, all ringing at once.
More. Now. Bleed. Break. Take.
The demands are not words; they are impulses fired directly into the base of my skull, a relentless, grinding static that hasn't ceased in two centuries. It is the sound of a thousand vipers hissing in a sealed room. It scrapes against the inside of my eyes, a constant, blinding pressure that makes thought feel like wading through broken glass.
I press the heels of my hands into my temples, groaning. The noise is louder tonight. It is a physical vibration in my teeth. Itmakes my hands shake. It makes me want to tear the skin off my face just to let the pressure out.
This is the price of power. The Chaos magic does not sit idly; it churns. It is a storm trapped in a bottle, and I am the glass, cracking under the strain.
"Quiet," I hiss, the word lost in the cacophony.
I need to vent it. I need to open the valve before I explode.
I raise my hand, fingers splayed, calling upon the chaos. I want a simple manifestation—a writhe of shadows to darken the corners of the room, a small act of dominance to soothe the beast.
Nothing happens.
A spark of violet light fizzles at my fingertips, sputtering like a candle in a gale, before vanishing into the gloom.
The noise in my head spikes, a shriek of disappointment that sends a spike of agony down my spine. I stagger, clutching the altar for support.
I stare at my hand. My skin, the color of burnt charcoal, looks dull in the low light. The intricate silver embroidery of my cuffs seems to mock me, a symbol of Khuzuth nobility wrapping a wrist that currently commands the magical authority of a tavern rat.
Pathetic.
I press my fingers together, tapping the pads against one another in a rhythm of calculated irritation. The silence in the room is heavy, pressing against my eardrums, but it is a lie. Inside me, the noise is deafening. It drives me. It makes me cruel not out of desire, but out of necessity. Cruelty is the only language The Serpent speaks. When I cause pain, the noise dips for a moment. When I break something, the static clears just enough for me to breathe.
I am a drowning man, and suffering is my air.
"You demand more," I whisper into the shadows. My voice is low, modulated to betray nothing, even to a god. "Always more."
The Serpent answers with a thrumming void within my chest, a hollow ache that demands to be filled. Pain is the currency of my patron deity. Suffering is the wine He drinks. But lately, the screams of the usual stock—the broken criminals, the weeping debtors—have grown stale. They offer their misery too freely. There is no texture to it, no exquisite resistance. It is cheap wine, and The Serpent has a refined palate.
Because the offering is weak, the noise remains loud. It makes me irritable. It makes me irrational. Yesterday, I nearly executed a chef for spilling soup, not because of the stain, but because the clatter of the bowl hitting the floor sounded like a thunderclap in my sensitized ears.
I am fraying.
Lord Malek knows this. I can feel my rival’s ambition circling my estate like a shark in the water. Malek, a brute who worships The Warrior, believes power lies in the strength of the arm and the sharpness of the axe. He is crude, loud, and effective. Rumors swirl in the high court that Malek has gained favor, that his territory expands while mine stagnates.
If I do not perform the Rite of the Blackened Heart before the next new moon, my standing in the caste will fracture.
I cannot allow that. I carved my domain out of the unforgiving stone of Lliandor with nothing but my will and my cruelty. I will not lose it to a man who thinks strategy is merely hitting something until it stops moving.
I lower my hands and look at the ring on my right forefinger.
It is a heavy band of obsidian, carved with the coiling likeness of my god. Usually, it hums against my skin, a conduit connecting my blood to the Ley lines of chaos that run beneath Protheka. Today, it is quiet. Not dead, but dormant. Waiting.
I run a thumb over the cold stone. It needs fuel. Not just blood—blood is easy. It needs terror. Pure, distilled terror. The kind of fear that stops the heart before the knife even cuts. I need a victim who understands exactly what is happening to them, who fights the inevitability of it, building a dam of panic behind their eyes until it bursts.
