Waiting for the next horror to crawl through and finish what Severen had started.
“Look out!” I shouted, my voice cracking as it echoed into the dark.
Something massive struck the ground behind me.
I threw myself sideways, palms scraping against stone, just as a corpse crashed into the pit with a wet, heavy thud. The sound split the silence—thick and deadened, like the end of a heartbeat.
The body landed twisted, its spine bent the wrong way, its head turned toward the ceiling as if it were still searching for mercy. The eyes stared wide and glassy, the mouth frozen mid-prayer.
My breath hitched. My stomach tied itself into knots.
Then more came.
Bodies fell like offerings cast into a sacrificial pit—slamming into the ground one after another with bone-shattering weight. They didn’t land clean. They split open. Flesh tore, organs spilled, limbs tangled together until the center of the chamber became a heap of blood and bone.
They were half-rotted already.
Men who had failed the trials.
One had no arms—just stumps, bones jutting white through blackened flesh. Another’s jaw hung by a few tendons, slack and broken against what remained of his throat. A third had no eyes, only hollow sockets crawling with maggots.
The air turned solid with stench.
Rot. Piss. Iron. Decay.
It filled my lungs, coated my tongue. The torchlight flickered, fighting to stay alive in the suffocating dark.
Flies came instantly—buzzing, writhing, feeding. They crawled across the faces of the dead, dipped into open mouths, disappeared into wounds. The pit belonged to them now.
I stumbled back until my shoulders struck stone. My hands trembled against the wall. A scream tried to tear its way out of me—but nothing came. The sound died in my throat.
Then a shadow appeared at the rim of the pit—a guard.
He stood above us, torchlight catching the edges of his grin.
“Eat or starve,” he called down, voice flat and almost amused. “Doesn’t matter to me. The faster you eat, the quicker you leave.”
And then he was gone.
The door slammed shut.
Salvatore and I sat across from each other in the filth, corpses piled around us, the remaining trial men huddled at the edges—breathing, wounded, barely upright.
We didn’t speak.
We didn’t move.
We only stared at the heap between us, waiting for it to twitch. Waiting for it to whisper.
After what felt like an hour—or a lifetime—Salvatore finally spoke. His voice was rough, barely human.
“It’s only a matter of time,” he said. “Until we give in.”
He looked at me, eyes hollow.
“May as well end it now.”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.
