The laughter spread—cold, echoing down the stone hall like a blade drawn slow.
But I knew better.
We weren’t survivors.
Survivors came back whole.
We were something else—things born of hunger and madness.
And somewhere deep in my gut, I knew the truth.
The worst was still ahead.
Chapter15
Salvatore
Sleep had become a fever dream. I drifted in and out of it, my stomach twisting with the weight of what I’d swallowed—the taste of human flesh still sour on my tongue.
The crash of iron tore me out of half-consciousness.
The prison door screamed under the strain of its chains. Each strike echoed through my skull, as sharp as a bone splintering.
I jolted upright, breath catching in my throat. My hands were still caked with dried blood—the blood of men I had torn and devoured. My face had hardened beneath it, the gore stiff and cracking when I moved.
And I felt nothing.
Not guilt.
Not horror.
Nothing.
Lazarus had raged. He’d prayed, wept, gagged until his throat bled.
That was the difference between us.
The guards slammed the door again. The sound rattled the walls, shaking dust from the stone.
“On your feet, you useless bastards,” one barked. “Unless you’d rather waste away where you sit. Your chores await.”
Their voices were the same as always—cruel, detached, filled with the tired amusement of men who had forgotten mercy long ago. I wondered if they still saw us as human, or if we were already part of the Dreadhold’s rot.
The air was thick—sour, damp, unmoving. Every breath carried the stink of iron and decay.
Across the cell, Lazarus sat hunched in the corner, his face half-hidden, shoulders drawn as tight as rope. When he rose, he didn’t look at me. Didn’t even twitch in my direction. His gaze stayed low, fixed on the floor.
“Hey,” I said, my voice too loud in the suffocating quiet. “I wonder what kind of hell they’ll feed us today.”
I tried to make it sound like a joke.
But he didn’t answer.
Didn’t move.
Just stood there, as silent as the stone around us.
Something in his stillness unsettled me. The space between us wasn’t just silence anymore. It was distance—a gulf carved by what we’d done.
