Oil lamps burned atop iron stakes, their flames bending sideways though no wind stirred. The light was unnatural—feverish, pulsing—throwing long, stuttering shadows that crawled across the walls like living things.
Whispers slithered along the floor, rising from nowhere and everywhere at once. I couldn’t understand the words, but I felt them—deep in my bones, like something ancient scratching against the inside of my skull.
The braziers hissed and spat, their smoke thick and greasy, clinging to my lungs. The scent was unbearable, incense laced with the metallic tang of dried blood, coppery and suffocating.
The walls had been shrouded in heavy black fabric, soaked and stained with crimson sigils that ran downward. Chains still hung from their hooks, but now they carried adornments—bone charms, black feathers, and strings of finger bones that rattled together in a low rhythm, like the whispering voices below the stone.
Where once iron masks had stared down from the walls, new visages leered. Ceremonial masks—grotesque, swollen with expression, each one carved to resemble some forgotten god. Mouths gaping too wide. Eyes hollow, dripping red pigment that ran like tears. Their shadows glared across the chamber in cruel judgment.
Severen’s throne no longer resembled a vulture’s perch. The floor beneath it had been carved into a vast pentagram, the grooves burning with dull-red light that pulsed like a living heartbeat. The obsidian slab gleamed wet, and slick with fresh blood, carved through with runes that twisted and shifted even when I tried not to see them.
Beside the throne stood a dome of smoky glass, its surface veined with imperfections. Within it, a silver-and-black flower turned slowly, hypnotic, as though swaying to music only Severen could hear. The petals caught the lamplight and flashed like knives beneath water.
And then I saw him.
Severen.
No longer the gaunt, decaying figure that haunted the pits. He sat straight upon his throne, every movement smooth and deliberate. His skin gleamed with health, his long gray hair pulled back to reveal eyes alive with something unholy.
The grin he wore wasn’t human. It was hunger given shape.
Shadows coiled around his feet, twitching and restless—drawn to him, eager to be near, to feed.
He had been reborn.
And he was waiting for us to be broken.
When he spoke, his voice slid through the air like poison—soft, perfect, each word cutting with the precision of glass.
“Welcome, my chosen.”
The sound echoed off the stone, a dark benediction.
“Tonight,” he said, “you ascend. Tonight, you are stripped of what you were… and remade into what you must become.”
His smile widened, and the shadows surged forward, crawling toward us like dogs hearing their master’s call.
The guards shoved us through the doorway; the iron at my wrists screamed as the chains bit and the chamber swallowed us. One of them spat on the floor and barked toward the throne in a voice wet with triumph. “Master, we found your prisoners in the healer’s room, she snuck into their cell.”
Severen’s head lifted. His grin spread slowly and easily, those pale, dark-rimmed eyes drinking us in like something he meant to devour. “Oh?” he said, as if the news were a delicious seasoning. He glanced toward the guards and then back at us. “Did she now?”
The taller guard pressed the claim, leaning close. “Yes. She freed them from their cells and tended their wounds. Defied your orders.”
Severen’s eyes glittered. He folded his hands as if considering a rare toy. “Do not worry,” he purred to the men, voice buttery and poisonous. “She will receive her punishment very soon. While you undergo your ascent, during your last trial, her fate will be made an example.”
Lazarus didn’t wait. He lunged against his bonds, the chain snapping, and all the soft things in him—love, fury, despair—poured into one raw sound. “Don’t you fucking touch her!” he roared. “I’m going to kill you.”
Severen’s laugh slid through the chamber like smoke. He leaned forward, shadows pooling at his feet, and the grin widened until it was obscene. “You can try,” he said, voice as flat as a blade. “But death will not touch you once you ascend. No matter how hard you strike, no matter how often you think you bury me—when the dark coils around you, you will find me standing.”
The barb hung in the air. It was not only a taunt but a promise—he had already placed himself beyond the reach of the world’s rules. The guards relaxed as if they had heard a verdict.
Lazarus spat blood and fury, his chest heaving. The sight of him pushing, desperate and unbroken, set something cold and dull inside me, tugging toward a split—part rage, part calculation I could not yet admit. I felt the ember in my ribs flare.
I came forward, each step forced by iron hands, and told him what I’d been holding like a blade. “Lazarus and I will destroy you,” I said, voice low and steady. “When we stand over your corpse, that will be the last face you ever see. I might have done monstrous things, but you are the true monster. Every single deed of yours drips with corruption and cruelty.”
Severen’s eyes narrowed, the room seeming to drink the sound of my vow. For a moment, a raw, pleased hunger crossed his face. “Have the two of you made your peace,” he mused, “or perhaps you’ve finally fucked my son in secret? Is that why you stand shoulder to shoulder?” His words were meant to wound, meant to pry open whatever small tenderness remained between us and make it bleed.
They shoved us inward, iron grinding against stone as the guards forced us into the rune-scarred circle. Masks on the walls leaned close with painted grins, their vacant eyes catching the lamplight and throwing it back like knives. The braziers spat, fat black smoke curling up to darken the beams above. Beside the throne, the glass dome turned with slow, inexorable grace; the black-and-silver flower within caught every flicker like a blade flashing in the dark.
