The guards didn’t hear me, or maybe they did and simply didn’t care. I wasn’t speaking for them anyway.
The words left me like ash, carried on the wind that reeked of salt and dust. I spoke them to no one—to the air, to the gods, to whatever dying thing in this place that still had ears.
But the wind gave nothing back.
The gods didn’t answer.
And silence was all that came.
Here, there was no truth.
No mercy.
Only chains and dust and the weight of what the world had decided I was.
A prisoner.
A murderer.
A stain the gods had already forgotten.
And gods—if he still lived somewhere beyond these walls, hidden behind the sunbaked limestone of his estate, seated in that cedar hall of his lined with gold and arrogance, sipping date wine from silver goblets carved with lions and bulls?—
It would be just like him.
To let the world believe I killed him.
To watch me fester for his amusement.
To savor the ruin of me as if it were a fine meal, every scream and lash a drop of sweetness on his tongue.
I could see it too clearly—his smug grin in the firelight, the brazier smoldering with Byblos incense, the ivory box at his side stuffed with secrets and coin. His favorite phrase whispered through my skull, oily and cold.
The gods favor the clever.
Maybe that was why he wrote me into his final deception?—
So, he could prove that even from afar, even in death, he could still win.
We stood like lambs before slaughter. Wrists bound. Necks collared. Chains linking us together in the cold wind. The ground trembled beneath the weight of the fortress.
A guard barked a command.
Slowly—so slowly—the gates of the Dreadhold began to move.
The sound that followed wasn’t the groan of bronze or stone. It was a cry. A long, dragging wail—as though the fortress itself resented being opened. The hinges shrieked, flaking green corrosion into the wind. A wave of cold air spilled out, thick with the stench of mildew, blood, and human shit.
Inside, the noise was worse.
Wailing. Moaning. Screams that belonged to no single throat. The crack of a whip sounded through the chaos—sharp, deliberate, almost rhythmic. Each strike ended in a wail that wasn’t human anymore.
I hesitated at the threshold.
A shove between my shoulders sent me stumbling forward into the dark. The air closed around me like water swallowing a stone.
The cold clung to my skin. The smell of decay settled into my throat. Every breath felt harder than the one before. Would I survive this? Or would the sound and the dark grind through my skull until they hollowed me out? Until madness became the only mercy left?
I looked toward Lazarus. His eyes met mine.
