“And Helena?” the guard asked, stepping closer, voice dripping mockery. “Enemies of hers, too? And her lovers? Convenient, isn’t it? Everyone is dead but you.”
He leaned in, voice low, breath sour.
“You’re grasping at shadows, fool. And if you’re not careful… you’ll choke on them.”
Chains rattled beside me—Lazarus’ voice breaking through the tension, rough with desperation.
“Salvatore, stop,” he said. His voice was steady, but I could hear the fear hiding underneath. “You’re only giving them what they want.”
But I couldn’t stop.
I turned my head toward him, the chain between us pulling taut, cutting into my neck. “They’re framing us!” I shouted, the words ripping free like flesh from bone. “This whole thing is a godsdamned setup!”
A guard stepped forward, his movements efficient, almost bored.
The hilt of his sword slammed into my jaw.
The world lurched sideways. My body folded, dragging the chains into a sharp clatter that echoed through the chamber like thunder in a tomb.
Pain exploded behind my eyes—white, searing, endless. My head rang. My mouth filled with blood.
But it was nothing compared to the hollow rupture in my chest.
The kind of ache that didn’t bleed—it devoured.
“You don’t understand—my father would do this! He’d fake his death just to ruin me, to prove I’m nothing! Show me his body! Show me he’s really fucking dead!” I rasped, spitting blood onto the stone. I forced myself upright, my body shaking, chains clattering like a death chant.
The guard’s hand slid back to his sword hilt, his lip curling. “Stand down, prisoner.”
“Let us go!” I screamed, voice tearing raw from my throat. “We didn’t do this!”
“Salvatore!” Lazarus shouted, his voice ragged, desperate, chained as I was. “Stop! Please—stop! You’re only making it worse!”
The sound of Lazarus’ voice went thin and then went out—like a torch snuffed at my back.
Rage filled me so completely that it left no room for anything else. It was a weight in my mouth, a furnace in my chest, a drum in my skull. Louder than reason. Louder than pain. The only thing that felt real.
“You’re framing us!” I roared, the words ricocheting off the basalt. “This reeks of manipulation!”
The guard didn’t wait this time. His fist came without thought, a hard, ugly instrument of the place. It cracked into my jaw, and the world exploded.
I hit the stone harder than before. Fire seared behind my eyes. Blood filled my mouth, hot and metallic, and my head throbbed as if struck by a smith’s mallet. I lay there, lungs burning, ears ringing, the ground steady and indifferent beneath me.
Above me, the guard loomed—his silhouette a jagged thing in the torchlight, the smell of smoke and sweat and old cruelty on his skin. He bent so close his breath tasted of refuse.
“You’re never leaving this place, Lorian,” he said, voice as flat as a slab. “The only way out of the Dreadhold?—”
He leaned in.
“—is to kill the warden himself. Morgrath Severen.”
He drew back, spit curling at the corner of his mouth. “And let me tell you something—that’s never going to happen. You and your little friend? You’ll die here. Slowly.”
The sentence dropped into me and sank like a stone. The pain in my jaw dulled to a cold, gnawing ache as his words planted themselves inside my chest.
Morgrath Severen.
The name itself was a weight. A whisper men feared to speak aloud, the way one spoke of disease or blasphemy. I had heard it first as a child, whispered around the hearth to frighten the bold into obedience. Back then, it was only a story—smoke and superstition told to keep boys from wandering too far into the night.
