“You’ll be first.”
The Sovereign of Flames.
Even the name read like a sentence.
Lazarus and I met eyes—soldiers carved by war, suddenly children before some old god. No words. One look said everything—What in the gods’ names had we been handed?
The guards hauled us up, the chains biting as they dragged us toward the gates. Bronze doors groaned open, spilling a wash of sunlight that stabbed at our eyes. For a moment, the world was only glare and dust—the prison yard.
Beneath our feet, the ground was hard-packed earth scattered with old straw and dried blood. Wooden posts lined the yard, dark with age and use, ropes hanging like dead vines. The smell of flesh and sweat clung to everything. A few prisoners worked under watch—hauling stones, emptying waste pits, their bodies little more than bone and sinew.
We were driven through them like cattle. A shove between the shoulders, a strike of the rod, and we stumbled across the yard toward the great bronze doors ahead. Beyond them waited the Dreadhold’s belly—the place that ate hope and spat out hollowness.
The air outside reeked of everything a living man feared—sweat, blood, decay, the sour tang of piss. It smelled like old wounds. Like the breath of men who had long since stopped begging.
Prisoners turned their hollowed faces toward us. Ribs showed in the way their linen hung. Skin stretched thin over bone. Their eyes were feral and empty—wolves who had learned to wait and taste the fear of fresh meat. They watched for the stumble, the crack, the first dark bead of blood.
“Strip them,” the scarred guard barked.
I froze. For a heartbeat, I couldn’t move—not from shame, but from knowing what came next.
“What?” My voice scraped out of my throat, as dry as dust.
“You heard me.” The guard’s tone was a whip. “Strip.”
The guards tore the rags from our backs and the sandals from our feet. It burned cold, biting through sweat and grime. My body flinched despite myself. The heat from the prison fires licked at my flesh, but it did nothing to stop the crawl of humiliation up my spine.
I clenched my fists and met their stares. “Go on,” I said, my voice low, even. “Look.”
They did.
The sunlight crawled over my skin, revealing the truth I’d carried my entire life. Scars—some as thin as a blade’s whisper, others thick and jagged like the memory of chains. Pale ridges across my back. Old burns that had never fully faded.
A life carved into flesh.
They looked—and I let them.
Let them see what kind of home a lord’s son grew up in. Let them see what wealth didn’t hide.
Because while others saw the gilded nameLorian, I remembered the iron. The cold halls. The bruises that bloomed like flowers every night. The mansion wasn’t a home. It was a tomb with silk curtains.
And every scar on me was a story my father had written with his hands.
Let them look. Let them laugh.
I would not break—not for them.
Beside me, Lazarus stood tall. Silent. Bare to the waist, but unbowed. The wind pulled at his hair, and for a moment, he looked hewn from the same stone as the walls that held us.
They dragged us across the yard toward the far corner, where two guards entered, hauling a brazier between them. Coals pulsed within it like a living heart. They set it in the center of the pit, the glow licking their faces red as the heat rippled through the yard. The light exposed the prisoners gathered above—scars slashed across ribs and bellies, old burns blackened like charred leather.
Then, he arrived.
A man, cloaked in ember-colored robes, descended the stairway into the pit. The fabric shimmered like molten metal, each step deliberate, silent, controlled. The world seemed to move around him.
And as he descended, the prisoners fell silent. One by one, they bowed their heads, eyes lowering to the dirt. Even the guards straightened, their cruelty shrinking beneath his shadow.
My breath caught.
