32. Varkhul
THIRTY-TWO
VARKHUL
The Shadow Court is worse than death.
I hang suspended in darkness, chains of pure shadow wrapped around my wrists, my ankles, my throat.
They’re not metal—they’re colder than metal, colder than ice, colder than anything I’ve ever felt.
The chill seeps through my skin and into my bones, numbing flesh and thought until I can barely remember what warmth felt like.
The mark on my chest is the only heat in this frozen void. It pulses weakly, a distant ember fighting against the endless cold. Eirene. She’s out there. Still alive, still fighting. I cling to that pulse the way a drowning man clings to driftwood.
I cling to the memory of her body beneath mine. The softness of her skin against my scars. The taste of her mouth, copper and sweetness, when she bit my lip and drew blood. The sound she made when I first pushed inside her—half-gasp, half-moan, the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.
The Sovereign can force me to relive every execution. But it can’t take that memory. Can’t poison the way she felt wrapped around me, the way she looked at me afterward—not with fear, not with disgust, but with a fierce tenderness that was entirely hers.
Time doesn’t work here. I know that much. Seconds stretch into hours, moments compress into heartbeats, and I’ve lost all sense of how long I’ve been hanging in the void. It could be minutes. It could be days. The darkness doesn’t care about measurement.
The Sovereign has created a mockery of a throne room around me.
I can see it in glimpses, when the darkness shifts—walls built from stolen memories, their surfaces crawling with faces that press and strain against an invisible barrier.
Eyes that track my every movement. Mouths that open in silent screams.
These are the souls the entity has consumed. The lives it has devoured. And they’re all watching me, waiting to see what happens to the executioner who thought he could escape justice.
The floor beneath me—or what passes for a floor in this nightmare realm—is paved with severed ties. I can feel them even from up here: promises broken, loves lost, families torn apart. Every grief the Veil has fed upon, solidified into a foundation for the Sovereign’s court.
And at the center of it all, a throne. Built of crystallized darkness, sharp edges catching light that doesn’t exist. Empty, for now.
The Sovereign doesn’t need to sit. It is everywhere in this place. Every shadow. Every whisper. Every forgotten dream.
Executioner. The voice comes from all directions, a chorus of stolen tones that makes my skull throb. Welcome to my home. I’ve been waiting for you.
I don’t respond. Don’t have the strength to respond. The cold has stolen my voice along with everything else.
Not much for conversation? The darkness ripples with amusement. That’s fine. We have other ways to pass the time.
The memories begin.
The first execution plays out before me like a living painting.
I’m eighteen again, standing on the platform in the Iron Citadel’s great hall. My hands are steady—I remember being proud of that, how steady my hands were. The prisoner kneels before me, a man accused of smuggling shadow-touched artifacts across the border. His crime is real. His sentence is just.
But watching it now, I notice things I didn’t notice then. The way his eyes dart to the crowd, searching for someone. The slight tremor in his bound hands. The words he mouths—silent, desperate—as the blade rises.
Please. Tell my daughter I love her.
I didn’t hear him then. Didn’t let myself hear him. The blade fell before he could finish the sentence.
The memory fades. Another takes its place.
A woman, middle-aged, her face weathered by sun and wind. A farmer’s wife, accused of harboring boundary-crossers in her barn. She doesn’t beg. She stands straight, chin raised, eyes burning with defiance.
“They were children,” she tells me. Her voice is steady. “Cold, hungry, scared children. I gave them bread and a warm place to sleep. If that’s a crime worth dying for, then your laws are the real evil here.”
I remember what I felt then. A flicker of doubt, quickly suppressed. The law was clear. The sentence was passed. My job was to execute, not to question.
The blade fell.
She was right, you know. The Sovereign’s voice slides through my skull like a serpent. The children she saved are still alive. They grew up, had families of their own. All because she chose mercy over obedience. And you killed her for it.
I want to argue. Want to defend myself, point out that I was following orders, that I believed in the law, that I didn’t know—
But the excuses taste like ash in my mouth. I didn’t know because I didn’t want to know. I followed orders because questioning them was harder than obeying. I believed in the law because it was easier than believing in people.
The memories keep coming.
Do you see now? The Sovereign’s pleasure radiates through the darkness. Do you understand what you are? Not a protector. Not a guardian. Just a tool. A blade that never questioned who held the hilt.
The worst part is, it’s not wrong. For twenty years, The Sovereign had already made that argument. It was no less true the second time.
Not until Eirene.
The thought of her name sends a pulse of warmth through the frozen void. Faint, distant, but real. The brand over my heart responds—not burning, not blazing, just… present. A reminder that I’m not alone in the darkness.
She’s out there. Somewhere beyond this nightmare, she’s still fighting. Still believing that I’m worth saving.
I don’t know why. After everything she’s seen—every sin I’ve committed, every life I’ve ended—she still chose me. Still claimed me. Still walked into hell to pull me out.
I want to touch her again. Want to bury my face in her hair and breathe in that strange sweetness that clings to her skin. Want to feel her nails raking down my back, leaving marks that prove I belong to her as surely as she belongs to me.
Ah. The Sovereign’s voice sharpens with interest. You’re thinking about her. The one who bound herself to a monster. How… touching.
I feel the entity’s attention shift, feel it probing at the mark on my chest. The touch is violation—cold fingers digging into a wound, prying at the edges of a scar.
Let me show you what she sees when she looks at you.