Chapter 9 #2
“We found the bodies,” he went on. “Your knife—with your family’s mark—was lodged in your father’s chest. And another, bloodied and abandoned, left behind at Helena Elani’s house.”
Something inside me snapped.
“That’s a lie!” I shouted. “I didn’t kill him!”
The lash struck again, biting into the same side of my face—skin split. The blood came faster now, spilling thick and hot down my throat.
I hissed, tasting it, dragging my tongue across my lips like it was the last truth I owned.
The Enforcer leaned close until I could smell the leather and salt on his skin.
“Your father is dead,” he said. “Accept it, you worthless piece of shit.”
Then his gaze shifted—slowly—to Lazarus.
“And you. Lazarus of Ugarit.”
His voice dropped lower, rougher.
“You stand accused of murdering your mother, Anatya James. With brutality. And without remorse.”
“No!” Lazarus’ cry tore through the chamber, raw and cracking. “That’s impossible! We were gone all night—at the beach! People saw us! Ask them!”
The barbed lash sang again. Metal struck flesh.
Lazarus staggered, blood spraying across the packed dirt, but he didn’t fall.
“This is madness!” he shouted, voice thick with pain. “We’re soldiers of the crown—we bled for this kingdom! We would never—could never—do something like this!”
The Enforcer stood motionless. His arms crossed over his chest, eyes as cold as the iron tools hanging from his belt.
“Soldiers or not,” he said, “the evidence stands. Your blades. Your blood. The proof of guilt is carved into the corpses you left behind.”
Lazarus’ face twisted, grief and fury warring across it. “You’re framing us!” he roared. “We were at the shore—ask Amara! Ask anyone! I would never harm my mother!”
I lunged forward, the chains biting deep into my wrists, clattering like a nest of snakes.
“What if my father isn’t dead?” I roared, my voice cracking under its own weight. “What if this is just another of his twisted games—another punishment for my failure at the war camp? Show me his body! Show me he’s really gone!”
The guard sneered, lips peeling back like torn flesh.
“Your father’s corpse rots in the earth, Lorian. No games. No redemption. No return.”
He said it like a hammer driving the final nail into a coffin—
And something inside me snapped.
“That’s a fucking lie!” I shouted, the words scalding my throat. “I didn’t kill anyone! My father had enemies—real ones. He was ruthless, hated by half the kingdom. Anyone could’ve done it!”
“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.
But the stories were mercy compared to the truth.
Now the name had a shape. A hunger. A heartbeat.
Even my father, who feared nothing living, had lowered his voice when that name was spoken. As if saying it too loud might summon the man himself.
The guard’s promise unspooled into certainty.
The Dreadhold did not return men.
It swallowed them.
It cured them of hope.
I tasted blood on my tongue. The torchlight flickered against it, turning the red to black.
We were not leaving this place alive.
I turned my head. Lazarus knelt a few paces away, wrists bound, chains hanging like dead weight between us. His fists were clenched, his jaw set—but his eyes were breaking.
“We’re innocent,” he said, voice trembling but still clear. “You’re condemning two innocent men.”
The guard smirked, already walking away. “Innocent or guilty doesn’t matter here,” he said. “Only those who survive long enough to matter.”
He let the words hang in the air like a noose. Then, with a cruel smile—
“Welcome to the Dreadhold.”
Something inside me broke loose.
I lunged forward, rage pouring through every vein, a fire too hot to think. I threw my weight into a charge, head low, ready to drive my skull into the Enforcer’s gut, to feel something break that wasn’t me.
He didn’t move.
One massive hand shot out and caught my head mid-run, fingers closing around my skull like a vise. For a heartbeat, I couldn’t breathe. Then he flung me aside as though I weighed nothing.
Stone met skin. The impact tore across my arm, leaving a trail of blood on the floor. The sting was sharp—but what came after was worse.
There was no Amara here to bind the wound.
No gentle hands. No whispered prayers.
Here, wounds would fester. The putrescence would crawl beneath the skin, fever would bloom in the bones, and death would come quiet and wet in the dark.
I would die here.
Marked by the god of death.
And maybe—just maybe—that would be mercy.
My father’s voice rose from memory, cold and perfect, echoing through my skull like a curse carved into the walls.
You’re worthless. You always were. You deserve this.
And for the first time in my life, I believed him.
The Enforcer’s voice broke through the silence, deep and thunderous. “The Sovereign of Flames is coming,” he said. “He will bestow your first initiation.”
He turned toward me, a grin cutting across his face, teeth yellow in the firelight, eyes shining with something close to hunger.
“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.