11. Chapter Eleven
CHAPTER ELEVEN
WILDER
T he air here mobs my lungs like wet iron, clinging to my skin in a way that feels too intimate, too alive. It’s suffocating. I’ve been in deep trenches where the ocean’s crushing weight could’ve shattered bones, but this—this place—is worse. The very atmosphere seems to hiss at my presence, rejecting me with a low, insidious hum, like a predator circling something foreign to its ecosystem.
“This is where you torture them?” I ask, my words steadier than I feel. I survey the flow of molten lava spilling lazily over a towering waterfall into a river of fire. The heat radiates from it in waves that shimmer like mirages, but the sensation doesn’t reach me, thanks to Caius’s spell. Even now, it crawls under my skin, his magic coiled like a smug serpent, binding us together in a way I’m not sure I’m entirely comfortable with.
Caius smirks, throwing his arms wide. “No, little fishy, this is just the waiting room. The sorting facility, if you will.” His tone drips with the kind of amusement that only someone thoroughly at home in a place like this could muster. He gestures around us as he takes a few steps backwards to show off Aggonid’s domain.
I ignore the barb .
My eyes flick back to the scene before me. Towering cliffs jut into the air like the ribs of some long-dead beast, their jagged edges slick with an oozing sheen of decay that pulses faintly, sickly, like a dying heartbeat. The ground beneath my boots shifts, cracked and uneven, riddled with veins of blackened earth that seem to writhe like something alive and trying to claw its way out. Wisps of gray fog coil between the rocks, weaving around the shuffling figures of the damned.
The souls here are pale shadows of what they must’ve been in life. Gaunt, hollow-eyed, and silent, save for the occasional desperate plea or guttural moan that cuts through the heavy stillness. Some cling to the cliffs or slump against the rocks, their skeletal forms blending into the terrain. Others pace in frantic, aimless circles, like prey animals too stupid to realize there’s no escape. A few even throw themselves into the lava pits in futile attempts to end their torment, their screams brief but haunting as they’re swallowed by the flames. Yet they always return, bodies whole again, if only to suffer once more.
The scent is what truly sets this place apart—rot and sulfur, layered with the acidic tang of fear. It clings to everything, settles in the back of my throat like an unwanted guest. Even the air tastes dead.
I swallow hard, forcing the bile back down as my eyes lock onto a cluster of chained figures near the base of the waterfall. Their forms are wreathed in shadows and steam, but I can see enough. These aren’t ordinary souls. Their armor—battered and bloodstained—still clings to them like a desperate memory of who they once were. Soldiers. And the hazy metallic tang in the air confirms it.
Romarie.
A low growl from behind me draws my attention, and I glance back to find Emeric prowling like a starved predator. Eyes like ice blaze with predatory intent, scanning the group as though weighing which one would break first. Beside him, Caius basks in the scene with an almost theatrical ease, his smirk wild as the cliffs around us. He’s in his element here, the devil’s right hand dressed in runes and a barbed tail.
And then there’s Aggonid, who looms like an ancient god carved from the very bedrock of this place, with crimson eyes that see everything. He doesn’t need to speak. His presence alone bends the space around him, the souls instinctively cowering farther into the shadows, their dread tangible.
I glance down at my hands, flexing them to shake off the phantom sensation of their fear clinging to my skin. The ocean inside me roils in protest at this place, its purity at odds with the underworld’s oppressive death-ridden atmosphere. But I shove it down. This isn’t about me. This is about her.
Morte.
I straighten, focusing on why we’re here. She’s somewhere out there, held captive once again, and I’ll carve through every shadow, every nightmare all the realms can conjure, to find her.