Chapter 31 Killian
thirty-one
Killian
Killian’s world was a void of endless suffering. Darkness enveloped him and the walls of his wooden prison pressed in on him with every breath. He quickly lost sense of time and only knew hunger and rage.
Killian’s throat was raw from screaming, and his fists were bloody.
He knew it was fruitless; years of banging on the outside of Eryn’s coffin proved as successful as the attempts from within his own.
Killian’s panic dominated him with every moment that passed, and he found it increasingly difficult to breathe.
Having experienced this punishment before, Killian knew exactly what to expect, but it provided no comfort.
The last ordeal left him broken and disconsolate, and it was only through Eryn’s help that he was able to scrape the fragmented pieces of himself back together.
This time around, his sister wouldn’t be there to help mend him upon his release.
And with twenty years stretching out before him, he wasn’t sure who the person would be that came out on the other side, if he came out at all.
It was a dark and torturous echo of his first punishment.
Everything was intensified—the silence was deafening, the hunger was profound, and his desperation was debilitating.
Worst of all were the thoughts and feelings that crippled him as he lay in the dark.
With nothing to do but dwell on his failure and regrets, he oscillated through the catalysts of his doom.
Drachen. The scheming bastard. Visions of his face drifted through Killian’s mind, igniting the coals of a profound hatred that started piling up upon his very Creation. The embers of rage sparked to life, and he longed to burn his Sire’s world to cinders.
Eryn. He pictured his sister’s face, and his guilt licked at his insides when he admitted the depth of his failure. His punishment delayed Eryn’s rescue, only allowing her madness to grow within the confines of her coffin.
Ivy. He was confused by the longing for her that simmered within him.
When he thought of her, he was bombarded by a montage of memories from their exchanges over the past year.
He pictured her in his mind, and it made his entire body ache—her green eyes, with flecks of gold like shards of broken glass, her ink-black hair fanned out like a darkened halo and her lithe body as she writhed beneath him.
The three figures fuelled his burning need to escape his confinement, but that desire began and ended with his overwhelming hunger.
It was a demon that dwelled beneath his skin.
When he closed his eyes, the images were washed with red, and his insides were on fire with the need to consume.
With each breath, the agony became more acute, and his mind threatened to shatter to pieces.
His hunger scared him most of all—it loosened his grip on reality, and he knew that if he ever made it out of this coffin alive, he would be an unstoppable force until he sated the hunger that was shredding him to pieces.
The incendiary force of his emotions set him ablaze, and he relived the memories that surrounded his first Living Death.
It was the first of many punishments of Drachen’s crafting.
It came as a consequence not of failure, but of betrayal.
Maelani was nothing but dust, and Killian felt no sadness for his Broodmate’s Ending.
Killian had been a Vampire for three years, but he still hadn’t overcome the animosity he felt for his Sire, and his every action was an act of defiance against him.
When Killian committed an unforgiveable act against his Broodmate, the Living Death was the only thing that would save him from his Ending. Drachen’s egocentricity meant that condemning his Broodling to ten years of isolation was the logical trade to circumvent his share of the punishment.
Drachen summoned Killian to the basement, where a coffin laid open on the bier in the centre of the cold, dark room. Killian, aware that he stood no chance of standing up to his 150-year-old Sire, was coerced into the box.
Drachen’s final words before the coffin was closed reverberated through Killian and became a cruel incantation that replayed as his mind was shattered and rebuilt, over and over.
You have left me no choice, Killian. You are wilful and defiant, and you are a complication I cannot afford to have.
You take every opportunity to disobey me, so I will stamp that disobedience out of you.
Ten years ought to do it. The sounds of the lid slamming down, and the click of the lock echoed in his mind for what felt like nights afterward.
Every moment of his life, both Human and Vampire, ran through his mind.
Good and bad; pain and pleasure; triumph and failure, all became twisted into a mélange of misery and despair as the coffin swallowed him whole.
Time became a foreign concept, and his ever-growing hunger quickly became a living thing.
He was frequented by vivid hallucinations, fits of rage and bouts of despair and hopelessness.
By the time ten years had inched by, Killian was a shell of his former self.
When sounds from outside the coffin broke into his consciousness, Killian was sure it was another hallucination.
When a splinter of light exploded into his vision, he was certain his mind had finally disintegrated.
But the relatively fresh air of Drachen’s dank basement invaded his nostrils and seemed to grab hold of a tendril of his psyche.
His head swam with pain and nausea. He didn’t know his name.
He only knew a desperate hunger, and it propelled his movements.
Drachen wasn’t prepared for the tidal wave that burst forth from the coffin and he was knocked sideways as Killian charged out of the basement.
In his esurient state, he could smell blood, and his sole purpose became seeking it out.
Moving faster than Drachen anticipated, Killian fled the basement and made his way into the streets of Clerlet, where his rampage began.
Killian tried to hold himself together, but his strings of thought were being pulled in different directions. As those threads started tearing him apart, he could feel his mind unravelling faster than the first time.