Chapter 35
Chapter
Thirty-Five
Days blurred together in the dark.
He began to lose track of time. The torches outside his cell guttered and were replaced, though he never saw who came. The scrape of metal on stone, the shuffle of boots—these were the only rhythms left to him.
When sleep came, it brought memories. Not dreams—memories, old and sharp.
His mother’s bracelets clicking as she ground herbs by the fire.
Her voice low as she spoke to what others could not see, bidding spirits back into the earth where they belonged.
He had been small then, half afraid of her, half awed.
She would turn her pale eyes on him and murmur, You hear them too, don’t you?
And he had.
His father had been the opposite—solid, practical, a man of orders and blades. “Steel doesn’t lie,” he used to say. “A man’s worth is in what his hands can hold.”
Between them, Rakhal had learned both kinds of power: the blade and the dark.
He remembered, too, his brother—Kardoc, laughing in the rain after a skirmish, blood on his hands and pride in his eyes.
The laughter turned bitter when he remembered the betrayal that followed, the armies split, the years of silence between them.
Betrayal tastes like kin, Azfar had said once.
He hadn’t understood it then. He did now.
And through every memory, Eliza’s face wove itself like thread—bright, defiant, unbearably alive.
He tried not to think of her, but the mind had its own hunger.
The warmth of her breath when she had defied him, the pulse beneath her skin when she had feared him, the scent of her hair after rain.
The shadows writhed whenever she crossed his thoughts, restless and sharp-edged, as though they too remembered her.
He swallowed hard, pushed the memory down, and returned to the work of keeping himself alive.
The mages came often now. Some were silent and clinical, scribbling notes in the half-light; others took pleasure in cruelty.
One young man—a soldier’s son, perhaps—called him beast each time he passed, as though the word itself could wound.
Others discussed him as though he were an artifact, not a living thing.
“Remarkable cellular regeneration,” one murmured. “The shadow essence repairs flesh directly.”
“Dangerous,” another replied. “If it spreads beyond the host, the corruption could contaminate the wards.”
“Then we’ll dissect it before that happens.”
Laughter. Quills scratching. None of them dared step too close.
But the longer Rakhal remained in the dark, the more he understood that something else lived down here—older, deeper, waiting.
The walls hummed at night, not with his power, but with something vaster.
The ghosts that pressed against his thoughts were not merely human remnants.
There was will in them, a mind that coiled through the stone.
The air tasted wrong, sharp with metal and cold rot.
Even the shadows hesitated at times, as if another presence moved among them—something that claimed this place long before the humans built their fortress.
He tried to warn them.
When the mages next arrived, he lifted his head. His voice was rough but steady.
“You shouldn’t keep me down here,” he said. “These shadows are dangerous. Old shadows such as these… they were here before your wards and sigils were writ. They don’t care much for them.”
The nearest mage snorted. “Superstition. Even monsters dream.”
Rakhal’s gaze hardened. “This castle is built on cursed ground. You can’t contain what’s here. Neither can I.”
They exchanged glances, amused. One whispered, “Delirium.” Another smiled thinly. “Arrogance.”
“Orc stupidity,” the youngest said. “He’s raving.”
“Perhaps,” said the leader. “But a raving beast still needs discipline.”
He touched a rune on the chain.
The sigils on Rakhal’s manacles blazed. A surge of searing light ripped through his body, bending his spine against the wall. Pain flooded him like molten iron, and the shadows screamed in his veins. The mages watched, unflinching.
“Tell me,” one murmured, voice almost curious, “how it feels to have your own darkness turned against you.”
Rakhal couldn’t answer. The sound that tore from his throat was half growl, half breath.
When they left, the air still burned. The scent of scorched metal and flesh clung to him. The shadows gathered around his trembling body, restless and furious, pressing like wolves against a fence.
He drew a ragged breath and forced them back, terrified of what would happen if he let them loose.
He had seen death in a thousand forms—on battlefields, in brotherhood, in betrayal—but this was different. This place was not a dungeon. It was a wound in the world.
And the humans, with their chalk and sigils and arrogance, had no idea what they were keeping chained down here with him.
He lay back against the stone and stared into the dark until the whispers came again—soft, patient, older than language—and wondered how long before even he would stop resisting their call.