The cage was damp, the cold seeping through my clothes, and the rusted bars seemed to close in with every breath. I didn't dare move. None of us did. The other prisoners huddled together, their whispers barely audible over the crackling of the distant fires. Prayers, curses, and the occasional sob filled the space between us, but no one dared to speak too loudly. Not after what had happened to the woman who had prayed in her tongue.
Lyra sat beside me, her knees pulled up to her chest, her hands clasped tightly together. Her knuckles were white, her breathing shallow, but her face was unreadable. She was holding herself together, but I could feel the tension radiating from her. We both knew this wasn't over. The captain's words still echoed in my mind, cold and final: "You are property."
I clenched my fists, my nails digging into my palms. The weight of his words settled over me like chains, heavy and unyielding. But it wasn't just the captain's cruelty that haunted me. It was the vision—the fire, the screams, the blood. It had felt so real like I had been there like I had seen it. And now, as I sat in the cage, the memory of it lingered, pressing against the edges of my mind, threatening to pull me back in.
I didn't want to think about it. I didn't want to remember. But the more I tried to push it away, the more it clawed at me like a beast trying to break free from its cage.
Then, it started.
A pulse, deep in my skull. A dull, rhythmic throbbing, like the slow, inevitable beat of a drum signalling the approach of something terrible. At first, I thought it was just another headache, the kind that comes from too many nights spent in this damp, rusted cage, breathing in the stale air of despair. But then, the pain sharpened, and I realised it was something far worse.
The images returned.
Not as memories—no, these things weren't mine. They forced their way in, jagged and wrong like someone was peeling open my mind and stuffing it full of nightmares. Faces twisted into grotesque smiles, eyes stretched wide, hungry and watching. They weren't human, these faces. They were something else, something that shouldn't exist. And yet, here they were, clawing at the edges of my consciousness, demanding to be seen.
I tried to pull away, but there was no escaping it. It was inside me, burrowing deeper with every passing second. My breath hitched, and I felt my body tense, muscles coiling like a spring ready to snap. The other prisoners shifted uneasily, their eyes darting toward me, then away, as if they could sense the wrongness radiating from my skin.
The pulse behind my eyes wasn't just a throb anymore—it was a hammer, a deep, bone-crushing rhythm that pounded through my skull like it was trying to break out. My teeth rattled with every beat, my vision trembling.
The voices didn't just whisper—they scraped against my ears, too high, too low, as nails dragged across the stone. They wormed their way under my skin, crawling through my nerves, twisting, scratching, until I could feel their words like heat against my spine.
My breath was too loud, or maybe everything else had gone silent. The cage bars pressed against my back, the damp metal seeping cold into my skin, but I barely felt it over the fire crawling up my spine.
A scream tore free from my throat before I even knew I was screaming.
The cage rattled. Bodies shifted away. The other prisoners pressed themselves against the bars, trying to make space between them and the thing that was me. Someone whispered a prayer, voice shaking. Someone else just stared, their eyes hollow, as if they'd already accepted that this was the end.
"Luell!"
Lyra's hands were on me—warm, human, grounding—but they didn't pull me back. Her touch was a lifeline, but it wasn't enough to anchor me in this storm. Her fingers dug into my arms, her voice breaking as she shouted my name again.
"Look at me! What's happening?"
I wanted to answer. I wanted to tell her I was fine, that this was just another episode, that it would pass. But my breath was ragged and shallow—my ribs squeezed like a vice, and my lungs refused to pull enough air. My hands clutched my skull, nails pressing in like they might dig out the infection festering there. If only I could tear it out, rip it free, and be done with it. But it wasn't that simple. It was never that simple.
Then—the pressure shifted.
A new image bloomed, slow and deliberate.
A mouth, wide and grinning, teeth too sharp, lips stretched past what skin should allow. It whispered, but the lips did not move. The voice was low, guttural, a sound that shouldn't exist in this world. It spoke in a language I didn't understand, but the meaning was clear. It was mocking me. Taunting me. Telling me things I didn't want to hear.
A hand, reaching, clawed fingers inches from my throat. I could feel the coldness of it, even though it wasn't real. Or maybe it was. Maybe it was more real than anything else in this cage. Something pressed against my skin. Not biting. Waiting. It was toying with me, savouring the fear that radiated from my every pore.
My vision fractured. The world around me splintered into a thousand jagged pieces, each one reflecting a different nightmare. I saw faces I didn't recognise, places I'd never been. And yet… I knew them. They had been waiting. Watching.
Then—nothing.
The pain vanished. The pressure in my skull stopped. The air was too still, like the silence before a storm. I gasped, desperate, confused—was it over? My body was trembling, my breath thin, but the fire had gone. My mind felt hollow like something had been ripped out. A second passed. Then another.
And then I felt it.
A grin, stretching too wide.
The whisper creeps into my bones.
Did you think that was all?
The flames returned.
It roared to life in my skull, consuming everything. The sky bled red, thick with smoke, drowning out the stars. Bodies twisted in the flames, their screams piercing, their flesh curling like dry leaves. The heat was unbearable, suffocating, melting the air itself.
Something massive loomed in the smoke. A shadow, towering, shifting. It did not walk—it crawled, long fingers dragging through the dirt, through the blood, through the corpses. And above it all, there was laughter.
Not from the dying. Not from the soldiers.
Something else.
The creatures in the first cage—the ones with too many eyes, and too many limbs—watched in eerie stillness, their bodies frozen in a way that felt unnatural, like puppets waiting for a hand to guide them. Their mouths didn't move, but something about them laughed—not with sound, but with a deep, knowing amusement that pressed against my skull like a weight.
Their heads tilted—too slow, too precise. Watching. Learning. Mimicking.
Like children playing a game.
It was more twisted that way, as if their nature yearned for the torture as if they were learning from it, feeding on it.
Tears streamed down my face as I clawed at my throat, gasping for air that wouldn't come. The screams around me were deafening, but they weren't mine. They were the screams of the dying, the burning, the damned. I could smell the burning flesh, the acrid stench of smoke and blood. It clung to me, refusing to let go.
Lyra's voice broke through the chaos, raw and desperate.
"Do something!" she screamed, her voice cracking. "Help him!"
But no one moved. No one dared. The other prisoners pressed themselves further against the bars, their eyes wide with fear. Even the creatures in the first cage seemed to pause, their many eyes fixed on me, their twisted forms shifting in the firelight.
The masked man outside the cage hadn't moved. He hadn't so much as glanced up. The cage rattled, and screams filled the air, but to him, none of it was worth looking at.
He dragged his blade against the stone—slow, deliberate, a whisper of metal that cut through the chaos with chilling ease. It wasn't just sharpening. It was waiting. Measuring. As if he already knew how this would end.
The blade was black, not like iron but like something deeper, something that didn't just swallow light but devoured it.
Lyra's hands were on me again, shaking me, trying to pull me back. But I was too far gone. The visions had me, and they weren't letting go.
"Luell!" she cried, her voice breaking. "Please, someone help him!"
The masked man exhaled, long and slow. Bored.
Then, he spoke.
And the words did not belong here.
They were thick, warping the air as they slipped out of his mouth. The syllables didn't fit into human speech—twisting, writhing, something ancient that should never be spoken aloud. The moment the sound touched my ears, my skull split open with ringing pain.
The creatures froze.
The images shattered. The weight in my chest lifted, and the world rushed back into focus. The damp, rusted bars of the cage. The flickering lantern light. The silence.
I collapsed forward, gasping. My skin was drenched in sweat. My pulse rattled against my ribs, too fast, too weak.
But the voices didn't stop.
Not out loud.
In my head.
They whispered—not with words, but with meaning, bleeding into my thoughts like ink spilling into water. Their mouths did not move. Yet I heard them.
You do not belong.
A hollow shell.
A mistake.
I sucked in a breath, my vision swimming. The whispers slither through my skull, wrapping around my thoughts like vines. And then they start laughing.
Mocking.
Low, guttural. Like they know something I don't.
I clutched my head. The laughter was growing, twisting, rising.
"They're mocking me," I whispered.
Lyra stiffened.
"Luell?"
"They're mocking me," I said again. The words don't feel like mine anymore. They were being pulled from me, forced out by the voices that had taken root in my mind.
I couldn't stop saying them.
"They're mocking me. They're mocking me. They're—"
Lyra's grip on me faltered—just for a second—but I felt it. The brief hesitation. A flicker of uncertainty in her touch. She didn't move far, just enough for the air between us to feel colder. Her breath hitched, her fingers curling in on themselves as if she wasn't sure whether to hold on or let go.
"Luell," she whispered, but there was something new in her voice now—something fragile, something uncertain. The w
The creatures leaned in, their eyes gleaming.
They were curious now. Interested.
One of them tilted its head. It shouldn't have been able to. Its body was all wrong—too many limbs, too many eyes—but somehow, I knew it was looking at me. Watching. Learning. Its lips peeled back in something almost like a smile, too wide, too knowing. Then, as my breath hitched—so did its. As I whispered, "They're mocking me"—so did it.
Something dark coiled inside me, and for the first time, I felt it too—their hunger. It wasn't just a physical hunger. It was something deeper, something that craved more than flesh. It wanted my fear, my pain, my very soul.
Then—movement.
The masked man rose.
He didn't rush. He didn't hesitate. He sighed like this was nothing more than a mild inconvenience. The dagger in his hands gleamed—black as a starless night. It wasn't just a weapon. It was a tool, a key, something meant to unlock the horrors that lay just beneath the surface of this world.
The last thing I saw was his hand moving. Too fast. Or maybe too slow.
My vision blurred at the edges, darkness curling inward like ink spreading through water. My limbs felt heavy—not just weak, but wrong like they no longer belonged to me. I tried to reach for Lyra, my fingers grasping at nothing, the distance between us suddenly impossibly wide.
Then, the pain.
A sharp, white-hot crack through my skull—splintering, burning. My mouth opened, but no sound came. The world tilted, and the last thing I heard was the masked man's voice, low and bored.
"Too much of that will spoil the others."