“You were trying to get us away from here… so you could save them.”
Their laughter filled the dungeon, hollow and mocking, reverberating off the cold stone walls—a cruel symphony of my failure.
A groan escaped my lips, heavy with the weight of my recklessness.Lazarus.Elizabeth.My men.All of them were betrayed by my arrogance, ensnared in a trap I had set upon myself.
The iron against my wrists burned, not from heat but from the bitter realization that I had given my enemies exactly what they wanted.
“Tell me,” Mathias’ voice slithered through the thick air, a viper’s hiss laced with venomous amusement, “do you know who you’ve lured here?”
His gaze flicked to Winston and Alexander—silent sentinels of doom, standing in cruel judgment.
“He is darkness incarnate,” Mathias continued, lips curling with disdain.“A vestige of my past teachings.”
Then, his expression darkened further, suspicion slicing through his features.“Are you and Balthazar working together?Is he near?”
Balthazar.
The name rang in my head, absurd in its intrusion.How had Mathias’ mind wandered there, now, of all times?
Even in victory, he remained shackled to his delusions.A fool chasing ghosts.
But his mood snapped in an instant.
“Enough of this,” he barked, impatience seething beneath his words.“Sedate him.More Belladonna.Let him drown in his venom and misery.”
The order was given, and its execution was swift.
A sting pierced my neck—a needle, a dagger’s kiss of poison.The dim room blurred at the edges as the venom sank into my veins, curling through my body like a viper.My thoughts fractured, slipping through my grasp like water, and the figures before me melted into grotesque silhouettes, their movements twisting in the flickering torchlight.
I hung there, suspended in agony, my mind reeling from pain, from betrayal, from the cruel hand of fate.And then, mercifully?—
Darkness.
* * *
Consciousness returned, but it was no mercy.
The air was thick—a putrid mix of decay, sweat, and the lingering stench of old blood.My head lolled forward, my vision swimming as I entered my new prison.
A torture chamber.
A gallery of horrors where each instrument bore silent testimony to the agony it had inflicted.
I shifted, rusted chains rattling against stone, their echo joining the rhythmic, merciless drip of water in the shadows.It was a macabre symphony, each note promising suffering.
My gaze landed first on the tools of this wretched theater—pincers and tongs, their metal jaws stained with the ghosts of past victims; a rack looming in the corner, its wooden rollers warped and splintered, glistening with the sweat and screams of those who had known its cruel embrace.
Against one wall stood an iron maiden, its spiked interior waiting, patient and hungry.The door was left ajar like an invitation to hell.
Nearby, knives of every shape and size gleamed dully in the dim light—some curved like the crescent moon, others jagged, designed not to kill but to carve, to linger.
And then the ones whose purpose was more insidious—screws meant to crush, clamps meant to tear.
Every instrument in this chamber whispered a promise—an assurance of pain.
A symphony composed of sadistic minds, each tool a musician waiting to play its part on my flesh.
This was where hope came to die.
