And it knew we were coming.
I approached the manor’s entrance, my fingers resting lightly on the hilt of my weapon, senses honed to the quiet language of deceit.Each step carried the weight of anticipation, the air thick with unspoken dread.Had we been expected?Or had some other fate already claimed the souls within this accursed place?
The Timehunters never shied away from their excesses.Their feasts of flesh and indulgence were not mere revelry but a declaration of dominance—a grotesque display of power, a celebration of the lives they twisted and discarded.And yet, where the air should have thrummed with drunken laughter and debauched moans, there was only silence—a void where their wickedness should have flourished.
“Stay alert.”The command left my lips like tempered steel, threading through my men, binding us with the weight of our purpose.We had come to purge.But first, we would unearth the truth lurking behind the manor’s silent facade.
Our gazes met in fleeting exchanges, unease settling over us like a shroud.The hush was oppressive, broken only by the muted clink of weapons and the distant echo of our boots against the uneven cobblestone.At the manor’s grand entrance, I lifted the lion-head knocker, its cold brass biting against my skin.The heavy door shuddered as I let it fall—a single, resonant thud.
The door swung open with a slow, reluctant squeal.
And what lay beyond was not revelry but torment.
From within came sounds not of whispered pleasures but of suffering.Groans of anguish seeped through the darkness, chilling my blood.
We moved forward, steps cautious, the air thickening with something unseen—something wrong.The scent of rot and a deeper, hidden malevolence clung to the walls, weaving into the air.Ahead the ballroom doors stood, their gilded edges gleaming in the dim light.I pressed my palm against them, pushing just enough to part the gap, enough to see.
And what I revealed turned my blood to ice.
Bodies lay strewn across the marbled floor, not in the careless abandon of excess but in the convulsions of agony.Flesh blistered and peeled, dissolving like wax held too close to a flame, pooling into mangled remnants of what had once been dancers and courtiers.
“Stay here.”The order was barely a whisper, yet it carried the weight of command.My men did not protest.
Alone, I stepped through the threshold.
The stench of decay rushed to meet me, thick and cloying, coating my throat with the taste of something vile.My boots met the floor with a sickening stick, the residue of ruined flesh grasping at the soles.
What had once been a chamber of opulence was now a grotesque tapestry of suffering.Boils marred faces frozen in expressions of unholy agony, their eyes wide with silent screams.Limbs twisted at unnatural angles like their very bones had turned against them.And through it all, the air pulsed with a sound that made my skin crawl—the rasping, wet gasps of the dying, each breath a futile plea for salvation that would never come.
I stood amidst the carnage; my heart hardened against compassion, yet my mind reeled.This was my duty—my purpose—to be the blade that severed the plague of the Timehunters from existence.But someone, or something, had already claimed that finality before me.
Who else possessed the knowledge of such devastation?Who else harbored the will to execute it?
“Who has done this?”My voice, muffled beneath the Black Wraith’s mask, was a whisper of bewilderment.“Who has usurped my role as harbinger?”There was no pride in the question, only the cold realization that my vendetta had grown more complicated.The path of vengeance had veered into unfamiliar shadows.
Stepping carefully over the misshapen remains of the Timehunters—flesh sloughed from bone, limbs frozen in nightmarish contortions—I moved toward one of the dying, slumped against the wall.His breath rattled, and each rise and fall of his chest was a battle against the inevitable.
I knelt beside him, my gaze locking onto his pain-clouded eyes.
“Who did this?”The demand left my lips in a controlled murmur despite the chaos that thickened the air around us.
The dying man’s lips cracked apart, a whisper like brittle parchment escaping.
“A vat… of smoke,” he croaked.“Nobody saw… It filled the room, and then… darkness.The poison was?—”
His head lolled.Silence swallowed the rest.He would speak no more.
A jolt of something primal shot through me—terror, nausea, a dread that curled through my veins like ice.The macabre distortions, the bodies dissolving like wax under a flame… I knew this work.This was no earthly poison.
This was something far worse.
The only place I had seen alchemy of such unnatural malevolence was Solaris.
A shiver coiled down my spine—not from fear but understanding.Someone else possessed knowledge of those ancient mysteries.Someone else had brought that power into this world.
But who?
“Amir?”The voice of one of my men interrupted my thoughts, laced with quiet unease.
