I should have fled.
Instead, I edged closer, the screams pulling me in, my fear eclipsed by something far more dangerous.
Morbid curiosity.
Peering through the grimy window, my gaze fell upon a macabre scene that would haunt even the most ghastly of nightmares.There was Lord Winston, towering over a naked man whose body bore the evidence of merciless brutality.His skin was mottled with bruises and lacerations, each one a testament to the cruelty he had endured.
Lord Winston’s smile was like a grotesque gargoyle, full of malice and sadistic pleasure.In his hand, he held a knife, its blade catching the dim light as he carved cruel lines into the man’s face.A wicked grin spread across his mouth as he spat out the words.“You’re nothing but a filthy Timeborne,” he hissed with venomous delight, his eyes blazing.
“Every second I wait hones the edge of what’s coming.I will break you—slowly, methodically.And when you finally beg for mercy… it still won’t come.Because there’s a special kind of pleasure in watching someone realize how much agony they can survive—only to learn it’s still not enough.”
The helpless man’s eyes fluttered closed, his body limp from the agony he had endured.Something shifted in Lord Winston then—something feral and monstrous.I could feel it rather than see it, a pulse of depravity in the air that made my stomach turn.
I looked away.
I couldn’t watch.
But the sounds—the sounds would haunt me forever.A low, guttural growl.The rustle of fabric.The sickening rhythm of violence.My breath caught in my throat, and the world tilted around me—the trees blurring, branches swaying like they too wanted to look away.The air felt too thin, the earth unsteady beneath my feet.I wanted to scream, to run, to rip the moment from time itself and bury it where it could never reach me again.
A soft rustle stirred from the shadows.
A young maid stepped out from behind a crumbling partition, where the broken remains of old shelves slouched against the wall, emerging slowly, her eyes wild and glassy, her grin split too wide, too wrong.It was the smile of someone who had long since abandoned their soul.
“Oh, my lord,” she whispered, her voice thick with something sick, something corrupted.Her gaze dropped to his blood-smeared hands, and a tremble rippled through her body.“Seeing you like this… it drives me mad.”
She moved toward him like someone hypnotized.
“Fuck me,” she begged.
A sound clawed its way from my throat, strangled and hoarse.I couldn’t stop shaking.
Lord Winston’s face twisted into a mask of wickedness—hunger without conscience, lust without humanity.He seized her, pulling her against him with violent fervor.
And then, before the broken body on the floor, they consumed each other—two beasts lost in their shared madness.
I staggered back, bile clawing up my throat, the world tilting violently around me.
How could such evil exist?
How could I be bound to it?
The air thickened, pressing in from all sides, suffocating.The trees seemed to shudder, their gnarled limbs arching inward as if the very earth recoiled from the sickness festering inside.
And in that moment, a single, brutal truth seared through me—I could not, would not, shackle myself to this monster.
But panic held me in its iron grip, rooting me to the spot.A petrified statue.A prisoner of my horror.My gaze remained locked on the macabre tableau beyond the grimy glass as if my body refused to believe what my mind already knew.
Lord Winston’s twisted, satisfied grin burned itself into my memory, branding him as something beyond villainy—something unholy.
I didn’t wait.I turned and ran.
Branches clawed at my sleeves as I fled through the overgrown path, heart pounding like a war drum in my chest.Only when the shadows of the outbuilding were safely behind me did I stop, gasping for breath.
“Lady Elizabeth, what’s wrong?”
Mary’s voice broke through the haze—crisp, urgent, anchoring.She hurried toward me, jarring against the horror I just witnessed.
“You’re as pale as a ghost!”
