Not now.Just keep going.
The ship’s crew step out of the way—no one wanting to get close to the monster the King of Zerynthia has become. Not even if he’s chained and bleeding. Kael inspires fear the way stormsdo—something vast and uncontrollable that’s been briefly contained.
She forces him below deck, fingers digging into unavoidable wounds, blood spattering onto the floor like this is a godsdamned blood letting.
The door slams shut behind them, sending the noise of the docks above into a distant muffle. What remains is the sound of Kael’s breathing—ragged, uneven, each inhale dragging through him like it costs something.
Marin releases the chains.
He drops to his knees with a heavy, unsteady thud, his body finally giving in where it has been forced to endure for too long. For a moment, she doesn’t move. She simply stands there, watching him, forcing herself to look—to take in what he has become, what they have done to him.
This is him.
Or what remains of him.
The Decay has not simply consumed him. It has hollowed him out and dressed itself in his skin.
Her gaze lowers, tracking the wreckage of his body, the blood pooling beneath him, the torn flesh where the barbed Aether has carved its way into him again and again. And then she sees it.
A strip of cloth, half-enmeshed with the flesh behind the waist of his pants.
Her breath catches.
She knows that cloth.
She moves slowly, crouching beside him with care, as though any sudden movement might provoke something she cannot control. Her fingers close around it, lifting it free from the blood. The fabric is stiff, saturated, darkened beyond recognition in places where it has soaked through.
Not all of that blood is from his wounds.
Her thumb shifts against the surface, turning it slightly, and her chest tightens as the marks come into view.
The letters are uneven, jagged, smeared into the fabric. They are not written cleanly. They are dragged.
Elyssara.
For a moment, Marin forgets to breathe.
He had held onto that.
Through whatever they have done to him, through whatever has been stripped away, something in him still reaches for her name. Not as a thought or a memory, but as something inevitable etched into his soul.
“Elyssara,” she whispers.
His breathing changes, subtle, but unmistakable. Like the name reaches somewhere deeper than the monster.
“He’s still in there,” she murmurs, the words slipping free before she can stop them.
Above her, something shifts. The air changes. She glances up, rising to her feet.
Too late.
His hand is at her throat in an instant, fingers locking around it with brutal force as he surges forward and slams her back into the wall. The impact drives the breath from her lungs, her vision flashing as instinct takes over. Her hands fly to his wrist, trying to tear him off, but even now—broken, bleeding, barely standing—he is stronger than her.
She reaches for the small blade tucked into her sleeve, but he swats her hand away like it’s nothing.
His face is inches from hers. There is nothing human there. No restraint or hesitation or confusion. Only violence, raw and unfiltered, something unbound clawing its way to the surface and devouring everything in its path.
“Kael—” she forces out, the name strangled beneath his grip.
