Page 78 of Whisper of Nightmares

Bare flesh sizzles. The man hisses, jerking his arm away and staggering even farther away.

Euphemia has no room for empathy for him at this moment.

All she thinks of is her father and how she can no longer hear him.

With Ash staring down at his sizzling arm, Euphemia seizes the opportunity presented. She dashes back across the corridor.

“Euphemia, stop!” His shouts ricochet after her like arrows fired haphazardly.

But Euphemia is already halfway down the hall, having dodged them all.

She leaps over the pools of venom.

Dodges rubble and bones.

And bounds around the corner, across the threshold, and toward the salvation awaiting her.

Only, salvation is far from what she finds.

If the twisting halls behind her were the bone palace, this must be the chamber of slaughter.

Death permeates the walls here, acrid and thick. Like it’s all this vacuous room has ever known.

Corpses litter the ground. Not just emaciated bones like the previous halls, but bodies of flesh and blood so torn apart that it is difficult to tell where one ends and another begins.

Euphemia stops.

Her stomach twists.

She locks up.

Heaps of the dead are piled along every wall, stacked nearly to the vaulted, cathedral ceilings. They tower around her like sentinels of judgment. Skewed jaws. Cracked ribcages. Limbs twisted at impossible angles.

This is not a room of peaceful death.

It is one of torment.

She can no longer lie to herself that this is only a dream.

This is Hell—or some place like it.

And she gets the distinct feeling that no one leaves here alive.

Despite the churning of her stomach, Euphemia’s neck snaps around the yawning chamber, searching for signs of her father.

She climbs over bodies, her nose shielded from the sour smell. She doesn’t want to look. Doesn’t want these faces, twisted in terror, forged in her mind. Doesn’t want to witness the aftermath of every disembowelment. But she has to find him. Has to know he’s alright.

By the time Ash staggers into the room behind her, Euphemia is already a decent way in. Not quite to the other side—this chamber seems endless. The piles of bodies amassed around the room fade into shadows and then into utter darkness. But she’s far enough away that it takes him a quick scan of his surroundings before he spots her.

Euphemia turns her back to him, preparing to drown out what she anticipates will be his commands. Stop. Come back. We have to leave at once.

They do not come.

Only in his silence does she finally hear it.

A rattling sound of death.

Something sliding over bones and viscera.