The chamber wouldn't stop bleeding.
Noah crouched behind the marble pillar, his palm clamped over his own mouth to silence the ragged gasps tearing from his throat. The blood pooling across the floor had reached his boots—warm, sticky, reaching like grasping fingers. The corpses weren't cooling. They were changing, skin turning ashen-gray, eyes sinking into shadowed hollows.
Near the throne, the figure hadn't moved. He stood with his back to Noah, staring at nothing, a silhouette carved from the darkness itself.
He hasn't seen me. He hasn't seen me. He hasn't—
The thought died as the figure's head turned. Slowly. Mechanically. As if his neck had never been meant to bend that way.
Purple eyes flared to life in the gloom.
Noah's blood turned to ice. He pressed harder against the pillar, willing his hammering heart to quiet—but it was too late. Those eyes weren't looking at the pillar.
They were looking through it.
"Finally," the figure whispered, and the word echoed in Noah's skull like a tolling bell. "Found you."
The darkness shrouding his face began to… dissolve. Not fully—never fully. But the veil thinned, revealing a slice of pale skin, the sharp cut of a jawline, and a smile that shouldn't exist on something human.
A devilish smile. Cold. Knowing.
Noah tried to scream. No sound came. His legs refused to run.
The figure took a step. Then another. Each footfall resonated through Noah's bones. He was close now—close enough that Noah could see the faint glow of violet light pulsing beneath his skin like veins of liquid amethyst.
But the face… the face…
Just as the shadows began to peel back from his eyes, just as Noah was about to see—
---
Noah bolted upright, a silent scream ripping from his throat.
His room was dark. Silent. The cool night air from the open window kissed his sweat-drenched skin. He was in his bunk, in the barracks, miles from that cursed throne room.
A dream. Just a dream.
His hands shook violently as he pressed them against his face. The images refused to fade—the blood, the corpses, that smile. It had felt so real. Too real.
He threw off his blanket. The rough wool was soaked through, as if he'd run miles through a storm. His tunic clung to his back, sticky with sweat. But it wasn't just sweat. Noah's fingers came away tinged with something dark in the moonlight.
Reddish-brown. Dried.
Blood?
His stomach lurched. He scrambled out of bed, bare feet slapping against cold stone. He needed water. He needed air. He needed to think—
A knock shattered the silence.
Three soft raps. Deliberate. Patient.
Noah froze. It was past midnight. No one knocked like that. Not here.
He stared at the wooden door. It was locked. It had to be locked. He always locked it.
Another knock. This time, a voice—low, amused, and familiar—slid through the crack beneath the door:
"You forgot the rest of the message, boy."
Noah's breath hitched. That voice. The exact voice from his dream.
The lock clicked.
The door began to swing open.
---