Lysara lay paralyzed upon the silk sheets, a fabric so unnervingly smooth it felt like the cold, slick skin of a serpent coiling around her limbs, slowly tightening its grip until her breath came in shallow hitches. The room was a tomb of artificiality; it held no trace of the honest scents of rain, turned earth, or the sun-baked grain of Eshka. Instead, it was thick with a cloying, sickly sweet perfume that failed to mask the deeper stench of decay, stale wine, and the rank, acidic odor of unwashed skin. This was the stagnant miasma of Baron Vaelin, a smell that had already leached into the heavy velvet drapes and now clung to Lysara's hair like woodsmoke from a dying, diseased fire.
Above her, Vaelin was a mountain of trembling, gelatinous flesh that seemed to swallow what little air remained in the room. His weight was an unbearable tide, crushing the air from her lungs as his sweat—hot, greasy, and smelling of copper and old grease—dripped onto her collarbone and chest, slicking her skin until she felt as though she were drowning in his very pores. His breathing was a mechanical torture, wheezing like a pair of rotted leather bellows, a rhythmic, wet rasp that sawed through the silence. Every time his heaving chest pressed against her, she felt the sickening heat of him, a vast, pulsating warmth that felt utterly predatory.
She was no longer a person; she was a commodity, a piece of sacrificial meat offered up to sate a monster's appetite. As he forced himself upon her, she felt the invasive, slick reality of his fluids—warm, viscous, and alien—leaving a trail of violation that felt like it would never wash away. It was the physical manifestation of the bargain struck in the dust of her home: the wet, heavy evidence of her father's betrayal and the Baron's ownership. She felt the repulsive friction of his damp skin against her own, a constant, sliding reminder that she was now a prisoner within her own body.
Lysara stared wide-eyed into the oppressive darkness of the canopy, her mind retreating to the red clay of the riverbank just to survive the moment. She felt the last embers of the Eshkan sun flicker and die in the cold reaches of her soul. The warmth was gone, replaced by a dark, jagged void. In the wake of the Baron's heaviness and the stains he left within and upon her, a new, obsidian resolve began to harden. The girl who had danced in the rain was buried under this sweating, wheezing mass of a man
Every night, that crushing weight descended upon Lysara—suffocating, inevitable, and inescapable. Baron Vaelin did not see a woman, nor a soul; to him, she was merely a beautiful, dark-skinned ornament, an exotic trophy to be displayed, handled, and discarded at his leisure. He used her with a casual brutality that suggested she was nothing more than a fine piece of furniture, crafted for his singular comfort.
When the Baron finally heaved his massive, sweating bulk off her and began to snore with a heavy, wet rattle, Lysara lay staring at the ornate moldings of the ceiling. Her body felt numb, a distant land she no longer inhabited. She had learned the art of dissociation, detaching her mind from her flesh and sending it far away—back to the crimson dust of Eshka where the wind blew fierce and free.
She rose slowly, her movements calculated and ghost-like, careful not to disturb the beast beside her. Her skin was a deep, rich sable, the color of a midnight shadow, standing in stark, defiant contrast against the pristine whiteness of the silk sheets. She walked to the window, her bare feet silent on the cold marble, and looked down at the gardens where guards patrolled with torches that flickered like dying stars in the gloom.
They had stripped her of everything: her home, her family, and the sanctity of her own body. All she had left was her hatred—a feeling that was small, sharp, and brilliantly clear, like a sliver of broken glass she had buried deep within her chest. It was the only thing holding her together when the Baron's damp, heavy hands reached for her once more in the dark.
Lysara touched the windowpane. It was biting cold. She did not cry; tears were a luxury of the weak, a waste of moisture she could not afford. Every humiliation, every night taken by force, was merely another entry in a ledger she intended to settle. One day, she would balance the scales. With blood. With interest.
She was no wife. She was a prisoner biding her time in a gilded cage. And when the moment finally arrived, she would burn this silken prison until nothing remained but ash and silence.
The room reeked of rotting luxury: expensive eastern oils, stale brandy, and the heavy, damp musk of Baron Vaelin's skin. It was a scent that had seeped into Lysara's pores, entangled itself in her hair, and infested her dreams until she could no longer remember the taste of fresh, unburdened air. She stood by the window, feeling the stickiness of his sweat cooling on her skin, a physical reminder of her status.
She had learned to be like stone, like a doll, like a decoration. It was the only way to protect the small, fragile fragment of herself that remained unbroken. The Baron was a vast, stinking mass that drowned her in his weight, his wheezing breath a rhythmic assault against her ear. Every labored movement of his body was a reminder of her reality: she was not a human being. She was a commodity. She was the ransom for the village of Eshka, paid for in flesh and bone.
Die, Lysara thought, her eyes fixed on the ceiling where gilded angels danced amongst painted clouds. Stop breathing. Choke on your own suet. Just stop.
But the Baron did not stop. His palms, swollen and perpetually damp, tightened like fleshy shackles around Lysara's wrists.
I am not here, she chanted to herself, a mantra against the violation. I am the wind over the Eshkan savannah. I am the river flowing far from this place. This skin is not mine. This pain is not mine.
But her desperation was slowly curdling into something else. It was no longer a simple, hollow sadness; it was becoming a thick, black tar that filled her lungs and poisoned her pulse. It was the sudden, jagged realization that if she lay here for even one more night, she would vanish entirely. Not even her name would remain—only an empty husk for the Baron to use until it finally splintered and frayed into nothingness.
She turned her gaze toward the window, and in that instant, her heart skipped a beat.
A black shadow glided across the face of the moon. It was not the polished, shimmering war-fleet of Olyndra, characterized by sterile order and rigid discipline. This vessel was ragged, scarred, and dented—an airship that looked as though it had been hammered together out of scrap metal, pure hatred, and unyielding defiance. It drifted through the sky like a silent curse hovering over the proud, clean city. It was chaos manifested in the heart of purity.
It was a sign. Or perhaps it was merely a hallucination conjured by her dying mind. But it was enough.
The Baron gave a guttural grunt and pressed his sweaty, stubble-covered face into the crook of Lysara's neck. His tongue flicked against her skin in a revolting, wet motion.
"My... property..." he wheezed, the sound slick with phlegm. His stench—the scent of rotting teeth and soured wine—filled her entire world, suffocating her.
In that moment, the desperation snapped. It no longer wept; it screamed. It became a bottomless abyss that roared: never again. If she was to die tonight, she would die free. She would die with her teeth in the Baron's throat, not submissively crushed between his sheets.
She felt her hands slip from his grasp as the man lost himself in his own base pleasure. Lysara did not hesitate. She did not think of the consequences, of the Kardeth legions, or the fate of Eshka. She thought only of that black shadow in the sky and how much she hungered to see the Baron blind and shrieking.
She coiled every muscle in her body. The hatred, tempered by months of silent agony, focused into a singular, lethal point at her fingertips.
This was the end. Or perhaps it was a beginning written in crimson.
Lysara struck. It was not a calculated blow, but an animalistic eruption of months of suppressed rot. Her fingers did not merely hit their mark; they tore through soft, moist resistance. Beneath her fingertips, she felt the sickening roll and pop of the Baron's eyeball. She felt the jelly-like coldness of the vitreous humor followed by a sudden, pulsing surge of hot, thick blood that geysered over her hand.
The Baron's beastly shriek tore the silence of the room to shreds, a sound of pure, primal agony. But Lysara heard only the thundering roar of the blood in her own ears. She felt no victory, only a blinding, nauseating terror that this mountain of meat might still try to claw at her.
She rolled violently off the bed and collapsed onto her knees upon the cold marble floor. She was naked, exposed, and drenched in blood, but she felt no cold. She felt only the desperate, frantic need to move. She left behind the silk that had absorbed her shame and the Baron who now writhed amidst the sheets like a half-crushed maggot.
She lunged for the balcony, vaulting over the railing and scrambling down the thick vines that clung to the stone. Her fingernails tore and her skin was shredded against the rough masonry, but she didn't stop. When her feet finally slammed against the cobblestones of the street, the weight of reality hit her with merciless force.
She ran, her breath wheezing in her throat like a rusted saw blade, every agonizing step against the gravel and jagged stone a fresh torment. She could feel the Baron's slick, viscous semen trickling down her thighs—hot, tacky, and a constant, crawling reminder with every slow slide of exactly what had just been done to her. It was a stain of rot and total humiliation, a brand she could not outrun no matter how hard she pushed her failing lungs. Run, run, run, her mind hammered in a frantic rhythm with her feet; don't look back, for if you do, you will turn to stone, and if you stop, you are nothing but a carcass. Her heart felt as though it were physically splintering inside her chest, and while the adrenaline scorched through her veins like liquid fire, beneath it swirled a bottomless, black despair—she had no clothes, no coin, and no home to return to, remaining nothing more than a wounded animal fleeing a butcher through the indifferent, high-born streets of a city that didn't care if she lived or died.
Then, through the gloom, she saw it: the rusted ramp of a black ship. It was ugly, it reeked of heavy oil, and it was the only thing in the entire world that did not belong to the Baron. In the shadows of the harbor, Arin and Mira were huddled at the foot of that same ramp, the air thick with the scent of salt water and airship exhaust, while Arin tried his desperate best to hide the fact that his knees were knocking together. "You're slower than a louse in tar," Mira hissed, wrenching a rope free from its mooring. "If you fumble with that knot one more time, I'm leaving you here and telling Kael you fell in the harbor." "This is precision work, you little brat," Arin grumbled back, mopping sweat from his brow. "I don't want this bucket taking off and leaving half my backside on the pier. Besides, who'd protect you then?" Mira let out a short, jagged laugh. "Protect me? You're about as useful as a wet newspaper in a fight. Last time someone looked at you cross-eyed, you practically apologized for existing."
Arin lifted his lantern to fire back a retort, but the movement froze mid-air. The beam of light sliced through the dark and caught something moving in the shadows. "What in the…?" Arin breathed, the joke dying on his lips as if it had been shot through the heart. A figure lunged out of the darkness, looking less like a person and more like something clawed out from the blackest depth of a requiem mass. It was a woman, but she was drenched in blood—not elegantly, but messily, gore-streaked and raw. Her hair was a matted, filthy nest, and the desolation in her eyes was so absolute that Arin forgot how to breathe. Lysara didn't stop to ask for permission; she didn't even seem to see them. She threw herself onto the ramp, and from inches away, Arin saw her shivering, naked form, her blood-slicked hands, and the way the adrenaline had pulled every tendon taut like a wire at its snapping point. His eyes fell to her thighs, where something pale and sticky was running down, mingling with the dark blood, and in that moment, his stomach did a slow, sick somersault.
"Lift… up," Lysara rasped, her voice not human but a ruin. "Get… this… filth… into the air." She collapsed onto the deck just as Nyra surged from the hold, throwing a heavy grey cloak over her. Beneath the fabric, Lysara's hands remained clenched into white-knuckled fists, as if she were still trying to tear herself away from something that refused to let go. Mira, who a second ago had been full of sharp-tongued bravado, stood deathly pale. She looked at Lysara and then up toward the manor, where animalistic roars and the frantic clanging of alarm bells were beginning to erupt. Mira, who had witnessed the bloodiest gutter-fights in Soryn, gripped Arin's sleeve so hard her nails pierced the fabric. "Arin," she whispered, her voice trembling in a way he had never heard. "We have to go. Right now." Arin didn't quip back. He didn't try to be a hero, and he had no jokes left. He felt rising bile in his throat and a blind, inexplicable rage. He kicked the ramp's locking mechanism free and screamed up toward Kael with a force that scorched his lungs: "RELEASE! NOW, DAMMIT, RELEASE!" The ship lurched and rose vertically, leaving Olyndra and its blood-stained sheets far below. Lysara lay on the deck beneath the cloak, shaking so violently that the chattering of her teeth could be heard over the roar of the engines. She was free, but the stench of the Baron's sour wine and sweat would not leave her for a long, long time.