Page 70 of Whispers of Ruin

The seventeen masked members strike the floor with their right heels in unison again, the sound echoing, a war drum pounding through the chamber. Then, in perfect synchronicity, they all turn their backs to me. Alright. Weird flex, but okay.

Lucian steps forward, drawing his ceremonial dagger—curved, ornate, and unnecessarily ominous. I extend my hand, expecting the classic palm cut Xan had warned me about. You know, simple. Manageable. Symbolic.

But no.

Lucian’s masked face tilts slightly, and instead of slashing my hand, he guides the blade higher. Much higher. The point of the dagger rests just beneath my sternum—dead center. Before I can react, he presses.

The knife punctures the skin with brutal elegance, sliding into the soft flesh between my ribs. The pain is immediate and white-hot, blooming through my chest with such precision it feels as though it pierces straight into my heart.

I wonder if this was it—if I was truly about to die here, carved open like a pig on this cold slab of stone. I suddenly feel the blade glide downward, dragging a searing line from my chest to just above my navel. Then… he pulls it out, smooth as silk.

Okay. Cool. Guess I’mnotdying. Not yet anyway.

He wipes the blade with a length of black satin, like it has its own sacred ritual and not just him cleaning up my insides. With all the ceremony of a twisted tailor, he lays the dagger beside me—perfectly parallel to my hips.

With a strange sort of care, he lifts the blood-stained tissue and wraps it around my eyes. The fabric sticks to my skin, warmand damp. I can smell the iron instantly—so strong I can even taste it. It fills my mouth, my nose, my throat, until I feel like I am breathing it in.

The slash across my stomach burns like acid—sharp and far too real—still my mind barely registers it. Everything is buzzing, hazy. My brain is trying to buffer through a hallucinatory fever blur. The ache is there, screaming, but it is drowned out by the intensity of the moment, by the blood, the whispers, the goddamn satin caging my sight.

Lucian’s voice cuts through the silence like a chef master announcing dinner service at Hell’s five-star resort.

“Let the feast begin. Try to savor boys—gluttony leaves such a mess.”

Charming. Just what you want to hear when your guts are barely staying in place.

I hear the first set of footsteps pivot behind me as one of the masked members steps forward to the altar. My nerves spike so violently, my soul seems to push itself out of my body. I feel myself drifting, detaching—floating somewhere above the stone slab like some desperate guardian angel watching the scene unfold.

The problem is, the poor soul splayed out on the altar below, stripped of sight and sanity, blood seeping down her side… is me. And all I want to do is scream at this invisible version of myself:run, girl—get off the damn table.

But I can’t. I am completely incapable of moving, of fleeing, of doing anything other than lying here as some tragic offering. I must go through with this. Not just for Xan—even if the thoughtof him is anchoring—but for me. For the version of Mira that is clawing her way out of the ashes of the girl I used to be.

That old version? She is fucking gone. Buried somewhere beneath heartbreak, fury, and a stone altar slick with her own blood. What is rising now… is something else entirely.

Though I cannot see a damn thing, I feel someone standing over me. The air shifts—heavier, colder—and, without warning, a finger presses into the fresh wound on my abdomen.

A choked gasp escapes me. The pain is blinding—sharp and searing, a molten blade shoved straight into my gut. My back arches instinctively against the stone beneath me, trapped in stillness, strapped down—not by force, now by fear.

Every nerve in my body screams. It burns, it throbs, it boils. I clench my jaw, already dreading the fact that this was only the first… one down,sixteento go. Sixteen more men. Sixteen more hands. Sixteen more trials by stirring fire.

If I survive until number five, I am convinced my insides are going to just spill out onto the floor like overcooked spaghetti. Yet—I stay. I endure. Because this is not just suffering.

It is the price of becoming someone no one will ever dare to touch without my permission again.

And comes the next one. Another faceless shadow stepping forward to take their turn. I brace myself, even if it is useless. The pain hits again—sharp and invasive—like the first time.

I keep waiting for the adrenaline to kick in, to work its magic and numb the agony. Isn’t that how this is supposed to go? Body in shock, mind floating away somewhere safer?

Sadly, my body is clearly too stubborn, or too aware. Every nerve is awake, on high alert. The sting does not dull at all—it multiplies, spreads. I am starting to think I will feel every goddamn one of them as if it was the first. Again and again.

When the next figure approaches, I count—eleven. This is the eleventh one. Which means there are only six more to go. Just six. I cannot believe it. The end is finally creeping closer.

For a moment, I genuinely thought Julian’s murder would be the peak of my life’s trauma chart. Like the defining moment of unbearable horror.

Butoh, how naïve of me.

Life—or rather, the Order—had other plans. Apparently, rock bottom has a basement. Here I am, spread out on a stone altar, bleeding, blindfolded, and being sampled like an hors d’oeuvre at a cannibalistic wine tasting.

And this man… this man takes his time. Excruciatingly so. I can hear his breath hitch as he leans closer, inhaling me like a dying deer, catching the scent of salvation. He finally exhales. A low, guttural sigh of satisfaction that snakes down my spine like liquid heat.

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