Page 72 of Devoured
The word sealed our fate. I’d seen what punishment looked like in this place—the hanging souls in his workshop, their eternal whispers of agony. The thought of joining them made my whole body lock up with terror.
Before I could speak again, he scooped me up. My stomach hit his shoulder, the sheet tangling around my legs as he strode toward a section of wall I hadn’t noticed before. The stone looked different here—older, with symbols carved so deep they seemed to pulse with their own dark light.
His fist slammed into the stone. It crumbled inward, revealing a tunnel that descended into absolute darkness.
He carried me down rough-hewn steps, deeper into the building’s bones.
We passed through the ritual chamber where we’d first landed—that terrible room of bone and blood where everything had changed. But he didn’t stop. He kept going, taking me deeper still, into the very foundations of this place.
Each step took us further from anything resembling the hospital above. That was just the surface. A mask. Below it lay something older. Worse. A place carved from living rock and pain, a foundation built on screams and watered with blood.
The walls changed as we descended. White stone gave way to black rock, then to something that wasn’t quite stone at all. It felt organic. Breathing. Like we were traveling through the digestive system of some massive beast.
My shoulder throbbed where Helena’s claws had torn through skin and muscle. The bandages the Executioner had applied were holding, but wetness was seeping through.
The air grew colder the deeper we went. My exposed skin broke out in goosebumps that had nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with the wrongness that saturated this place.
The attack came without warning.
Hairless, flayed canine forms leapt from shadows I hadn’t seen. They poured from crevices that shouldn’t have been large enough to hold them. Their faces were carved into permanent surgical grins, jawbones hinged with gleaming metal.
They laughed as they attacked—children’s giggles played backward, the sound bouncing off the walls like broken music.
The laughter was the worst part. Somehow. It spoke of innocence corrupted, joy twisted into something obscene.
“Grin-Hounds,”the Executioner muttered, setting me down behind a pillar. He drew his massive blade. “Stay back.”
The sword cut through the first creature like paper, splitting it clean in half with wet efficiency. Black blood splattered the tunnel walls in arterial sprays. Its death shriek was barely human—more like tearing metal mixed with a child’s scream.
But more came. Always more.
They poured from the walls like water, emerging from cracks too small to hold them.
He fought with brutal precision. Each swing took limbs. Each thrust found hearts—or whatever passed for vital organs in these things. The blade moved like it was alive, flowing from one kill to the next without pause.
But for every hound that fell, two more emerged from the dark.
Their laughter echoed louder, building into a crescendo that made my teeth ache. Blood—his and theirs—painted the walls in abstract patterns that might have been beautiful under different circumstances.
“Ah, the prodigal returns.”A voice came from deeper in the tunnel. Calm with sermonic certainty.
At once, the hounds began to back off, slinking into the shadows but not leaving. Watching. Waiting.
A figure emerged from darkness, nightmare wrapped in sanctity. Tall and thin, moving with the certainty of someone who had never doubted he was right.
His robes were stitched from scripture pages, the words moving across the fabric like they were alive—trying to escape.
Where his chest should have been was a hollow cavity filled with scales and scorched coins that clinked softly as he moved. They looked like scales of justice—but blackened, warped by heat, until they resembled charred skin.
“Gallows,”the Executioner spat, blade still raised despite the blood dripping from his wounds. “You should’ve stayed in your chapel.”
The priest—or whatever he had become—smiled. His teeth were filed to points, each one carved with scripture in a language I didn’t recognize. He waved his hand and an invisible force made the Executioner fall on his knees. He tried hard to break free but couldn’t.
“I’ve served the Varnar line since the beginning,”Gallows said, tone never shifting from that awful calm. “When their ancestors first summoned the Judge in the 1400s. I was a priest then too. Helped prepare the first sacrifices—women who knew too much. Men who asked too many questions. We burned them as witches while I took their confessions.”
He stepped closer, coins clinking in his hollow chest.
“I chose this, you see. Chose to follow the Judge into this realm. Chose to become Sanctified—one of his eternal servants, granted life unending to extract truth from the guilty. The Judge rewards those who serve willingly. We become more than human. We become instruments of divine judgment.”
