Page 83 of Devoured
His skin didn’t fit right. Too tight in some places so you could see every vein, too loose in others where it hung like melted wax. The muscles underneath moved on their own—one flexing while another relaxed—giving him this constant rippling motion that made me seasick to watch.
Chains wrapped him like he’d been gift-wrapped in hell. They weren’t restraining him—they moved when he moved, part of him. Rust flaked off constantly. No, not rust. Dried blood.
“My wayward Executioner.”His voice came from everywhere—the walls, the floor, inside my chest. I felt my ribs vibrate. But those weeping black pits were locked on the Executioner alone, and the rage there could have melted steel.
The Judge’s massive hand shot forward. Chains erupted from the air itself—thick as tree trunks, glowing with hellish heat. They wrapped around the Executioner’s arms, legs, throat, and yanked him to his knees with such force the stone floor cracked beneath him. He tried to rise, muscles straining, but the chains only tightened.
The Seamstress dropped me so fast I didn’t have time to catch myself. My face met the floor. She was already prostrating, grinding her forehead into the stone.
“Master,”she muffled against the floor. “I have brought you the corrupted one, as you commanded.”
“Have you?”He didn’t look at her. Didn’t look at me. Only at the Executioner. “What I see is betrayal. Centuries of service thrown away for mortal flesh.”
The chains tightening around the Executioner started heating up. I could hear them sizzling against his skin, smell flesh cooking. He didn’t flinch, but I saw the muscles in his jaw lock, saw his massive frame tremble just once. My chest cracked open watching it—this creature who’d saved me, who’d chosen me over eternity, now burning for that choice.
“You dare steal from me?”The Judge’s words dripped venom. “My blade. My instrument. Corrupted by this... nothing?”He pointed at me without looking, like I wasn’t worth his attention.
“She chooses her own fate.”The Executioner’s voice rang out despite the chains crushing his chest. Still fighting. Still protecting me even as his skin blackened under the burning metal.
The Judge laughed—that grinding, breaking sound that made reality hiccup. “Choice? There is no choice here, my broken tool. There is only judgment. And yours, my wayward son, has finally come.”
He slammed his fist into the floor. The impact reverberated through every bone. Power radiated outward in waves I could see—warping the air, cracking stone. But all I could focus on was the Executioner—my protector, my monster, my salvation—brought to his knees because he’d dared to care about me. I’d done this. I’d broken him just by existing, just by being something he wanted to save. And now we were all going to pay for it.
Chapter 25
The chamber dissolved.
One moment, stone walls surrounded us. The next, we hung suspended in a void where thoughts had weight and my terror left trails of light. When we crashed back into reality, everything was wrong.
The ground beneath us wasn’t earth but ash mixed with bone dust, still warm—like whatever had burned here never stopped burning. Above us stretched no sky, only a red membrane that pounded with its own heartbeat.
We weren’t in the hospital anymore. This was what had always waited underneath. The truth beneath every lie we’d told ourselves about where we were.
“Welcome to my true domain.”
The Judge stood before us. And here, in this place, his chains blazed with their own light. Behind him rose something that called itself a castle but had been built from nightmares. Every stone was bone—human skulls compressed into bricks, ribs forming archways, femurs as pillars. The whole structure wept blood from ten thousand eyes that death hadn’t closed. The moat surrounding it bubbled with boiling blood, steaming with the stink of copper and rot.
“Move.”
New chains materialized around our limbs. We walked, not because we chose to, but because choice had been torn from us. The Executioner strained against his bonds until his scars split and bled, red ribbons painting his chest—but the chains only tightened in response.
The bridge was vertebrae: human spines fused together, bending slightly under our weight. From inside the bones came whispers. Last words. Dying breaths. Names of people long forgotten—everywhere but here, where forgetting wasn’t allowed.
Inside the castle, the throne room broke my mind trying to process it. Too vast to comprehend. Its ceiling was lost in shifting shadows that moved independently of any light source. Everything had been carved from human remains but arranged with terrible artistry. The throne itself defied direct gaze—hundreds of skeletons twisted together in a shape that still tried to scream.
The Judge settled into it, and the bones glowed in recognition of their king. Torture devices lined the walls, but these weren’t normal tools. I saw a rack designed to stretch guilt until it snapped, wheels that spun through dimensions of pain, braziers burning concepts instead of coal.
From alcoves in the walls stepped servants that used to be human. Now they were empty things, moving only because he willed it. Their faces were blank as unwritten paper.
“Kneel.”
My knees hit the mosaic floor before the thought to resist could form. This wasn’t obedience—it was compulsion. His word was physics here.
His burning gaze moved over us like fingers rifling through pages, reading everything written in our souls. When those eyes found mine, I felt him cataloging my capacity for suffering with the patience of a collector appraising a rare find.
“The nurse.”He pointed at Sela with one clawed finger. “Still thinking knowledge means power.”
She rose into the air without any visible force lifting her. Just floated—suspended like a butterfly pinned to nothing. Her clothes didn’t tear or fall away. They simply ceased to exist, leaving her naked and exposed while he circled beneath her like a shark.
