Page 95 of Devoured
I didn't turn, but I raised one hand in a swift gesture toward the door.Go.
Marion hesitated for just a heartbeat, then grabbed Isaac's arm. Sela was already moving. Their footsteps retreated up the stone stairs, fading into the corridors above.
The cultists remained frozen in their circle, trembling. Some still clutched their ceremonial daggers, though their hands shook too badly to use them. Others had dropped to their knees, mouths moving in silent prayers to gods who wouldn't answer.
I stepped closer to the altar, my shadow stretching long across the blood-stained floor. The lead cultist—the one who'd been chanting moments before—backed against the stone table, his elaborate robes now damp with sweat.
“You know what I am,” I said softly.
Above us, distantly, I could hear doors opening. Muffled shouts. The sound of many feet beginning to move. Marion and the others were doing their work. But that was their concern now.
Mine stood before me, reeking of fear and sin.
One cultist—younger, quicker, probably newer—tried to run. He made it three steps before the Executioner’s blade sang through the air. His head separated cleanly but kept screaming as it rolled across the floor, eyes blinking in confusion. The body took a few more steps, muscle memory dragging it forward, before collapsing.
“Now, now,” I purred. The sound made several cultists whimper. “Leaving already? And the evening’s entertainment has just begun.”
I moved toward the nearest cultist with predatory grace. The oldest one—Varnar’s advisor.
“Six hundred years,” I murmured, placing a clawed hand on his weathered face. “Six hundred years your bloodline has served. Six hundred years of torture, and not a drop of remorse. Perfectly aged. Vintage sociopathy.”
“I... I am faithful,” he wheezed. One of his eyes burst like an overripe grape from the pressure of his terror. “Always faithful to the Judge—”
“The Judge is gone. Now there’s only hunger. My hunger. And you’re exactly what I’ve been craving.”
I began the extraction. Not his soul. No—I devoured something far more specific. I pulled out his missing guilt, all those centuries of unfelt remorse. It poured from every orifice as black smoke, thick as tar, screaming with the voices of everyone he’d hurt.
His face contorted as he relived every moment of pain he’d ever caused—from his victims’ perspectives. Not just their physical agony, but the aftermath. The nightmares. The shattered families. The suicides. The ripples of grief that echoed for generations.
When he was nothing but a hollow husk, I fed deeply. The taste was exquisite—centuries of justice aged to perfection, flavored with every culture he helped destroy. His body crumbled, not into ash, but into dust so fine it resembled the sand of ages. The dust whispered names as it fell. Every victim, finally remembered.
“Delicious,” I purred, licking my lips with a tongue now forked and far too long. “Who’s next?”
The cultists scattered like roaches exposed to light.
Some ran for doors that no longer led anywhere—I’d been reshaping the building’s geometry since I arrived. One opened a doorway only to find a wall of screaming mouths. Another ran in circles, the room folding in on itself, trapping him in an endless loop.
The Executioner moved with brutal efficiency. But he left some alive. He knew the ones I’d marked for feeding. He could smell the particularly rancid guilt on them.
His blade sang as it moved. And the song was names—every soul who had died in this place, finally given voice. The walls began to weep blood as the building itself remembered its crimes.
“Please!” A cultist fell to his knees, robes slipping open to reveal a chest covered in ritualistic scars—prayers to the Judge carved into his skin. “We were just following orders! The Judge demanded—”
“Following orders.” I chuckled. “How many times did your victims beg? How many did you ignore because you were ’just following orders’?”
This extraction was especially satisfying.
He didn’t just feel pain—he relived the full lives he’d stolen. Every future he erased for the Judge’s appetite. His adult mind couldn’t withstand the innocent terror from within. He aged fifty years in fifty seconds—his hair went white, skin shriveled like rotting fruit, teeth falling out as his body tried to carry the weight of his sins.
Varnar backed into Alan’s corpse, shaking like a leaf in a hurricane. His expensive shoes slipped in her blood, and he fell—landing with one hand inside her chest cavity. He yanked it back with a shriek. Her organs clung to his fingers like desperate lovers.
The wet, sucking sound made two more cultists vomit.
“Wait. Please. We can make a deal.” His voice had lost all polish—reduced to raw, animal desperation.
“A deal?” I tilted my head so far it should’ve snapped. The cracking sound made him flinch. “What could you possibly offer me? Your money? I rule the Realm Beneath. Your connections? I’m linked to every guilty soul that breathes. Your knowledge? I absorbed it when I ate your god.”
“Information! Resources! I know where the Judge’s artifacts are hidden!”
