Page 52 of Empire of Wrath and Ruin
His response came back fractured, broken by the war raging inside his mind. I could feel him fighting, struggling against the darkness that wanted to consume him completely. The shadows weren't just responding to his call anymore—they were demanding it, clawing at his consciousness with razor-sharp hunger.
Can't... they killed them all...His mental voice was strained, desperate.The children... I knew that family...
Through the bond, I felt the exact moment his control began to slip. The pain spiked suddenly, white-hot agony as the shadows dug deeper into his soul, and his resistance crumbled like a dam giving way to flood waters. The fury that followed wasn't entirely his own—it was something ancient and terrible, a wrath that had been building for centuries and now had a vessel to express itself through.
Taveth, please,I begged, my own fear flooding through the connection.Don't let them take you. Fight it.
But I could feel him slipping away, could sense the gentle, thoughtful man I loved being subsumed by something that viewed the world through a lens of absolute violence. The shadows weren't just using his body—they were rewriting his thoughts, his motivations, his very sense of self.
For a brief moment, I felt him surface again, felt his horror at what was happening to him.Little Flame... I'm sorry... I can't...
Then the darkness swallowed him completely.
"No," he said aloud, his voice carrying clearly despite the wind. But it wasn't really his voice anymore—it was colder, flatter, empty of everything that made him who he was. "Enough."
The terror that gripped me was unlike anything I'd ever experienced. This wasn't fear of death or capture—this was the helpless horror of watching someone you love disappear before your eyes, consumed by forces beyond anyone's control. Through our bond, I could still sense him somewhere deep inside the darkness, screaming silently.
What happened next unfolded with a terrible, inevitable precision. Taveth's shadows exploded outward from his position, extending across impossible distances to reach our pursuers. I watched in horror as the darkness wrapped around dragons and riders alike, not gentle or quick, but deliberate and sadistic.
He started with the outermost rider first. The shadows coiled around the man's arm with surgical precision, and I heard the sharp crack of his wrist breaking. The scream that followed was cut short as another tendril snapped his shoulder, then his elbow. The dragon beneath him shrieked in terror and pain as shadows found his wing joints, methodically breaking each delicate bone one by one.
Stop,I tried to reach Taveth through the bond, but there was nothing there but cold satisfaction and hunger for more.
The second pair fell next. Taveth took his time with them, the shadows playing with their victims like a cat with wounded mice. Ribs cracked in sequence, a grotesque percussion that echoed off the mountain walls. The rider's legs were next, each bone snapping with deliberate slowness while his dragon writhed helplessly in the shadow's grip, wings useless, unable to fly or fall.
The remaining dragons tried to scatter, but the shadows were everywhere now, growing stronger with each act of violence.Taveth's face was utterly serene as he orchestrated the torture, his pale eyes tracking each movement with predatory focus. This wasn't the man I loved—this was something else wearing his face, something that fed on suffering and found art in cruelty.
The third dragon's neck bent at an impossible angle, but Taveth kept it alive, kept it conscious as he worked on its rider. Fingers first, then hands, working his way up the arms with methodical precision. The sounds—the wet snaps, the strangled screams, the desperate keening of dragons watching their riders destroyed—created a symphony of agony that seemed to energize the shadows even more.
By the time he reached the final pair, I was sobbing, my hands pressed over my ears as if that could block out the horror. But through the bond, I could feel Taveth's twisted pleasure, his satisfaction at each broken bone, each cry of pain. The shadows had turned him into something monstrous, and he was revelling in it.
The last dragon and rider died slowly, their bodies crushed gradually from the extremities inward, giving them time to feel every break, every rupture, every moment of agony before the shadows finally granted them the mercy of death. When it was over, when the mangled bodies were hurled against the mountainside with sickening impact, Taveth's face showed no remorse whatsoever.
If anything, he looked satisfied. Hungry for more.
The silence that followed was deafening, broken only by the sound of my own ragged breathing and the soft whimpers I couldn't control.
Sirrax's anguish flooded through our bond—grief for his fallen kin, even enslaved as they were, mixed with horror at the casual brutality of their deaths. Tarshi keened, a sound of pure sorrow that echoed off the mountain walls, his distress at witnessing such cruelty overwhelming his usual playful nature.
They had been trying to spare the dragons, to find a way to escape without killing creatures that were as much victims as anyone else. But Taveth had turned their deaths into a spectacle of torture, drawing out their suffering for his own twisted pleasure. The man who had claimed me so fiercely, who had been brutal and demanding but would never truly hurt me, was gone. In his place sat a monster that wore his face and spoke with his voice but felt nothing but cold satisfaction at the carnage he had created.
He's losing himself,Sirrax said quietly, his mental voice heavy with concern.The shadows are taking more of him each time.
I could feel it too, through the bond we shared. The Taveth I'd come to know—gentle, thoughtful, deeply caring despite his reserved nature—was being consumed by something darker. Something that took pleasure in violence, that saw enemies to be destroyed rather than people to be saved.
This was what the council had meant when they'd spoken of his limited time. Not just that the shadows would eventually kill him, but that they would make him into something else entirely before they did.
The hope I'd felt this morning, the joy of being whole and complete with my mates restored to me, suddenly felt fragile and naive. How could I have believed that everything would be all right when the very bond that connected us was slowly destroying the man I loved?
We flew back toward the hidden city in heavy silence, the weight of what we'd seen and what Taveth had done settling over us like a shroud. The intelligence we carried—that Imperial forces were advancing faster than expected, that they were systematically destroying Talfen settlements, that they were closer than anyone had imagined—felt almost secondary to the personal revelation of how far Taveth had already fallen.
By the time the temple came into view, carved into the mountainside like a sanctuary against the gathering storm, I felt hollow again. Not the same emptiness I'd carried during our separation, but something new and worse. The knowledge that even when we were together, even when the bonds between us were strong and whole, we were still losing pieces of ourselves to this war.
The snow was falling harder now, thick flakes that would soon cover the mountains in white. Pure and clean, unlike the grey slush we'd left behind in the destroyed village. But even the snow couldn't wash away what we'd seen, or what we'd learned about the darkness growing inside the man I loved.
As Sirrax settled onto the landing platform carved into the temple's side, I realized that hope was more fragile than I'd thought. It could survive separation and uncertainty and even the threat of death.
But it might not survive watching the people you love disappear piece by piece, consumed by the very forces that were supposed to save you.
