The Journey, Book 2; Chapter 28 - Previous Chapter
Chapter 29: Untold
Matthious drifted up and down the narrow hall, a warped figure in the torchlight. His long, skeletal fingers tapped against his chin with a slow, insectile rhythm. Green-grey eyes, narrow, sunken, and gleaming, never left the woman huddled in the cell. A grin, stretched too wide on his lip-less mouth, crawled across his face.
When he spoke, his voice grated like rusted iron dragged across stone.
"I was once like you… weak. Fragile. A hollow shell with no purpose. But then… I found a book. Old beyond measure. Its pages stank of moild… and pig shit."
The woman flinched, her hands curling tighter around her knees. The stench seemed to seep into the cell, choking her throat. Behind her closed eyes, visions clawed their way in: a looming shadow wearing Matthious’s shape, faceless and vast; pigs with eyeless sockets, their pale skin split and glistening, staggering toward her in silence. She gasped and shoved the images away, but they clung, sticky as cobwebs.
Matthious leaned closer, skeletal fingers wrapping around the bars. His grin widened.
"The book gave me answers. It whispered the true language, every word, every thought sharpened into a blade. Through it, I learned to fashion undgrolls… hollow slaves, carved from flesh and agony. But knowledge has its price. To open the darkness, I had to kill. To master it, I had to bleed. Blood magic embraced me… and I embraced it."
The woman’s chest heaved, fear rattling her ribs. For a heartbeat she felt as if the shadows themselves would smother her. But then, slowly, she raised her chin. Her wide, trembling eyes narrowed.
“You think that makes you powerful?” she whispered, voice raw but steadying. “You’re nothing but rot in a cage of skin.”
Matthious froze, grin faltering. Then he laughed, low and rasping, as if the sound itself wanted to flay her courage.
Matthious’s grin stretched again, thin as a knife cut.
"Do you know how many souls I bled for this power?" His voice rasped through the bars, each word soaked in malice. "Hundreds. Men, women… children. Creatures with voices like music, cut short in screaming silence. Elves with eyes like jewels, gouged and hollow. Dwarves whose bones I ground to powder. I slit throats, cracked skulls, drained rivers red. Each death carved a doorway deeper into the dark."
The woman gasped as the words became images, forced into her mind like burning brands. She saw elves impaled on black spikes, their luminous eyes fading. Dwarves shrieking as their veins burst open, their blood drawn upward into a writhing spiral. Children, pale and still, their shadows torn free and shackled to Matthious’s will. The visions clawed at her sanity, writhing and screaming, too vivid to shut out.
Her nails dug into her palms until blood welled. She forced her breath steady, jaw clenched. Don’t let him in. Don’t let him win.
Matthious leaned forward, eyes alight with a cruel hunger. "Every life taken strengthened me. Every scream was an offering. The more I killed, the louder the book sang. Blood upon blood, until the darkness itself bowed at my command. And you—" he hissed, his voice dropping to a guttural growl, "you will bow too."
The woman’s body trembled, her heart hammering like a war drum. The images still clawed at her, pressing, crushing. For a moment, tears burned her eyes. But she raised her head again, her gaze locking on his with raw, stubborn fire.
“You can flood me with all your horrors,” she whispered hoarsely. “But they’re still yours. Not mine. I will never carry them for you.”
Matthious’s grin wavered, just slightly, like a candle flickering before a gust. His fingers tightened on the bars until they groaned, but the woman did not look away.
Matthious’s grin crept wider, his teeth blackened stumps in the firelight. He leaned close, the bars between them seeming thinner, weaker, as if his voice alone could reach through and strangle.
"Do you know my favourite?" he whispered, almost tender. "Of all the souls I’ve broken… there was one who sang the sweetest."
The woman stiffened, her breath hitching.
"An elf," Matthious continued, savouring each syllable. "But not like the others. His blood carried the wild. His face was sharp, feline, cheetah-like. Quick and proud. I chained him down… wrists, ankles, stretched on cold iron. I laid out my tools before him. Simple things. Primitive. A knife, a hammer, a hooked blade, a brand."
The prisoner flinched as the vision slammed into her mind, torches guttering, shadows crawling across stone walls. A long, scarred table slick with blood. And on it, the Elvish man: lean, golden eyes wild, muscles taut as the restraints cut into his skin. His breath came ragged, defiant even as terror flickered in his gaze.
Matthious’s voice dropped, soft as rot eating wood. "I began shallow. Little kisses of the knife, tracing his skin. He tried not to cry out… oh, how hard he tried. But every shallow cut builds hunger, you see. Soon the body begs for release. I gave him deeper strokes then. Slow, dragging slices. His blood came hot and fast. He screamed—"
The woman clamped her hands to her ears, but the scream tore through her mind anyway, raw and endless.
"—and every sound was a hymn to me. I carved his pride away, strip by strip. Hours. Days. Until even his voice was nothing but whimpers. When he finally begged for death, I knew I had made him pure."
Her stomach twisted, bile burning at her throat. Her whole body shook, every instinct screaming to collapse, to curl into nothing. But through the horror, through the tears gathering hot in her eyes, she spat between clenched teeth:
“You enjoyed it. That makes you filth. Not strong. Not powerful. Just filth.”
For the first time, Matthious’s smile faltered, just barely. His eyes narrowed, a shadow of frustration cutting through his mask.
The grin vanished, replaced by a flash of feral rage. With a shriek of rusted metal, Matthious tore the cell door open, the slam reverberating through the stone like a death knell. In two strides he was upon her.
His hand shot out, sinewy, skeletal fingers clamping around her throat. The skin of his palm was leathery, reeking of ash and rot. His grip tightened until her breath came ragged and thin. He dragged her upright, slamming her back against the wall, his green-grey eyes boring into hers with predatory hunger.
His lip-less mouth twisted inches from her face, spittle hissing as he spat his words:
"Do you want to know what I did to him?"
The visions surged again, hammering into her skull. She saw the cheetah-like elf, bound and bleeding, his golden eyes dulling with agony. Matthious’s hand, steady as a surgeon’s, carving strips of flesh from his thigh. The elf’s teeth snapping together to choke back screams, until Matthious dug the knife deeper and deeper, peeling him open like fruit.
"I cut him slowly," Matthious hissed, his grip tightening around her throat. "I tasted his pain. I drank every cry, every twitch of his muscles, every ounce of his blood. And I enjoyed it."
The woman gagged, her vision blurring with the crushing pressure on her windpipe. The stench of his breath—copper and carrion—filled her nostrils. The torment slammed against her mind like waves against stone, trying to break her, drown her, drag her under.
And yet—through the tears, through the trembling—she forced her gaze to meet his. Staring straight into those vile green-grey eyes, she rasped, voice shredded but sharp as steel:
“It’s a shame… you didn’t choke on it. And die.”
For an instant, the cell seemed to still. His grip trembled. His grin cracked, not with triumph this time, but with something darker, uglier.
A hiss escaped him, long and venomous, as though her words had drawn real blood.
Matthious’s grip convulsed around her throat, a low, guttural roar tearing from his lip-less mouth. The stone walls quivered with the sound, dust drifting from the ceiling. His green-grey eyes burned with unholy fire, his skeletal frame vibrating with rage.
From the shadows, a shambling figure crept forward, an undgroll, its hunched body stitched from pallid flesh, its soulless eyes black as tar. It wheezed, clutching a message sealed in wax, and bowed low before him.
“Master…” it croaked.
But Matthious did not turn. His fury was a storm with no room for interruption. He snapped his fingers once.
The undgroll’s body convulsed violently, its limbs twisting at unnatural angles. Skin split like wet parchment as blood bubbled from its pores. A shriek erupted from its throat, high, piercing, inhuman, before it collapsed inward on itself, flesh liquefying into a steaming heap of gore that spread across the stone floor. The stench of burnt iron and rot filled the air.
Matthious’s chest heaved as he released the woman, letting her crumple to the ground, gasping for breath. For a heartbeat he stood trembling, staring at the smouldering remains of his own creation. His clawed fingers twitched as though he longed to tear her apart, to silence that defiance forever.
But then… restraint. A realisation, sharp and sour, cut through his rage. He had let her words rule him. He had shown her his loss of control.
Slowly, he stepped back, skeletal shoulders rising and falling with ragged breaths. His grin returned, but it was strained now, less certain.
“You think you’ve won something,” he rasped, forcing calm into his voice. “But all you’ve gained is time. And time is a luxury I can strip from you with a word.”
He turned sharply, the torches flickering as he strode away, leaving the cell reeking of blood and burnt flesh. The woman coughed, clutching her bruised throat, yet through the haze of pain, a spark of triumph flickered in her eyes.
She lay on the cold stone floor, one hand clutching her bruised throat, dragging in ragged breaths that scraped like glass through her windpipe. Her heart pounded so violently she feared it might split her ribs. The stink of burnt flesh still clung to her nostrils, acrid and heavy, making her stomach twist.
I almost broke.
The thought stabbed through her mind, mercilessly clear. She had felt it—when the visions of the elf’s carved flesh had clawed at her soul, when Matthious’s grip had crushed the breath from her lungs. A few more heartbeats, a few more words, and she might have begged like the others. She had felt that edge yawning open beneath her.
But she hadn’t fallen.
Her body trembled, fear still coiled deep in her gut, but her eyes burned with something else now. Defiance. She replayed the moment, the flicker in his grin, the tremor in his grip. She had touched a nerve. She had forced him to lose control.
He’s not untouchable. Not unbreakable. Even monsters bleed.
She pressed her back to the wall, forcing her breath steady, and let that thought root itself deep.
Elsewhere, Matthious stormed down a torchlit corridor, his tattered robes snapping around him like the wings of a carrion bird. His skeletal fingers twitched restlessly, opening and clenching, as though still hungry for her throat.
He stopped suddenly, his reflection catching in a shard of broken mirror nailed crookedly to the wall. The sight froze him.
His grin was there, stretched and jagged, but beneath it, his eyes betrayed the truth. A flicker of uncertainty. The shadow of restraint.
With a violent snarl he shattered the mirror, shards clattering across the stones. His breath came ragged, the sound more beast than man. He had slaughtered hundreds without blinking. He had ripped apart kings, carved open saints, and yet… a single caged woman had shaken him.
His claws dug into his own palm, blood dripping down his withered hand.
“No,” he rasped to himself, voice trembling with fury. “She will break. She will bow.”
Her breath still rasped from Matthious’s grip when her eyes caught the faint glint near the cell door. Something lay on the stones, dark wax, a torn seal, the letter the undgroll had carried before its master obliterated it in blind fury.
Her pulse quickened.
She stretched out her arm through the bars, fingertips brushing the edge of the parchment. Too far. She strained harder, her shoulder screaming with pain. Still just beyond reach.
Gritting her teeth, she shoved harder, until with a sickening pop her shoulder wrenched from its socket. White-hot agony surged through her, spots blotting her vision. She bit down on her lip until blood filled her mouth, muffling the cry that threatened to escape.
Her hand quivered as she dragged the parchment closer, inch by torturous inch, until finally it was hers.
She pressed it to the bars, tilting it to catch the firelight. The wax bore a crude, scorched emblem. With trembling fingers she broke the seal, unrolled it, and read.
Her eyes widened. Her lips parted, words slipping out as a whisper of disbelief.
“Another… dragon… Orange and purple…”
For a moment the cell fell away. The bruises at her throat, the stink of blood and ash—none of it mattered compared to what those words meant. If Matthious saw this… if he knew…
Her gaze darted to the brazier, flames licking hungrily at the dark. She ripped the wax seal free and tossed it in. It curled and blackened at once, vanishing into ash.
Then, heart hammering, she tore a strip from the parchment and shoved it into her mouth. The taste was foul, ink bitter, parchment dry and choking. Her stomach lurched in protest, bile rising as she chewed and forced it down.
Piece by piece, she ripped the letter apart, swallowing each strip, gagging quietly as her eyes watered. She pressed a fist against her mouth to stifle the heaves, her body trembling with the effort.
She swallowed the last strip of parchment, gagging as it scraped down her throat. Her stomach roiled, her whole body trembling with the effort. She pressed herself into the shadows, trying to calm her breathing, when a sudden stillness swept through the corridor beyond.
The torches guttered, as though sensing their master’s return.
Matthious.
His footsteps echoed slowly against the stone, each one deliberate, dragging. He had not yet come back into sight, but she could feel him, like a predator circling, scenting blood.
He stopped. Silence pressed heavy against the cell.
Then his rasping voice slithered through the dark.
"Something… has shifted."
Her throat tightened. She forced her face into blankness, lowering her eyes to the floor, hiding the tremor in her jaw. Her stomach cramped violently around the parchment, every swallow threatening to betray her.
The scrape of his skeletal fingers across the wall set her teeth on edge.
"I smell it," he hissed. "Something hidden. Something kept from me."
Her heart hammered, but she clenched her fists, grinding her nails into her palms to anchor herself. Don’t look up. Don’t let him see it.
Matthious stepped into view, green-grey eyes glowing faintly, hungrily. He leaned his gaunt frame against the bars, studying her with unnerving stillness. His head tilted, birdlike, as though listening to something only he could hear.
"You are quiet," he said softly, almost curious. "Too quiet. And your silence… reeks."
A long, unbearable pause. She dared a shallow breath, keeping her expression slack, her gaze unfocused, feigning the stupor of someone still half-broken.
Finally, Matthious clicked his tongue and gave a crooked, strained smile.
"No matter. Secrets rot eventually. And when they do… they are sweetest to devour."
He lingered one last moment, eyes narrowing, before turning sharply, his robes whispering across the stone as he stalked away.
Only then did she allow herself a breath, clutching her stomach, praying the bitter taste of ink wouldn’t come back up, a bitter weight pressing against her insides. She sat motionless in the cell’s shadow, heart hammering as Matthious’s presence filled the corridor like a suffocating fog.
When he spoke, hissing about secrets and rot, every muscle in her body screamed to recoil. But she didn’t. She forced herself into stillness, her face slack, her gaze empty.
And it worked.
For all his hunger, his prying eyes slid past her, his attention snagged on nothing. With a curl of his lip, he turned and stalked away, leaving the air trembling in his wake.
Only then did she exhale. The release was sharp and shaky, almost a sob. Her hands trembled, sweat cooling on her brow, but she clutched the ache in her stomach as though it were a lifeline.
He doesn’t know.
The thought struck like a spark in a storm. Thin, fragile, and desperately small, but still, it was hers. For the first time since being thrown into this cell, she had something Matthious didn’t.
Her throat ached, her shoulder throbbed, and bile still threatened to rise, but beneath all of it, a thin thread of defiance pulsed.
There is another dragon. And he cannot know.
Her lips twitched into the barest ghost of a smile, fleeting and dangerous. She leaned back against the wall, cradling her secret as though it were fire hidden under ash. Fragile. Precious. Alive.
And in the silence, for once, she didn’t feel completely powerless.
Matthious stormed through the winding halls of his lair, shadows clawing at the walls as if recoiling from his fury. His skeletal fingers twitched and flexed, curling like talons itching to tear. At last he reached the chamber, cold, cavernous, its walls etched with runes that pulsed faintly like dying embers.
At the centre, upon a black stone pedestal, lay the book.
The Book.
Its cracked leather cover seemed to breathe faintly, the edges damp with age, the air around it thick with a rot-sweet musk. Matthious bent over it, his lipl-ess grin drawn taut, green-grey eyes feverish with hunger. He tore it open with a skeletal hand, his gaze devouring the pages—
Blank.
Every sheet, every turn of parchment, an empty pale expanse. No sigil's. No blood-ink. No whispering voices. Just silence.
A strangled hiss ripped from his throat. His hand slammed against the pedestal, claws scraping deep gouges into the stone.
"Why do you withhold from me?" he spat, voice cracking between fury and desperation. "I’ve given you rivers of blood. I’ve crushed children’s screams into dust. I’ve emptied myself into you. And still, you starve me of answers!"
He stalked back and forth, robes snapping with each violent stride. His voice rose, echoing through the chamber.
"There must be more. There must be a key to all of it. The shadows. The marrow. The very bones of the world. I will harness it. I will not remain half-formed, gnawing at scraps like a dog. I will be everything. I will be all-powerful!"
His clawed hands clawed at his scalp, pulling his gaunt face taut as he glared down at the stubborn, silent book. His breath rasped in ragged bursts, his skeletal chest rising and falling.
For a heartbeat, silence pressed heavy, only the sound of his laboured breathing.
Then, in a voice quieter, trembling with venom, he whispered:
"Tell me what I must kill. Tell me who I must unmake. Show me the path to true dominion."
But the book lay still and blank, mocking him with its silence.
Matthious recoiled as though struck. His grin twisted into a grimace of frustration, his green-grey eyes bloodshot with rage. Alone in the chamber, his hunger pressed down heavier than ever, suffocating, gnawing, endless.
Matthious froze mid-step, his mind suddenly snagging on a thread of memory. His eyes whipped to the book, burning with feverish clarity.
"The first act…" he whispered, the words crawling out of his throat. "The first act of blood magic…"
The memory uncoiled inside him, vivid and sharp. He was young again, the knife trembling in his hand, its steel reflecting the candlelight of his father’s chamber. The sound of his father’s breathing was heavy, steady, oblivious. Matthious had crept closer, his heart rattling against his ribs like a trapped bird.
The blade hovered over his father’s throat, the edge trembling just above skin. His fingers had been slick with sweat, his nerves on fire.
And then—
The knife pressed down. A soft, wet squelch as the flesh parted. His father’s eyes had shot open, but the scream died gurgling as blood bubbled up in a crimson rush. Matthious had watched, shaking, quivering, then laughing. The terror in his chest had twisted, melted, transformed into a delirious ecstasy.
Blood spurted hot across his face, his hands, the bed. He had pressed his lips to the wound, drinking deeply, gagging and trembling, then lapping greedily at the gush.
When at last he staggered back to his room, wild-eyed and soaked in gore, the book had been waiting. Its pages, for the first time, unfurled with secrets. And then, it had reached out. His father’s blood had risen from Matthious’s veins, drawn out through his pores, siphoned back into the book itself as payment. He had felt it leaving him, every drop he’d stolen, feeding the tome that whispered its dark truths into his skull.
Now, in the cold present, Matthious shuddered. His gaunt body pulsed with a green-grey glow, veins burning with remembered ecstasy. His skeletal hands quivered as the grin stretched across his lip-less mouth.
"I need… to kill family."
The words came as a hiss, desperate and ravenous. His eyes darted, fever-bright, searching the shadows as if names might crawl out of them.
"But… who?" His claws raked against the pedestal, gouging stone. "Who of my blood still lives?"
His breath came ragged, his voice cracked into a guttural snarl. The chamber thrummed with his hunger, the air thickening with the stench of rot and iron.
Matthious’s mind spiralled with the thought, gnawing, tearing, family, blood, sacrifice. Who still lived? Who could he unmake?
He drifted from the book’s chamber, climbing the winding stone path that led to a jagged incline overlooking the cavern below. From his perch, he gazed down upon his brood.
The undgrolls toiled in the dark, their twisted bodies hunched and shuddering, their pallid flesh stitched crudely where it had torn. They moved with a jerking, insect-like rhythm, shaping crude weapons and armour from scrap iron and bone. Hammer strikes rang hollow, the clatter of rusted plates echoing in the gloom. Some bent jagged spikes into shields, others strapped shards of rock and steel onto rotting hides for makeshift armour.
The air was thick with smoke from sputtering forges, stinking of tar and burnt flesh. The undgrolls did not complain, did not tire. Their eyeless sockets stared blankly as they worked, every motion mechanical, soulless.
Matthious watched them in silence, skeletal fingers tapping against his chin, green-grey eyes slitted in thought. They were his creatures, his slaves. Each one born of suffering, each one bound to him by the true language. Yet even they could not ease the gnawing ache in his chest, the whispering hunger that clawed at him.
"Family…" he rasped to himself. His grin widened, stretched thin. "Somewhere in the marrow of the world… my blood still runs. I will find it. I will spill it. And the book will open again."
Below, one undgroll faltered, its crude hammer slipping from its twisted fingers. Matthious’s gaze snapped to it, and with nothing but a twitch of his hand the creature’s head burst inward like rotten fruit, spraying black ichor across the stones. The others did not even pause—they bent, collected the fallen tools, and continued their labor without a sound.
Matthious’s lipless grin twitched wider. He felt the pulse of the memory again, green-grey light flickering faintly beneath his withered skin. The cavern echoed with hammering and the wet sounds of flesh shifting against flesh, a lullaby to his thoughts.
"Soon…" he whispered, voice rasping like stone dragged over stone. "Soon the blood of my line will flow again."
Chapter 29: Untold
Matthious drifted up and down the narrow hall, a warped figure in the torchlight. His long, skeletal fingers tapped against his chin with a slow, insectile rhythm. Green-grey eyes, narrow, sunken, and gleaming, never left the woman huddled in the cell. A grin, stretched too wide on his lip-less mouth, crawled across his face.
When he spoke, his voice grated like rusted iron dragged across stone.
"I was once like you… weak. Fragile. A hollow shell with no purpose. But then… I found a book. Old beyond measure. Its pages stank of moild… and pig shit."
The woman flinched, her hands curling tighter around her knees. The stench seemed to seep into the cell, choking her throat. Behind her closed eyes, visions clawed their way in: a looming shadow wearing Matthious’s shape, faceless and vast; pigs with eyeless sockets, their pale skin split and glistening, staggering toward her in silence. She gasped and shoved the images away, but they clung, sticky as cobwebs.
Matthious leaned closer, skeletal fingers wrapping around the bars. His grin widened.
"The book gave me answers. It whispered the true language, every word, every thought sharpened into a blade. Through it, I learned to fashion undgrolls… hollow slaves, carved from flesh and agony. But knowledge has its price. To open the darkness, I had to kill. To master it, I had to bleed. Blood magic embraced me… and I embraced it."
The woman’s chest heaved, fear rattling her ribs. For a heartbeat she felt as if the shadows themselves would smother her. But then, slowly, she raised her chin. Her wide, trembling eyes narrowed.
“You think that makes you powerful?” she whispered, voice raw but steadying. “You’re nothing but rot in a cage of skin.”
Matthious froze, grin faltering. Then he laughed, low and rasping, as if the sound itself wanted to flay her courage.
Matthious’s grin stretched again, thin as a knife cut.
"Do you know how many souls I bled for this power?" His voice rasped through the bars, each word soaked in malice. "Hundreds. Men, women… children. Creatures with voices like music, cut short in screaming silence. Elves with eyes like jewels, gouged and hollow. Dwarves whose bones I ground to powder. I slit throats, cracked skulls, drained rivers red. Each death carved a doorway deeper into the dark."
The woman gasped as the words became images, forced into her mind like burning brands. She saw elves impaled on black spikes, their luminous eyes fading. Dwarves shrieking as their veins burst open, their blood drawn upward into a writhing spiral. Children, pale and still, their shadows torn free and shackled to Matthious’s will. The visions clawed at her sanity, writhing and screaming, too vivid to shut out.
Her nails dug into her palms until blood welled. She forced her breath steady, jaw clenched. Don’t let him in. Don’t let him win.
Matthious leaned forward, eyes alight with a cruel hunger. "Every life taken strengthened me. Every scream was an offering. The more I killed, the louder the book sang. Blood upon blood, until the darkness itself bowed at my command. And you—" he hissed, his voice dropping to a guttural growl, "you will bow too."
The woman’s body trembled, her heart hammering like a war drum. The images still clawed at her, pressing, crushing. For a moment, tears burned her eyes. But she raised her head again, her gaze locking on his with raw, stubborn fire.
“You can flood me with all your horrors,” she whispered hoarsely. “But they’re still yours. Not mine. I will never carry them for you.”
Matthious’s grin wavered, just slightly, like a candle flickering before a gust. His fingers tightened on the bars until they groaned, but the woman did not look away.
Matthious’s grin crept wider, his teeth blackened stumps in the firelight. He leaned close, the bars between them seeming thinner, weaker, as if his voice alone could reach through and strangle.
"Do you know my favourite?" he whispered, almost tender. "Of all the souls I’ve broken… there was one who sang the sweetest."
The woman stiffened, her breath hitching.
"An elf," Matthious continued, savouring each syllable. "But not like the others. His blood carried the wild. His face was sharp, feline, cheetah-like. Quick and proud. I chained him down… wrists, ankles, stretched on cold iron. I laid out my tools before him. Simple things. Primitive. A knife, a hammer, a hooked blade, a brand."
The prisoner flinched as the vision slammed into her mind, torches guttering, shadows crawling across stone walls. A long, scarred table slick with blood. And on it, the Elvish man: lean, golden eyes wild, muscles taut as the restraints cut into his skin. His breath came ragged, defiant even as terror flickered in his gaze.
Matthious’s voice dropped, soft as rot eating wood. "I began shallow. Little kisses of the knife, tracing his skin. He tried not to cry out… oh, how hard he tried. But every shallow cut builds hunger, you see. Soon the body begs for release. I gave him deeper strokes then. Slow, dragging slices. His blood came hot and fast. He screamed—"
The woman clamped her hands to her ears, but the scream tore through her mind anyway, raw and endless.
"—and every sound was a hymn to me. I carved his pride away, strip by strip. Hours. Days. Until even his voice was nothing but whimpers. When he finally begged for death, I knew I had made him pure."
Her stomach twisted, bile burning at her throat. Her whole body shook, every instinct screaming to collapse, to curl into nothing. But through the horror, through the tears gathering hot in her eyes, she spat between clenched teeth:
“You enjoyed it. That makes you filth. Not strong. Not powerful. Just filth.”
For the first time, Matthious’s smile faltered, just barely. His eyes narrowed, a shadow of frustration cutting through his mask.
The grin vanished, replaced by a flash of feral rage. With a shriek of rusted metal, Matthious tore the cell door open, the slam reverberating through the stone like a death knell. In two strides he was upon her.
His hand shot out, sinewy, skeletal fingers clamping around her throat. The skin of his palm was leathery, reeking of ash and rot. His grip tightened until her breath came ragged and thin. He dragged her upright, slamming her back against the wall, his green-grey eyes boring into hers with predatory hunger.
His lip-less mouth twisted inches from her face, spittle hissing as he spat his words:
"Do you want to know what I did to him?"
The visions surged again, hammering into her skull. She saw the cheetah-like elf, bound and bleeding, his golden eyes dulling with agony. Matthious’s hand, steady as a surgeon’s, carving strips of flesh from his thigh. The elf’s teeth snapping together to choke back screams, until Matthious dug the knife deeper and deeper, peeling him open like fruit.
"I cut him slowly," Matthious hissed, his grip tightening around her throat. "I tasted his pain. I drank every cry, every twitch of his muscles, every ounce of his blood. And I enjoyed it."
The woman gagged, her vision blurring with the crushing pressure on her windpipe. The stench of his breath—copper and carrion—filled her nostrils. The torment slammed against her mind like waves against stone, trying to break her, drown her, drag her under.
And yet—through the tears, through the trembling—she forced her gaze to meet his. Staring straight into those vile green-grey eyes, she rasped, voice shredded but sharp as steel:
“It’s a shame… you didn’t choke on it. And die.”
For an instant, the cell seemed to still. His grip trembled. His grin cracked, not with triumph this time, but with something darker, uglier.
A hiss escaped him, long and venomous, as though her words had drawn real blood.
Matthious’s grip convulsed around her throat, a low, guttural roar tearing from his lip-less mouth. The stone walls quivered with the sound, dust drifting from the ceiling. His green-grey eyes burned with unholy fire, his skeletal frame vibrating with rage.
From the shadows, a shambling figure crept forward, an undgroll, its hunched body stitched from pallid flesh, its soulless eyes black as tar. It wheezed, clutching a message sealed in wax, and bowed low before him.
“Master…” it croaked.
But Matthious did not turn. His fury was a storm with no room for interruption. He snapped his fingers once.
The undgroll’s body convulsed violently, its limbs twisting at unnatural angles. Skin split like wet parchment as blood bubbled from its pores. A shriek erupted from its throat, high, piercing, inhuman, before it collapsed inward on itself, flesh liquefying into a steaming heap of gore that spread across the stone floor. The stench of burnt iron and rot filled the air.
Matthious’s chest heaved as he released the woman, letting her crumple to the ground, gasping for breath. For a heartbeat he stood trembling, staring at the smouldering remains of his own creation. His clawed fingers twitched as though he longed to tear her apart, to silence that defiance forever.
But then… restraint. A realisation, sharp and sour, cut through his rage. He had let her words rule him. He had shown her his loss of control.
Slowly, he stepped back, skeletal shoulders rising and falling with ragged breaths. His grin returned, but it was strained now, less certain.
“You think you’ve won something,” he rasped, forcing calm into his voice. “But all you’ve gained is time. And time is a luxury I can strip from you with a word.”
He turned sharply, the torches flickering as he strode away, leaving the cell reeking of blood and burnt flesh. The woman coughed, clutching her bruised throat, yet through the haze of pain, a spark of triumph flickered in her eyes.
She lay on the cold stone floor, one hand clutching her bruised throat, dragging in ragged breaths that scraped like glass through her windpipe. Her heart pounded so violently she feared it might split her ribs. The stink of burnt flesh still clung to her nostrils, acrid and heavy, making her stomach twist.
I almost broke.
The thought stabbed through her mind, mercilessly clear. She had felt it—when the visions of the elf’s carved flesh had clawed at her soul, when Matthious’s grip had crushed the breath from her lungs. A few more heartbeats, a few more words, and she might have begged like the others. She had felt that edge yawning open beneath her.
But she hadn’t fallen.
Her body trembled, fear still coiled deep in her gut, but her eyes burned with something else now. Defiance. She replayed the moment, the flicker in his grin, the tremor in his grip. She had touched a nerve. She had forced him to lose control.
He’s not untouchable. Not unbreakable. Even monsters bleed.
She pressed her back to the wall, forcing her breath steady, and let that thought root itself deep.
Elsewhere, Matthious stormed down a torchlit corridor, his tattered robes snapping around him like the wings of a carrion bird. His skeletal fingers twitched restlessly, opening and clenching, as though still hungry for her throat.
He stopped suddenly, his reflection catching in a shard of broken mirror nailed crookedly to the wall. The sight froze him.
His grin was there, stretched and jagged, but beneath it, his eyes betrayed the truth. A flicker of uncertainty. The shadow of restraint.
With a violent snarl he shattered the mirror, shards clattering across the stones. His breath came ragged, the sound more beast than man. He had slaughtered hundreds without blinking. He had ripped apart kings, carved open saints, and yet… a single caged woman had shaken him.
His claws dug into his own palm, blood dripping down his withered hand.
“No,” he rasped to himself, voice trembling with fury. “She will break. She will bow.”
Her breath still rasped from Matthious’s grip when her eyes caught the faint glint near the cell door. Something lay on the stones, dark wax, a torn seal, the letter the undgroll had carried before its master obliterated it in blind fury.
Her pulse quickened.
She stretched out her arm through the bars, fingertips brushing the edge of the parchment. Too far. She strained harder, her shoulder screaming with pain. Still just beyond reach.
Gritting her teeth, she shoved harder, until with a sickening pop her shoulder wrenched from its socket. White-hot agony surged through her, spots blotting her vision. She bit down on her lip until blood filled her mouth, muffling the cry that threatened to escape.
Her hand quivered as she dragged the parchment closer, inch by torturous inch, until finally it was hers.
She pressed it to the bars, tilting it to catch the firelight. The wax bore a crude, scorched emblem. With trembling fingers she broke the seal, unrolled it, and read.
Her eyes widened. Her lips parted, words slipping out as a whisper of disbelief.
“Another… dragon… Orange and purple…”
For a moment the cell fell away. The bruises at her throat, the stink of blood and ash—none of it mattered compared to what those words meant. If Matthious saw this… if he knew…
Her gaze darted to the brazier, flames licking hungrily at the dark. She ripped the wax seal free and tossed it in. It curled and blackened at once, vanishing into ash.
Then, heart hammering, she tore a strip from the parchment and shoved it into her mouth. The taste was foul, ink bitter, parchment dry and choking. Her stomach lurched in protest, bile rising as she chewed and forced it down.
Piece by piece, she ripped the letter apart, swallowing each strip, gagging quietly as her eyes watered. She pressed a fist against her mouth to stifle the heaves, her body trembling with the effort.
She swallowed the last strip of parchment, gagging as it scraped down her throat. Her stomach roiled, her whole body trembling with the effort. She pressed herself into the shadows, trying to calm her breathing, when a sudden stillness swept through the corridor beyond.
The torches guttered, as though sensing their master’s return.
Matthious.
His footsteps echoed slowly against the stone, each one deliberate, dragging. He had not yet come back into sight, but she could feel him, like a predator circling, scenting blood.
He stopped. Silence pressed heavy against the cell.
Then his rasping voice slithered through the dark.
"Something… has shifted."
Her throat tightened. She forced her face into blankness, lowering her eyes to the floor, hiding the tremor in her jaw. Her stomach cramped violently around the parchment, every swallow threatening to betray her.
The scrape of his skeletal fingers across the wall set her teeth on edge.
"I smell it," he hissed. "Something hidden. Something kept from me."
Her heart hammered, but she clenched her fists, grinding her nails into her palms to anchor herself. Don’t look up. Don’t let him see it.
Matthious stepped into view, green-grey eyes glowing faintly, hungrily. He leaned his gaunt frame against the bars, studying her with unnerving stillness. His head tilted, birdlike, as though listening to something only he could hear.
"You are quiet," he said softly, almost curious. "Too quiet. And your silence… reeks."
A long, unbearable pause. She dared a shallow breath, keeping her expression slack, her gaze unfocused, feigning the stupor of someone still half-broken.
Finally, Matthious clicked his tongue and gave a crooked, strained smile.
"No matter. Secrets rot eventually. And when they do… they are sweetest to devour."
He lingered one last moment, eyes narrowing, before turning sharply, his robes whispering across the stone as he stalked away.
Only then did she allow herself a breath, clutching her stomach, praying the bitter taste of ink wouldn’t come back up, a bitter weight pressing against her insides. She sat motionless in the cell’s shadow, heart hammering as Matthious’s presence filled the corridor like a suffocating fog.
When he spoke, hissing about secrets and rot, every muscle in her body screamed to recoil. But she didn’t. She forced herself into stillness, her face slack, her gaze empty.
And it worked.
For all his hunger, his prying eyes slid past her, his attention snagged on nothing. With a curl of his lip, he turned and stalked away, leaving the air trembling in his wake.
Only then did she exhale. The release was sharp and shaky, almost a sob. Her hands trembled, sweat cooling on her brow, but she clutched the ache in her stomach as though it were a lifeline.
He doesn’t know.
The thought struck like a spark in a storm. Thin, fragile, and desperately small, but still, it was hers. For the first time since being thrown into this cell, she had something Matthious didn’t.
Her throat ached, her shoulder throbbed, and bile still threatened to rise, but beneath all of it, a thin thread of defiance pulsed.
There is another dragon. And he cannot know.
Her lips twitched into the barest ghost of a smile, fleeting and dangerous. She leaned back against the wall, cradling her secret as though it were fire hidden under ash. Fragile. Precious. Alive.
And in the silence, for once, she didn’t feel completely powerless.
Matthious stormed through the winding halls of his lair, shadows clawing at the walls as if recoiling from his fury. His skeletal fingers twitched and flexed, curling like talons itching to tear. At last he reached the chamber, cold, cavernous, its walls etched with runes that pulsed faintly like dying embers.
At the centre, upon a black stone pedestal, lay the book.
The Book.
Its cracked leather cover seemed to breathe faintly, the edges damp with age, the air around it thick with a rot-sweet musk. Matthious bent over it, his lipl-ess grin drawn taut, green-grey eyes feverish with hunger. He tore it open with a skeletal hand, his gaze devouring the pages—
Blank.
Every sheet, every turn of parchment, an empty pale expanse. No sigil's. No blood-ink. No whispering voices. Just silence.
A strangled hiss ripped from his throat. His hand slammed against the pedestal, claws scraping deep gouges into the stone.
"Why do you withhold from me?" he spat, voice cracking between fury and desperation. "I’ve given you rivers of blood. I’ve crushed children’s screams into dust. I’ve emptied myself into you. And still, you starve me of answers!"
He stalked back and forth, robes snapping with each violent stride. His voice rose, echoing through the chamber.
"There must be more. There must be a key to all of it. The shadows. The marrow. The very bones of the world. I will harness it. I will not remain half-formed, gnawing at scraps like a dog. I will be everything. I will be all-powerful!"
His clawed hands clawed at his scalp, pulling his gaunt face taut as he glared down at the stubborn, silent book. His breath rasped in ragged bursts, his skeletal chest rising and falling.
For a heartbeat, silence pressed heavy, only the sound of his laboured breathing.
Then, in a voice quieter, trembling with venom, he whispered:
"Tell me what I must kill. Tell me who I must unmake. Show me the path to true dominion."
But the book lay still and blank, mocking him with its silence.
Matthious recoiled as though struck. His grin twisted into a grimace of frustration, his green-grey eyes bloodshot with rage. Alone in the chamber, his hunger pressed down heavier than ever, suffocating, gnawing, endless.
Matthious froze mid-step, his mind suddenly snagging on a thread of memory. His eyes whipped to the book, burning with feverish clarity.
"The first act…" he whispered, the words crawling out of his throat. "The first act of blood magic…"
The memory uncoiled inside him, vivid and sharp. He was young again, the knife trembling in his hand, its steel reflecting the candlelight of his father’s chamber. The sound of his father’s breathing was heavy, steady, oblivious. Matthious had crept closer, his heart rattling against his ribs like a trapped bird.
The blade hovered over his father’s throat, the edge trembling just above skin. His fingers had been slick with sweat, his nerves on fire.
And then—
The knife pressed down. A soft, wet squelch as the flesh parted. His father’s eyes had shot open, but the scream died gurgling as blood bubbled up in a crimson rush. Matthious had watched, shaking, quivering, then laughing. The terror in his chest had twisted, melted, transformed into a delirious ecstasy.
Blood spurted hot across his face, his hands, the bed. He had pressed his lips to the wound, drinking deeply, gagging and trembling, then lapping greedily at the gush.
When at last he staggered back to his room, wild-eyed and soaked in gore, the book had been waiting. Its pages, for the first time, unfurled with secrets. And then, it had reached out. His father’s blood had risen from Matthious’s veins, drawn out through his pores, siphoned back into the book itself as payment. He had felt it leaving him, every drop he’d stolen, feeding the tome that whispered its dark truths into his skull.
Now, in the cold present, Matthious shuddered. His gaunt body pulsed with a green-grey glow, veins burning with remembered ecstasy. His skeletal hands quivered as the grin stretched across his lip-less mouth.
"I need… to kill family."
The words came as a hiss, desperate and ravenous. His eyes darted, fever-bright, searching the shadows as if names might crawl out of them.
"But… who?" His claws raked against the pedestal, gouging stone. "Who of my blood still lives?"
His breath came ragged, his voice cracked into a guttural snarl. The chamber thrummed with his hunger, the air thickening with the stench of rot and iron.
Matthious’s mind spiralled with the thought, gnawing, tearing, family, blood, sacrifice. Who still lived? Who could he unmake?
He drifted from the book’s chamber, climbing the winding stone path that led to a jagged incline overlooking the cavern below. From his perch, he gazed down upon his brood.
The undgrolls toiled in the dark, their twisted bodies hunched and shuddering, their pallid flesh stitched crudely where it had torn. They moved with a jerking, insect-like rhythm, shaping crude weapons and armour from scrap iron and bone. Hammer strikes rang hollow, the clatter of rusted plates echoing in the gloom. Some bent jagged spikes into shields, others strapped shards of rock and steel onto rotting hides for makeshift armour.
The air was thick with smoke from sputtering forges, stinking of tar and burnt flesh. The undgrolls did not complain, did not tire. Their eyeless sockets stared blankly as they worked, every motion mechanical, soulless.
Matthious watched them in silence, skeletal fingers tapping against his chin, green-grey eyes slitted in thought. They were his creatures, his slaves. Each one born of suffering, each one bound to him by the true language. Yet even they could not ease the gnawing ache in his chest, the whispering hunger that clawed at him.
"Family…" he rasped to himself. His grin widened, stretched thin. "Somewhere in the marrow of the world… my blood still runs. I will find it. I will spill it. And the book will open again."
Below, one undgroll faltered, its crude hammer slipping from its twisted fingers. Matthious’s gaze snapped to it, and with nothing but a twitch of his hand the creature’s head burst inward like rotten fruit, spraying black ichor across the stones. The others did not even pause—they bent, collected the fallen tools, and continued their labor without a sound.
Matthious’s lipless grin twitched wider. He felt the pulse of the memory again, green-grey light flickering faintly beneath his withered skin. The cavern echoed with hammering and the wet sounds of flesh shifting against flesh, a lullaby to his thoughts.
"Soon…" he whispered, voice rasping like stone dragged over stone. "Soon the blood of my line will flow again."