Chapter 14: 14 : Dark Corner

The stink hit first.

Rot, urine, old blood—so thick it clawed the back of Will’s throat and shocked him out of the numb haze that had carried him from the square. His cheek scraped icy flagstone; chains clinked. A boot toe jabbed his ribs.

“On your feet,” one of the guards grunted, but when Will’s legs folded they hauled him up by the armpits anyway, leather fists locking like barn-hooks. Neither man wasted words; they spoke in throaty syllables that might once have been language but had long ago surrendered to routine.

Down they dragged him—past torchlit cross-corridors, past barred recesses that breathed damp and moans. Stone swallowed every footfall and breathed it back colder. At each junction the air grew thicker, wetter, fouler, until even the torches wept resinous tears.

Will tried to count turns, but shock made numbers slippery. Left, stair, right, down again—until no more torches burned, only a single one hissing in a wall-bracket beyond an iron door.

A key screeched. The guards shoved him inside and slammed metal behind. Bolts thudded home; the torch in the passage cast a lone wedge of light through a slit, then dwindled as one guard carried it away.

Darkness collapsed, immense.

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The cell smelled worse than the stairwell. Will crawled blindly until fingers brushed a wall—slimy, pitted. A chain clanked under his palm: one end anchored overhead, looped round fouled rings along the stone, then dropped slack to the floor where a final shackle awaited. His breath fogged the cold.

Water dripped from somewhere high, each drop slapping stone in a maddening off-beat.

He sat, back to the wall. At first the dark stayed absolute; then slow as dawn, shades of charcoal emerged—contours of floor, darker stains he prayed were rust. Nothing else. Just him, chain, and questions.

Was this real? Was any of the last week? Elder deer, bone hill, the pond’s kiss, Garret dead, Bram dying, Osric’s blade—each flashed behind his eyes like scenes painted on separate panes of glass, misaligned.

Hot tears blurred them all. He pressed fists to sockets, but the tears only scalded harder. In that blind shuddering he did not know how long he wept—minutes or moons.

When the sobs emptied, silence crept back. Oddly gentle. He breathed it, almost grateful.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

A breeze—impossible underground—stirred his hair.

Then crackle: the brittle pop of burning wood, exactly like the campfire moments before Garret’s kicks. But no fire lived here. The far corner of the cell, once grey, now melted into velvet black, darkness pooling outward across wall and floor like ink.

Will’s heart slammed. He shuffled sideways, back already pinned. The blackness thickened, acquired texture—strands, no, hair, long and glossy, spreading tangle-lazy across stone like roots seeking purchase.

From its centre three eyes blinked open, each irised a different hue—rich brown, lake-blue, deep emerald. They did not sit side-by-side but drifted, weaving through one another as if sharing a single orbit. Their pupils pointed not inward but outward along the lids, giving the gaze an unsettling, sidelong devotion.

Will tried to stand—chain clattered, wall blocked—and found he could only watch.

Voices rose—plural, female, braided so tightly they near-harmonized.

A low, pleased moan from the green eye: “Ah, that’s the other one.”

A sly cackle from the brown: “His spirit burns bright—like the first.”

A distant scream from the blue: “But his shadow is thin. So thin.”

They spoke over each other, around each other, never together.

“Yes, but the hollow runs deep, deeep, deeep,” purred green.

“A fragile vessel,” tittered brown. “Growth unfinished.”

“The journey may kill him before the tide,” shrieked blue.

Will’s voice hid somewhere behind his tongue. All he managed was a rasped exhale.

The green eye drifted closer, pupils drinking him in. “I want to feel his full potential.”

Brown slid round it, dismissive. “The other one promises more.”

“The other may slip into light!” Blue wailed. “We must keep this one dark—dark—dark.”

“The tide approaches,” green sang, childish-bright.

“Madness will devour him first,” brown predicted with a scholar’s certainty.

“But what if it doesn’t?” Blue trembled, half plea, half warning.

Sudden as whip-crack, the green eye expanded, iris dilating to swallow sclera; within its deep emerald Will glimpsed stars swirling like embers in oil. A shadow-silhouette—hand, arm—unfolded from the mass of hair and reached toward him, fingers long as boning knives.

Terror finally broke his paralysis. He threw arms over his face, but invisible force pinned lids wide. The hand neared, nearer, black against black until its chilled presence brushed his lashes.

Will’s eyes slammed shut of their own accord; darkness behind lids felt blazing bright. A cold radiance poured into his bones, and dread deeper than death rippled through marrow. Only heartbeat thundered while the unseen hand—whether dream, omen, or doom—hovered, waiting to touch.