(1710)
Maya's eyes flew open as if yanked from the pit of some murky, endless dream.
Her breath came sharp and sudden, and for a moment she didn't remember where she was. The ceiling above her was uneven, stone-thick and dripping with moisture, like it had been weeping while she slept. The air was cold, dense, pressing in from all sides, heavy with mold and iron. Her skin was damp, her dress still crusted with dried blood. The ache in her limbs was raw and cruel.
But that wasn't what made her sit bolt upright.
It was the silence.
Thick. Chilling. Wrong.
Maya scrambled to her knees, heart thudding hard against her ribs. The rusted metal of her shackles rattled with every frantic movement as she spun around the cell, blinking hard in the dim, flickering torchlight.
They were gone.
The other prisoners. The two women and the silent man she'd seen huddled in the corner the night before—gone. Vanished like dust swept into shadow. No one lay dead. No blood. No sign of struggle. Just the deep indentation in the grime where one of them had sat for too long.
Maya staggered to her feet, her knees nearly buckling. Her voice trembled before her mouth even opened.
"Hello?" she called out, voice too small for the thick darkness beyond her bars.
Her voice echoed back to her, too empty to answer.
Panic hit next, hard and fast.
Did I sleep? she thought bitterly, dragging herself toward the bars. How could I have slept? She didn't even remember closing her eyes. Her body must have collapsed under exhaustion, blood loss, and grief all at once, dragging her unwilling into unconsciousness. And now—
She was alone.
Her fingers wrapped tight around the cold bars. The rust bit into her skin. She gritted her teeth and shook them violently.
"Where are they?!" she screamed, voice rising like a knife's edge through the stone corridor. "What did you do to them?! You coward! You monster!"
Her words hit the walls and scattered, hollow echoes bouncing back like laughter.
"Luxien!" she shrieked, her throat raw. "I know you can hear me, you blood-soaked devil! Come down here and face me like the beast you are!"
She slammed her fists against the iron again, again, again, until her skin split and her voice began to tremble beneath the weight of her rage. "You're nothing but a plague on this earth! A shadow pretending to be a god!"
No answer came. Not even footsteps.
Only that awful, sickening silence. Like the walls had gone deaf. Like even the rats had learned to keep their distance from her.
The panic sharpened into despair. Then anger again. Then something else—resolve.
She wasn't dead yet. That meant something. That meant she still had time. And if time was all she had, then she'd use every second to fight, scream, resist. Even if no one answered. Even if her voice turned to ash in her throat.
She let out one more vicious scream, leaning her whole weight into the bars as if she could rip the cell door off with the strength of her fury alone.
Then she fell back, panting. Her back slid down the damp stone wall until she hit the cold ground, arms limp at her sides.
She blinked up at the ceiling, chest heaving, wrists burning.
Somewhere out there in this cursed fortress, he existed—Luxien. The general of death. The creature who had stolen everything from her.
And yet, no matter how loud she screamed his name, he never came.
That was the worst part.
He didn't even consider her worth the confrontation.
---
The stone corridors of the fortress twisted like veins through the mountain, and deep in its heart—far above the cell Maya screamed within—Luxien Draxen stood with one hand braced against a marble column, his cold gaze fixed on the parchment unfurled across the war table. The flicker of candlelight caught the edge of his profile, carving sharp shadows along his cheekbones, emphasizing the unnatural stillness in his frame.
He had not moved in nearly an hour.
Stillness was second nature to him. But not today.
Today, her voice clawed at the edges of his mind like a wind that wouldn't quiet.
Even from so deep within the dungeons, her fury bled through the stone. No words reached him, not truly, but emotion did. A rage unfiltered. Raw. Alive. She carried it like a crown.
Luxien's mind-reading ability, subtle and buried beneath layers of darkness, had always allowed him to sift through the thoughts of others like turning pages in a book. But not hers. Not the girl in the cell. Not the one they called Maya.
She was closed to him—her mind silent, unreadable. That alone made her dangerous.
The hunger in his veins coiled tighter.
A soft knock at the chamber door broke the silence.
"Enter," Luxien murmured, without looking.
A soldier stepped in—clad in the darkened armor of his elite guard, face half-obscured by the shadows of his helm.
"My Lord," the man said, bowing low. "The prisoner… the girl from the razed village. She refuses to stay silent."
Luxien's jaw tightened.
"She hasn't stopped screaming since morning," the man continued carefully. "She curses your name openly. The guards… they've asked for permission to—"
"To silence her?" Luxien interrupted coldly, finally lifting his eyes from the map.
The soldier hesitated. "To teach her a lesson, sire. The others are… unnerved. She's alone now, and yet she screams like she expects someone to hear."
Luxien turned fully then, and the room seemed to darken with the shift in his attention.
His eyes, silver and flat like a winter moon, settled on the guard with all the mercy of a blade. "She has no one left to hear her."
"No, my Lord," the guard bowed quickly.
A pause stretched between them, long and cold.
Then Luxien turned, walking toward the window, his black-veiled hand clenching slightly behind his back.
"She's loud because she still has hope," he murmured, almost to himself. "Break that."
The soldier looked up, uncertain.
Luxien's voice hardened. "Hurt her pride. Humble her defiance. But do not kill her. Not a scratch on her face, not a mark to the eyes. She's not to be maimed." His tone dropped into something deeper. Quieter. "Just enough for her to remember who holds her fate."
"Yes, my Lord." The guard straightened and turned to go.
But Luxien added one last thing, almost as an afterthought.
"And make sure she screams for someone this time… someone who won't come."
The guard stiffened, then bowed again before vanishing down the corridor with vampiric speed.
Luxien stood there long after, his gaze drifting once more to the fortress towers beyond the frost-laced window.
A part of him felt her still—alive, seething, cursing his name like it meant something. And something in that burned deeper than it should have.
Good, he thought. Let her scream. Let her rage.
It meant she hadn't broken yet. And that… was fascinating.
He touched the edge of his jaw, where the phantom heat of some old wound pulsed faintly. From another time. Another life. One he no longer dared remember fully.