WHAT LIVES BENEATH THE VEIL
Book One: The Unblooded Lamb
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CONTENT WARNING: This series contains explicit sexual violence, human sacrifice, psychological torture, murder of innocent characters (including children and family members), ritualistic killing, and extreme horror. No character is safe. Read at your own risk.
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Chapter Eleven: The Web Tightens
Year 8 – Three Months After the Fourth Sacrifice
The castle had settled into a rhythm.
Not a peaceful rhythm—there was nothing peaceful about the place anymore, not really. But a rhythm of tension. Of whispered suspicions and averted eyes and silences that stretched too long.
The servants had started avoiding the east wing.
Not openly. Not in a way that could be noticed or commented upon. But when duties required them to pass near the old cellar, they found reasons to take the long way around. They walked faster. Spoke quieter. Kept their eyes forward.
No one said why.
No one needed to.
The cellar felt wrong now. The air around it was colder than it should be. The shadows were darker than they should be. Sometimes—if you listened closely enough—you could hear things. Whispers. Cries. Sounds that had no source and no explanation.
The servants told themselves it was the wind.
The rats.
The old pipes settling.
They did not believe it.
But they told themselves anyway.
Because the alternative—that something lived down there now, something that had not been there before, something that hungered—was too terrible to contemplate.
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Liora – The Growing Power
She could feel them now.
The sacrifices.
Not their souls—those were gone, consumed by the dark, burned up in the rituals that had made her stronger. But their echoes. Their lingering presence. The marks they had left on the world.
Four lives.
Four deaths.
Four sources of power that now flowed through her veins like a second blood.
She had learned to access that power in small ways. A whisper of shadow here. A flicker of cold there. Nothing dramatic—nothing that would be noticed—but real. Tangible. Proof that she was on the right path.
The old texts called this stage The Awakening.
The first five sacrifices open the door. The next ten widen it. The twenty after that tear it from its hinges.
By the time fifty souls have been offered, the dark will no longer be a visitor. It will be a permanent resident. A second self. A shadow that walks beside you always.
By the time one hundred souls have been offered—
She did not need to read further.
She already knew.
Immortality.
Invincibility.
Godhood.
She closed the book and looked at her reflection.
The girl in the mirror looked back.
But something was different now.
Something behind the eyes.
A glow.
Not light. The opposite of light. A darkness so deep that it seemed to swallow the reflections around it.
Beautiful, Liora thought.
She smiled.
The girl in the mirror smiled back.
And somewhere in the darkness beneath the castle, the cellar whispered her name.
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Finn – The Nightmare Returns
Finn had stopped sleeping.
Not entirely—the body could not survive without rest. But he slept in fragments now. An hour here. Two hours there. Always waking, always gasping, always drenched in sweat.
The dreams were worse than ever.
Not just the cellar anymore. Not just Mira. Everything.
He dreamed of the princess standing over a body, holding a knife, her white dress soaked in blood.
He dreamed of the princess smiling at him, her teeth too sharp, her eyes too old.
He dreamed of the princess following him. Through the castle. Through the town. Through the dark corridors of his own mind.
"You see too much," she said in the dream. "You always have."
"I don't see anything," he said.
"Liar."
He woke up screaming.
The other servants' children ignored him.
They had stopped noticing his screams months ago.
He lay in his corner of the kitchen, staring at the ceiling, waiting for morning.
He was eight years old.
He felt a hundred.
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Aldric – The Breaking
Aldric had stopped eating.
The food made him sick. Everything made him sick. The sight of the princess. The sound of her voice. The smell of her perfume—something floral, something sweet, something that clung to the air long after she had passed.
He was wasting away.
The other pages had noticed. They whispered about him in the dormitory at night, speculating about illness, about heartbreak, about madness.
"He's not sick," one of them said. "He's scared."
"Of what?"
"I don't know. But look at his eyes. He's seen something."
Aldric heard them.
He did not correct them.
He had seen something. A key. A cellar. A princess who smiled too much and cried too little.
But he could not tell them.
Because if he told them, they would ask questions. And if they asked questions, the princess would find out. And if the princess found out—
He stopped the thought.
He did not want to imagine what the princess would do.
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Liora – The Fifth Victim
She chose carefully this time.
Not a traveler. Not a beggar. Someone closer. Someone whose disappearance would raise questions if she was not careful.
A servant.
A woman named Marta, who worked in the laundry, who had been at the castle for twenty years, who had no family and no friends and no one who would notice if she vanished.
Marta was old. Fifty, maybe sixty. Her hands were gnarled from years of scrubbing. Her back was bent. Her eyes were clouded with cataracts.
She was invisible.
The perfect victim.
Liora approached her in the laundry room, late at night, when the other servants had gone to bed.
"Marta?"
The old woman looked up. Her eyes squinted against the lantern light.
"Who's there?"
"It's me. Princess Liora."
Marta's face softened. "Your Highness. What are you doing here so late?"
"I need your help," Liora said. "There's something in the old cellar. Something I'm afraid of. I thought—you're so brave. You've been here so long. You know all the castle's secrets."
Marta hesitated.
"I'm not as young as I used to be, Your Highness."
"I know. But I don't trust anyone else. Please?"
Liora widened her eyes. Softened her voice. Let her lower lip tremble.
Please.
Marta looked at her for a long moment.
Then she nodded.
"All right, child. Show me."
Liora smiled.
Thank you, she thought.
You're so kind.
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Marta – The Walk
The princess led her through the dark corridors of the castle.
Marta had worked here for twenty years. She knew every hallway, every staircase, every hidden passage. But tonight, the castle felt strange. The shadows seemed deeper. The air seemed colder. The silence seemed heavier.
It's just my imagination, she told herself.
I'm tired. I'm old. My eyes aren't what they used to be.
But her instincts—the ones that had kept her alive for sixty years—were screaming at her to turn back.
Something is wrong, they whispered.
Something is very wrong.
She looked at the princess.
The child was walking ahead of her, small and pale, her white dress ghostly in the darkness. She seemed so innocent. So helpless.
She's just a child, Marta told herself.
She needs help.
That's all.
She ignored the screaming in her gut.
She kept walking.
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The Fifth Cellar
The door was old. Iron. Locked.
The princess produced a key.
"It's down there," she said. "I heard it scratching. I think it's an animal. Or maybe—maybe something worse."
Marta looked at the door. Looked at the princess. Looked at the key in the child's small, pale hand.
"I don't like this," she said.
"Please," the princess said. "I'm scared."
Marta hesitated.
Then she took the key.
She opened the door.
She walked down the steps.
She did not walk back up.
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Liora – The Fifth Ritual
She waited only an hour this time.
Marta was old. Weak. Her screams faded quickly. Her pounding was soft. By the time Liora descended the stairs, the woman was already half-gone, her mind broken by fear and darkness and the terrible realization that she had been betrayed.
"Why?" Marta whispered.
Liora set down her lantern.
She opened her book.
"Because I need your soul," she said. "And because no one will miss you."
Marta opened her mouth to scream.
Liora was faster.
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The Power – Five
It came again.
Stronger than before. Much stronger. The five sacrifices had opened a door inside her, a channel through which the dark could flow, and flow it did.
She felt it fill her. Not like wine this time—like fire. Burning through her veins, lighting up her nerves, making her feel alive in a way she had never felt before.
Five, she thought.
Ninety-five to go.
She looked at the body.
She would need to dispose of it. Burn it. Scatter the ashes. Erase every trace.
But first—
She raised her hand.
The shadows answered.
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The Spell
They coiled around her fingers like living things. Cold. Hungry. Eager.
She had read about this in the old texts. The Dark Grasp. A simple spell—one of the simplest—that allowed the caster to reach out and touch things from a distance.
She reached out.
The shadows extended.
They brushed against the body on the floor—cold, lifeless, empty—
And pulled.
The body slid across the dirt floor toward her, dragged by nothing but darkness and will.
Liora smiled.
Power, she thought.
Real power.
She released the spell. The shadows retreated. The body stopped moving.
She would burn it later.
For now, she wanted to practice.
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Marta – The Disappearance
No one noticed she was gone.
Not the next day. Not the day after. Not the week after.
Marta had been invisible in life. In death, she was even more so.
The laundry was short-handed for a few days. The head laundress grumbled about irresponsibility, about old women who wandered off without warning, about the difficulty of finding good help.
Then she hired a replacement.
And Marta was forgotten.
Just like Orin.
Just like Greta.
Just like Corin.
Just like the man by the river whose name no one had ever known.
Five lives.
Five deaths.
Five souls fed to the darkness growing in a child's chest.
And no one—no one—had noticed.
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Aldric – The Confrontation
He found her in the library.
Not the hidden library—the real one, the one with the pretty books and the gold stamping and the windows that let in the afternoon light. She was sitting in a chair by the fireplace, reading a book of fairy tales, looking for all the world like a normal eight-year-old girl.
Aldric stood in the doorway.
He was shaking.
"Princess."
She looked up. Her eyes were soft. Her smile was gentle.
"Aldric. How nice to see you."
"We need to talk."
She closed her book. She set it on the table beside her. She folded her hands in her lap.
"About what?"
"About the cellar."
For a moment—just a moment—he saw something flicker in her eyes. Something cold. Something old.
Then it was gone.
"The cellar?" she said, tilting her head. "I don't know what you mean."
"Yes, you do. You asked me for the key. You said you wanted to explore. But you did something down there. Something bad."
She looked at him for a long moment.
Then she sighed.
"Aldric," she said, "I'm eight years old. What could I possibly do in a cellar?"
He wanted to say: I don't know. But I know you did something.
He wanted to say: People have disappeared. People no one misses. And you—you're always there, always watching, always smiling.
He wanted to say: I'm afraid of you.
But the words wouldn't come.
Because she was eight years old.
Because she was a princess.
Because she was innocent.
And he was nothing.
"I'm not going to keep your secrets anymore," he said instead.
She tilted her head.
"Secrets?"
"The key. I gave you the key. I kept quiet. But I'm done now."
She studied him for a long moment.
Then she smiled.
"All right," she said. "If that's how you feel."
She picked up her book.
She began to read.
Aldric stood in the doorway for a long moment, waiting for her to say something else, to threaten him, to beg him, to react.
She did nothing.
She just read.
He turned and walked away.
His heart was pounding.
His hands were shaking.
He had just threatened a princess.
And she had smiled at him.
Why did she smile? he thought.
Why wasn't she afraid?
He did not understand.
He would understand soon.
But by then, it would be too late.
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Liora – After Aldric Left
She closed her book.
She set it on the table.
She stared at the fire for a long time.
Aldric knows, she thought. Not everything. Not enough to prove anything. But enough to be dangerous.
She should kill him.
It would be easy. A word in the right ear. A whisper in the dark. He was a page boy—no family, no friends, no one who would ask questions.
But killing him would raise suspicions. He had been acting strangely lately. The other pages had noticed. The steward had noticed.
If he disappeared now, people would remember.
Not yet, she thought. Not until the suspicion fades.
She would wait.
She would watch.
She would prepare.
And when the time was right—
She smiled.
The fire crackled.
The shadows in the corners of the room seemed to lean toward her, drawn by the darkness in her heart.
Soon, she thought.
Soon, everyone will know what I am.
But by then, it will be too late.
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End of Chapter Eleven