CHAPTER 104: KILL...KILL!

Above, the silver liquid coiled lazily into the air, rippling above Gold’s head.

"You alive down there?" Kaedros called, his fireball throwing stark light across the scene.

"I’m great!" Gold called back, cheerful as if he’d just finished a sparring match.

No one argued when he started hauling corpses off the platform tossing them aside one by one.

The bodies were paper-skinned, yellow-boned, and draped in rags that disintegrated at a touch. Some wore plain brown tunics. Others had once been armored, black plates polished to a dark gleam in their time, with fine robes and weapons, Joint Accord, perhaps.

"Done," Gold announced.

The platform was a great slab of metal, its four corners anchored by thick poles. In the center stood an altar-like pedestal carved with unfamiliar markings.

"Stand back," Kaedros said. Drawing on the silver stone’s power, he felt his muscles harden to icy steel. He leapt down, landing light on the metal.

"Why’d you dive at that thing without warning? You could’ve been killed." His eyes narrowed, heat gathering in them until they glowed like molten metal a warning.

Gold shrugged. "Because I could take it?"

"Next time, you tell us before you pull something like that," Kaedros said, voice edged but not unkind. "Still... good work."

Gold grinned. "I know."

Their attention turned to the pedestal. The symbols were strange. "Runes," Gold called them.

They debated briefly. Would it lift? Lower? Link the mountains? No one knew.

Kaedros ended the discussion by placing his hand on the stone and channeling power. The runes flared dull green. The platform shuddered, then steadied, hovering as if weightless.

It felt... responsive, eager to obey. Kaedros pictured the tunnel in the opposite mountain, and the platform obeyed, gliding upward.

They sailed past the vast heap of corpses below, the fireball’s glow tracing the mound’s terrible shape. Killed here or dumped here? No time to dwell; the tunnel mouth approached.

Inside, the smooth walls and floors gleamed faintly. No human hands had shaped this, unless they belonged to arcane masters.

They hadn’t gone far before the bodies appeared again human and otherwise. And with them came another sight.

Golems. Earth golems. Chef’s work.

They littered the floor with their broken, crumbled bodies. Stone limbs lay twisted in grotesque shapes, shards scattered like brittle bones.

"These golems are much bigger than the ones Chef let us fight in her garden," Taria said, nudging the head of a shattered one with her boot. "Come to think of it... she’s been sending them more often lately. Something about us being strong enough now."

"Leave them. We’re getting close to the heart of the prison," Kaedros said, eyes scanning the shadows. He adjusted his fireball formation, layering another spell in his mind. "Stay sharp."

Minutes later, they reached the prison cells walls built from the same black-green mountain stone, massive stone doors sealing them. Or rather, once sealing them.

Every door had been smashed. Cells lay in ruin, their interiors wrecked. Bodies sprawled in heaps, human, monster, and other species entirely. Some had been crushed beneath the fallen doors, others torn apart inside the cells.

"I thought this was a jailbreak," Rauk said, taking in the carnage. "But every prisoner’s dead. Did Joint Accord do this? Or the Castle?"

"Thalso said the Castle was furious," Kaedros replied, voice low. "It sent forces against the Joint Accord."

"But we haven’t seen any sign of that," Taria said, shivering. Throne of Ruinlight had always felt alien to her—but now it was cold, hostile, and merciless.

"Maybe it was the Castle," Kaedros murmured. "Thalso said it took its anger out on this wing. Most of the prisoners were relocated..."

"Then the ones we’ve been seeing are Collector’s men?" Rauk asked.

"Does it matter?" Gold said flatly.

It didn’t. They pressed onward, deeper toward the prison’s center.

Taria suddenly halted. "Where’s the monster that’s supposed to be infesting this place? Aside from the bat, we haven’t seen a thing."

It was troubling. This place should have been crawling with beasts, yet it was eerily empty.

When they drew close to the heart of the prison, they understood.

The air vibrated with a low, constant hum, like a thousand flies buzzing at once. Then the smell hit them. Kaedros and Taria knew it well.

Monsters.

The stench was a suffocating mix of rot, filth, and the unwashed musk of countless creatures.

"Get ready," Kaedros murmured.

The shattered doorway ahead opened into a vast chamber, almost throne-like in design. But where a throne might have been, there stood a massive stone cage with thick bars. Torches burned steadily along the walls, pushing back the gloom.

"Collector’s prison," Rauk whispered.

Kaedros scanned the room and froze.

They were everywhere.

A serpent large enough to coil around a small fortress. Hounds with four heads and burning eyes. Hulking bull-like beasts shackled in warped chains. Dozens of monsters filled the space, each more nightmarish than the last.

But the largest, most terrible figure stood before the central prison.

A man or something like one. Three heads, two blank and featureless, the third with a long nose and beautiful black eyes. The face was almost handsome.

It wore no armor, no cloth only fire. Black fire wrapped around it like a robe, shifting and flowing, its heat warping the air.

It looked at them, and its stare pierced like a blade. "Humans... and nonhumans. After all these years, you come here. Do you intend to free them?"

It pointed one smooth, clawed finger toward the cell. Inside, shadows moved, shapes Kaedros dared not hope to see. But hope bloomed all the same, unbidden and dangerous.

He smiled. "You’re right."

All three heads fixed on him, as if he had six eyes boring into his soul. "It was my order to kill every living thing here. That is why I exist. To kill. To kill. To kill."

"Then why haven’t you killed them?" Taria asked, pointing first at the monsters surrounding the figure, then at the prisoners.

The man hissed like a serpent. The black fire flared. "Mock me? I cannot touch them, the prison bars protect them. And the monsters? They are my soldiers. They obey me."

As if to prove the point, he raised a hand. The massive serpent lifted its head, black eyes flashing, and in an instant it surged forward fangs bared, vomiting a stream of green acid.

They scattered. The venom splashed onto the smooth stone and sizzled, eating deep pits into the floor.

Kaedros landed beside Gold atop a broken slab. Across the room, Rauk and Taria crouched behind the remains of a collapsed pillar.

The serpent coiled, undecided, until a sharp command from the three-headed man made it retreat.

"So you control them," Kaedros said.

"Yes."

The pieces clicked together. In its rage, the Castle had sent this being, this executioner, to slaughter the prisoners. But something had gone wrong. It had been left here... untethered.

Kaedros didn’t know if it was human. He didn’t care. What mattered was defeating it.

"You don’t have to fight us," Kaedros said evenly.

"I’m not fighting you," the man snarled, fire rippling around him. "I’m killing you. That is the order. That is the scream in my head with every passing moment. Kill. Kill. Kill."