Camilla did not walk—she rushed, a desperate, flowing shadow against the grim stone of the dungeon's descent. It was a place of layered horrors, a prison built beneath a prison, where the very air felt thickened by despair.
No natural light ever reached here; the only illumination came from a single, smoking lantern hung in the middle of the central passage, casting a flickering, hellish glow that made the chains on the walls writhe like serpents.
The cavernous space seemed empty save for Sorana, huddled and silent in a far cell, and a raw, guttural sound that echoed from the darkness ahead—not a voice, not anymore, but the animal noise a man makes when his humanity has been stripped down to nerve and sinew.
"Lady Camilla! You are not permitted here—"
"She has the king's direct order!" Another guard, breathless from running after her, skidded into the lantern light, holding up a sealed parchment. "Tiberius is to be released. Now!"
But the scene that unfolded as she rounded the final, dank pillar was not an arrest. It was an execution of the spirit.
In a small, foul alcove, Tiberius was chained spreadeagle to a wet stone pillar. A guard stood before him, holding a iron brand that glowed a malignant, living orange in the gloom. The air wavered around its tip.
"You defied your king," the guard holding it monotoned.
A low, broken mumble was Tiberius's only reply.
The guard pressed the brand forward.
The metal iron did not only burn his chest—it sank into it.
Shiiiiiiiiiii!
The sound was not a sizzle. It was a wet, shrieking hiss, like fat thrown onto a god's altar. And the sound that tore from Tiberius's throat—
"Ahhhhhhhh!"
Tiberius screamed out a loud splintering sound of a soul breaking. It started as a ragged, high-pitched tearing of air from his lungs and ripped into a raw, sustained howl that held no word, no thought, only pure, unendailable agony.
It echoed off the stones, a wave of pure sound that seemed to vibrate in Camilla's own teeth. It was the sound of a man being unmade.
"LET HIM GO!"
She surged forward, the hem of her gown catching and tearing on the rough stone.
The man before her was a ruin. His face was a swollen, purple mask.
His back was a latticework of weeping lashes and blackened burns. But the new wound on his chest was the worst—a smoking, brutal stamp of blistered flesh and char, the smell of cooked meat and burning hair blooming in the stagnant air.
Blood, dark and thick, seeped from his split lip and dripped with a slow, dreadful patience onto the filth between his feet.
"It is the KING'S ORDER! UNCHAIN HIM!" Her voice finally cut through the terrible echo of his scream.
The guard with the brand pulled it back. Tiberius's body sagged in the chains, a shuddering, endless tremble wracking his frame. A low, continuous whimper now escaped him, the only sound left after the great scream had emptied him out.
With sullen, confused haste, the guards began working the manacles. The heavy irons clanged to the wet floor.
Freed, Tiberius collapsed.
Camilla caught him, his dead weight slamming into her, the heat from his new wound bleeding through her gown. She sank to the floor, cradling his head in her lap. His one unswollen eye stared past her, seeing nothing, still trapped in the moment the iron kissed his skin.
"I thought you left," he rasped, the words bubbling wet and broken through the blood that welled from his lips. His eyes, one swollen shut, the other a glimmer of pained awareness, rose slowly to meet hers.
"No," she breathed, already closing the distance between them. "How could I?" Her lips found his as she spoke the final vow against his mouth, "You are everything to me."
She kissed him, soft and firm, while the taste of copper and salt—his blood, their tears—filled the space between them. It was not a kiss of passion, but of reclamation; a seal pressed upon his brokenness to prove he was still here, still hers.
Tears fell from her eyes onto his battered face, tracing clean paths through the grime before vanishing into his hair. In that dark, wretched place, with the smell of seared flesh still hanging in the air, they clung to each other—a fragile, breathing testament to a love that had just weathered the fire.
"We will leave," she whispered, her lips brushing the feverish skin of his forehead. "We will go far from this cursed place. We will make a home." Her voice was a steady promise against the tremors wracking his broken body. "I have prepared everything, my love. Everything."
The words were a map drawn in the dark, a path out of the dungeon's nightmare. She kissed his forehead again, a gentle seal upon the vow, as if she could transfer the dream directly into his battered mind.
Her tears fell, not just of grief, but of a fierce, determined hope, watering the seeds of an escape she refused to let die.
She slid her arms beneath his shoulders, her own strength frayed by fear and grief. With a ragged gasp, she tried to lift him, but his dead weight was too much. He was a landslide of broken flesh and bone. Her knees scraped against the rough, wet stone as she buckled under the burden.
She looked up, her eyes sweeping the circle of guards.
Their faces were stone in the lantern's flicker. Not one moved.
Not a hand was offered.
The order had been to release him, not to aid him. And she—with her tear-streaked face, her blood-soaked gown, her desperate, undignified love—was no longer nobility here.
She was a woman in the dirt, clinging to broken things. Why would they help?
The realization was colder than the dungeon floor. Her title was parchment; their obedience was to power, not to pity.
Gritting her teeth, she wrapped her arms tighter around Tiberius's chest, her body trembling with the effort, and began the slow, torturous drag toward the distant stairs, leaving a dark, smeared trail on the stones behind them.
Sorana watched from the darkness of her cell, her hands gripping the cold, wet bars. She had been still for so long, a forgotten fixture in the gloom, but now she pressed her face against the iron.
The dungeon plunged back into its oppressive silence, broken only by the drip of water and the distant, fading scuff of claws on stone. The lantern's light seemed to shrink, as if it, too, were abandoning her.
Sorana's grip on the bars went slack. Her breath hitched, a raw, thin sound in the immense quiet.
"Don't…" she whispered to the empty darkness, her voice breaking. "Don't tell me I'll be the only one here."
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To be continued...